Theory and construction of gender relations in the Kurdish guerilla warfare of Turkey

Situations of violent conflict are often propitious to the reconfiguration of social relations and, in particular, the renegotiation of masculine and feminine roles. Yet the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) is seen as having gone farther than any other movement in feminizing its recruitment, supplying a complex theoretical foundation for male/female relations and genuinely attempting to apply the resulting principles at the organizational level. But are these quantitative transformations and organizational developments accompanied by distinctive gender relations within the PKK army? Have they dispensed with the sexual division of activist and warrior labor? In fact, the construction of gender relations within guerilla warfare is first and foremost a response to the questions raised by feminine involvement and is ultimately associated with a rationalization of "traditional" practices. Beyond this, it seems necessary to rethink the feminine question in terms of domination within the PKK: from this perspective, the liberation of women appears to be nothing more than the feminine version of the desexualization and submission of activists. Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po