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The Campaign To Legitimize the PKK in the Western Media
Highlights
Under the effects of a series of events in the Middle East in recent years (such as the Syrian Civil War, ISIL, Kobani and Turkey’s recent cross-border operations), the PKK terror organization has begun appearing quite frequently in the Western media. In a good many reports and analyses, PKK militants are hailed as virtually ‘heroic freedom fighters’ and ‘representatives of the oppressed Kurdish people.’
Under the effects of a series of events in the Middle East in recent years (such as the Syrian Civil War, ISIL, Kobani and Turkey’s recent cross-border operations), the PKK terror organization has begun appearing quite frequently in the Western media. In a good many reports and analyses, PKK militants are hailed as virtually ‘heroic freedom fighters’ and ‘representatives of the oppressed Kurdish people.’
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However, there is a vast gulf between the PKK as depicted in the media and the true face of the PKK. In fact, the PKK is a fanatical terror organization that has caused the loss of more than 40,000 lives in the acts of terror it has committed in Turkey over the last 40 years. In addition to the 40,000 of our people it has martyred, the PKK is also known to have killed at least 15,000 (18,000 according to some accounts), in internal disputes. This is confirmed, in official terms, by the organization’s appearing on the terror lists of various countries and organizations, such as the U.S., EU, UN and NATO.
‘The Rebranding of the PKK’ over the perception of Woman One of the latest attempts to depict the PKK as legitimate, in the right and sympathetic was a piece titled "The Female Guerrilla Fighters of the PKK,” published on the web site of the British-based Middle East Eye on July 31st . The article used the term "the rebranding of the PKK,” a concise summary of this mentality of image renewal. The article was written by Eleonora Vio.
The article refers to female guerrillas joining the PKK in order to achieve independence for themselves and their people. The impression is given that the PKK represents an opportunity for liberation and freedom for women. In order to complete the scene, some eight or nine women are shown sitting and joking with one another in ‘innocent’ poses.
Turkey’s ethnic and cultural composition varies from region to region. It is true that in the 1990s a largely feudal structure, dominated by tribes, was omnipresent in the Southeast of Turkey, and that it resulted in repressive policies toward women. The majority of those joining the PKK at that time and later are known to have done so to escape familial pressures, and that the organization was regarded as a way out for liberation.
However, as soon as they became acquainted with the organization, the great majority of the women in question were also exposed to its Marxist ideological nature and to internal violence. Under Öcalan’s management, they lost their identities and realized that they were being used as pawns. Indeed, from that time on, women began being generally employed by the PKK in suicide attacks. Most of the women joining the organization later voiced their regret and surrendered, while some were executed in internal squabbles or held as prisoners by it on the same grounds.
The position of women inside the organization is therefore not, contrary to what the mainstream media seek to portray, a garden of roses. The PKK has always used the subject of women in accordance with its imperialist-democratic mask, concentrating on it as one of the West’s sensitive spots. This is also where the Western media is most deceived.
Despite everything, since the target of such social engineering is always that part of society that is least informed, it has not been difficult to create the desired impression.
Are the Women of the PKK Freedom Fighters or Merely Exploited Pawns?
Statements from 220 terrorists, 57 of them women, who have fled the PKK and surrendered to the Turkish authorities in recent years, reveal just what a wretched situation and what physical and mental collapse women in the organization are in.
According to female PKK fighters who have surrendered, women are treated like slaves, beaten and humiliated on a daily basis.
Some striking passages full of regret from these female PKK militants read as follows:
"N.D., code name, Havin: I was full of hope when I went off to the mountains three years ago. But I was enslaved. I witnessed people killing themselves for lack of a single pain-killer."
"F.D. code name Nudem: I regretted going off to the mountains within the first month. We regarded death as a way of salvation."
"E.B., code name Dicle: I used to take care of by eight siblings at home. But up in the mountains I had to cook and wash up for 80 people."
As we have seen, the truth is very different to the scenario dreamed up in the Middle East Eye's article. Women who joined the organization to supposedly gain their freedom were used to cut wood and dig shelters and serve as slaves for hundreds of male terrorists.
PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan's Opinion of Women Some of the Western media want to create a brand new and felicitous impression of the PKK via the subject of women, to which society is highly sensitive, by suggesting that being a member of the PKK is a matchless opportunity for a Kurdish woman and something to be very proud of.
The fact is, however, that statements by the organization’s founder and leader, Abdullah Öcalan, are insulting to women, particularly Kurdish women, and such statements are more than enough to invalidate that impression all by themselves:
"The bodies of the majority of Kurdish women are dead, stinking, cold and coarse. They are like that physically, while their spirits are frozen. They do not exist on the level of ideas… They cannot even recite words so much as a parrot."
In a speech addressed to women militants in 1988, Öcalan said; "I am weak when it comes to love. I do not avoid it. But if my doves leave me, then they will suffer the consequences. Those who left before have all been punished." These words clearly reveal the terrifying scale of the threats and violence to which women in the organization are exposed.
In a book called ‘Escape to Freedom’ which describes life inside the organization, the militant code-named Dilaram who fled the PKK with three colleagues and settled in Iraq in 2003, explains what happened to 14 women who, like her, fled the organization.
The book also cites countless examples of violence perpetrated against female militants by such PKK leaders as Öcalan, Cemil Bayık and Murat Karayılan. Dilaram also describes how those who refuse to bow to that system were executed by those same leaders, and how other women militants were forced to carry out those executions.
Bearing in mind that the PKK is a Marxist organization, none of the foregoing is surprising; the ideology of the organization demands that women be regarded as valueless and common property.
While using the female factor for its own unpleasant ends and interests within the organization, the PKK continues, in a totally hypocritical manner, to employ women as a propaganda tool in the face of the international public. And some circles, wittingly or otherwise, are abetting this vile strategy.
By Harun Yahya
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