Dilar Dirik was born in Antakya and grew up in Offenbach am Main. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. She has written on the Kurdish struggle for a range of publications including openDemocracy and ROAR Magazine. She tweets [...]

Figures

Abbreviations and acronyms

Locations in Kurdish

Map

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: The Kurdistan women's revolution - A social history from below

PART I: HISTORY

1. Mapping the Kurdistan of women

2. The Kurdistan Revolutionaries

3. Berxwedan jiyan e! - The Diyarbak¿r prison resistance

4. Vejîn! - The first bullet

5. Edî bes e! - The dirty war

6. Towards women's autonomy

7. International conspiracy and internal crisis

8. The battle for the PKK's soul

9. Enter Democratic Confederalism

PART II: THEORY

10. 'Struggling woman': Ideology and identity

11. Building 'democratic modernity'

12. Jineolojî: 'A science of woman and life'

PART III: PRACTICE

13. Stateless society

14. Öcalan: Leader, prisoner, comrade

15. Revolutionizing love

16. Mothers

17. Self-defence

18. Martyrs

19. Prisoners

20. Education

21. Media

22. Ecology

23. Mexmûr: From displacement to self-determination

24. Bakur: Women against politicide

25. Bäûr: 'Freedom is more than the absence of dictatorship'

26. Rojava: A women's revolution

27. Resistance or feminicide: Women against Daesh

28. ¿engal: From feminicide to women's autonomy

29. Kobanê did not fall

30. Life after Daesh: Women's solidarity in Manbij

31. War and peace

PART IV: EMPOWERMENT OR REVOLUTION?

32. Two rivers, two freedom agendas?

Notes

Bibliography

Index