Necibe Qeredaxi
Necibe Qeredaxi shares the story of Sakine Cansiz (also known as ‘Sara’), co-founder of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), who dedicated her life to the Kurdish freedom movement. From her early inspirations to her efforts at organising women to resist multiple oppressive structures, this article traces the life of a revolutionary leader whose courage, resilience and determination continue to inspire millions.
Questioning identity
From the moment humans become aware of their existence as a will, they have continuously asked themselves fundamental questions, searching for the most satisfying answers that give meaning to their lives, both personally and socially. The question “Who am I?” has driven truth-seekers, philosophers, prophets, and leaders of social movements. It carries an even deeper meaning for individuals and social groups whose identity, existence, culture, and history are denied, or worse, face physical and cultural genocide. This process of questioning begins with an individual before rippling outwards, as people work together to build something new and prefigure a different form of life, one that stages their existence against the forces that deny them, both as individuals and as groups.
The success of this process depends on individuals being immersed in their historical memory – a memory that, with every change, both preserves the roots of its identity and renews itself, being reborn daily. It needs other motivations as well: consciousness from the depths of historical and social memory, courage and persistence despite obstacles, determination for all steps including self-sacrifice, the power to struggle against all ugliness, and a commitment to promises with those who searched for each other in the initial steps and found each other within the circle of this search. Here, I share the story of such a birth – not just a physical, but the process of birthing a new identity, beyond the identity that the ideology and knowledge of those in power have imposed throughout history, especially on women. At stake are processes of rebirth and self-construction.
Who was Sakine Cansiz?
A revolutionary who gave profound meaning to this process of questioning was Sakine Cansiz, also known as ‘Sara’. She was born on February 12, 1958, in a cold winter in the village of Takhti Khalil in Dersim, Northern Kurdistan, twenty years after the Dersim Genocide, the greatest genocide of the 20th century. Her parents, grandmother, and relatives were survivors of the Dersim Genocide. In those extermination campaigns by the Turkish state, being Kurdish and Alevi wasn’t the only crime – being a woman in Kurdish society, trapped between state occupation and tribal relations, was to be in a paradoxical situation. On one hand, women were a weak link of subjugation and faced multiple layers of oppression under occupation; on the other hand, they possessed an energy always ready for rebellion.
Sakine was the eldest daughter of the family, carrying many household responsibilities. Her mother was a rebellious woman, while her father was a calm and patient man. She was mostly influenced by her grandmother, as she describes her in the first volume of her book:
“My grandmother’s characteristics always caught my attention, I admired her and observed all her behaviors. She never extinguished the fire. At night, she would cover it with ashes and start uncovering it again at dawn. For her, it was a sin to go to another house to bring or give fire. If someone asked for fire, she would get angry with them and advise them to keep their own fire under ashes from the night before… For Eze (grandmother), life was about maintaining the fire, praying during lunar and solar eclipses, and being connected to the earth.”
Initially, Sakine only knew Dimli (Zazaki) because that was the dialect spoken at home. In school, she learned Turkish through the education system as Kurdish was banned from the establishment of the Turkish Republic (which continues until today). Despite this, her mother always told her, “Never be ashamed of being Kurdish.”
Early inspirations
Sakine’s self-questioning began during her school years, when the world was awakening to student uprisings and the Iraqi Revolution of 1968. Leftist groups were growing in Turkey and Kurdistan. Hearing stories of the Dersim genocide from elders, she became aware of the oppression faced by Kurdish society. Although her elders whispered about these events out of fear, her curiosity for knowledge and her adventurous spirit began to emerge. Isn’t it said that freedom begins in childhood?1 From that stage onward, her determination showed that the elders’ fear created courage in her instead of silence, curiosity and questioning instead of retreat. Rather than being a mere observer, she threw herself completely into the conflicts and questions, searching for answers.
Recalling her exposure to revolutionary life, her brother Metin Cansiz says: “Sakine was mostly drawn to the leftists. She participated in their marches and demonstrations. She asked questions but never became a member of any ideological group. After she met the Kurdistan revolutionaries, she became very active.”
Her student comrades (who were the first group of Kurdistan revolutionaries) knew that her liberation-seeking tendencies as a woman drew their attention, and they saw her admiration for Leyla Qasim. In the first volume of her memoirs, Sakine Cansiz also writes: “The inspiration they gave to political and revolutionary work put me on a path that changed my entire life. I knew several men who lived near our home; their lifestyle, their interactions, and their attitude toward values influenced me, and I saw the torch of Dersim’s freedom in them.”
“Down with the Coloniser”
After the 1971 military coup in Turkey, Sakine connected with revolutionary youth and joined the revolutionary movement from Elazığ in Northern Kurdistan. She actively participated and was present at the first expanded meeting of Kurdish Revolutionaries in Dersim in the winter of 1976. For the first time, she heard the phrase “Kurdistan is colonized” from Abdullah Öcalan, the group’s leader at this meeting which initially had sixty participants. For the first time, she became thoroughly familiar with national and class conflicts, embarking on a lifelong journey to ensure women had a role in the national liberation struggle and participated actively, becoming the first woman in the movement to organize women wherever she went.
During this period, Sakine Cansiz felt she could no longer continue living as an ordinary woman and searched for an alternative that would allow her to move more freely in the revolutionary struggle. She saw that the solution lay in leaving home. Marriage was an excuse and method for many revolutionaries at that time, as leaving home wasn’t easy for women. Sakine told her mother and family that she was marrying Baki Polat, her cousin, who was also a revolutionary. After marriage, she left home and went to Izmir. She worked at a chocolate factory for her livelihood while organizing women in general, particularly immigrant women workers from Eastern European countries in the factory.
Sakine always had conflicts with backward, imposing, and traditional attitudes. She was a woman who rebelled against customs and traditions. Her activism had angered her family, especially her mother. After marriage, Sakine’s second conflict began with her husband. Not only was Baki a member of ‘People’s Liberation’ which, like its organization, didn’t see Kurdistan as colonized, but he also wanted Sakine to be a traditional wife solely committed to family life. This was impossible for Sakine.
At the factory where she worked, she organized women and youth, leading to her and several others being fired. The workers began demonstrations and strikes. Sakine was arrested for carrying the banner which read: “Kurdistan is colonized”. For these efforts, she was taken to court, where she shouted “Down with the colonizer.” She wasn’t satisfied with just shouting slogans for “bread, work, and freedom” because she believed that in an occupied country and society where identity, history, and culture were denied, work and bread alone meant nothing. She saw true socialism in ending colonization and the joint struggle of peoples, and for this, she organized workers without discrimination.
When she returned to Kurdistan, she began organizing women in Çewlig (Bingöl), one of the most conservative regions of Northern Kurdistan. In a place where people were afraid to even say they were Kurdish, she established several women’s groups of 3-5 people and encouraged them to organize themselves. Despite family and societal barriers, women gathered around the slogans of the first revolutionary group and found themselves in it. Sakine had a great influence on them. About this period, Sakine says:
“We said women must participate in the national liberation struggle, as this is how they can become free and take steps toward true freedom.”
She organized not only among women but in all sections of society, creating trust, belief, and hope in a people who had faced attempted genocide. The fruits of her work in these later years had reached the level of beginning a new phase of struggle. The phase of moving toward establishing a revolutionary party that would answer the needs of freedom and independence for the phrase “Kurdistan is colonized.”
Founding of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK)
In the last week of November 1978, in the village of Fis in the Lice district of Amed (Diyarbakır), the movement’s first congress was held. Sakine, along with Kesire Yildirim (Fatma), were the first women to participate in the founding congress of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), a historic moment. While the manifesto and program were being drafted, Sakine was preparing for women’s struggle, and they even planned to call it the “Girls’ Group”2, composed of all cadres and supporters. They researched women’s struggles, travelling throughout Kurdistan to analyze women’s conditions.
While the manifesto and program were being drafted, Sakine was focused on women’s struggles. They even planned to call it the “Girls’ Group”, composed of all cadres and supporters. Later, Sakine traveled throughout Kurdistan, following up on and analyzing women’s conditions. From the movement’s First Manifesto, there was an analysis of women that stated:
“The destiny of women is like the destiny of the Kurdish people. Women must establish their own mass organization. If the goal is to build a democratic Kurdistan, then tribal and comprador pressures must be eliminated. Foreigners wanted to influence different social classes, but women are the segment of society they cannot influence. Women have been enslaved since the class society era.”
In 1979, after the congress, Sakine Cansız was tasked with organizing women in Elazığ (Kharput) and preparing for women’s education. Following organizational guidelines, women began studying Roman law and research on women worldwide. They started this struggle to build a foundation for women’s movement from 1979. Once, eighty women gathered in Dersim. Under normal circumstances, such a meeting would never have happened, especially since women couldn’t discuss their issues when men were present.
Prison Years
On May 18, 1979, following a coup, Sakine and many of her comrades were arrested in Elazığ. In prison, she demonstrated strong resistance both against the prevalent tendency to surrender within the movement and against state authorities. The state used various torture methods including hanging, electrocution, solitary confinement in cold dark cells, stripping, force-feeding excrement, etc. Her resistance amazed prison officials. She stood very courageously against her torturers. The notorious Diyarbakır prison, known for torturers like Esat Oktay, was where he particularly enjoyed torturing Sakine and wished to hear her scream just once under torture, but she never did.
Sakine described the prison conditions by comparing them to Nazi camps, saying:
“Humanity in Nazi camps was a silent and shameless corpse, the body naked and exposed. Hope was killed in those meaningless eyes. Those corpses only moved when their turn for death came. If one asks if such a place exists on Earth, we don’t need to look far – there is Amed (Diyarbakır).”
When Esat Oktay confronted her saying “You must accept what is said, many have come and gone, do you know who I am?” Sakine replied, “Do you know who I am? I am a revolutionary, clearly you don’t know revolutionaries” – and when he attacked her, she spat in his face. The incident of spitting in Esad Oktay’s face became a legendary tale passed down both inside and outside the prison. Sakine’s stance led her to be recognized as a symbol of resistance throughout the women’s ward and the entire prison. The resistance of Sakine and her comrades during their hunger strike in Amed Prison became like a rebirth for Kurdish women and the Kurdish people in particular. Her courage and bravery in prison impressed all the women inmates, both the political and non-political prisoners. One day, through a hole in their ward’s wall, they discovered that a prison guard was regularly spying on the women through it. When the women prisoners reported this to Sakine, she set up an ambush and stabbed the guard’s eye with a knitting needle. The guard screamed in pain, and Sakine was subsequently taken for torture because of this act of defiance.
Due to her acts of resistance against the prison administration and guards, Sakine Cansız was transferred to Amasya Prison. There, she was brought before the prison director named Şükrü. Their confrontation became an open defense of her political identity. When the director tried to establish his authority, Sakine responded defiantly: “I am Sakine Cansız, a founder of the PKK. I am here now and I have my own principles! I recognize nothing else.”
While there, she made several escape attempts, but they were unsuccessful due to informants. Because of these efforts to break free from the cell that imprisoned her body she earned the name “Butterfly” from her fellow inmates.
No freedom without women’s freedom
In response to the September 12, 1982 coup, which aimed to break people’s will, only one window of hope remained: the resistance of revolutionary prisoners. Those who played a role in this resistance brought new life to a society on the brink of death. Kurdish revolutionaries understood two key points: first, that Kurdistan’s freedom as a national question depended partly on changing the mentality of the genocidal and denial-based state system, but even more importantly on the awakening of the Kurdish people themselves; and second, that the resistance and the defence of a society’s identity and values in this movement wasn’t limited to men – women’s participation in this resistance opened the way for major social transformation.
Sakine Cansiz’s resistance paved the way for both women’s and society’s freedom. From this emerged the slogan “Without women’s freedom, society cannot be free.” What had weakened Kurdish society wasn’t just the effects of colonization, but also the social illness and backwardness that colonization had internalized in Kurdish identity. Sakine was the first woman in Turkey’s history to resist at such a level, becoming an exemplary figure of heroism. Sakine never accepted the conditions of an ordinary life and constantly struggled against such circumstances, never surrendering, despite having spent much of her youth imprisoned in various prisons.
In 1991, she was released. After her release, she went to the Mahsum Korkmaz Academy in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and participated in ideological education led by Abdullah Öcalan. She later carried out organizational work in Palestine, Syria, and Rojava. After this training period, Sakine requested to go to the mountains of Kurdistan. Öcalan, along with the academy comrades’ votes, agreed to her request to go to the Kurdistan mountains, believing that since she had played a role in the PKK’s founding from the beginning, he couldn’t make this decision for her. When most of the women comrades at the academy supported Sakine’s decision to go, Öcalan told her, “Sara, you won.” Sakine was overjoyed at this.
Life in the Mountains
Sakine went to the mountains of Kurdistan with great passion, participating in guerrilla activities and operations. She played an active role in the congresses and conferences of the Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Movement. Despite the harsh conditions in Kurdistan’s mountains, she maintained a disciplined life, waking up early in the morning to exercise and collect spring herbs from the highlands. She was also a powerful writer, which led Öcalan to suggest that she write her life story. She always kept her notebook in her bag, taking it out to write whenever she had the chance.
When the first autonomous women’s organization (Union of Patriotic Women of Kurdistan) was established within the movement in Hannover in 1987, Sakine was in prison. In the second congress held in 1989, Sakine played an important role by sending a guidance letter from prison that was read at the congress. The main topic of that congress was women’s autonomy (independent and special practices of organization) and how to develop it. From Kurdistan’s mountains, photos of 50 female guerrillas under the command of Comrade Azime were sent to the Congress, creating great enthusiasm among women and presenting a new image for everyone.
The third congress of the Union of Patriotic Women of Kurdistan was held in Europe in August 1991, with approximately 1,500 delegates attending. The congress decided to establish autonomous education for women in the Kurdish language, taking a clear and powerful stance against ethnic cleansing. They also decided to publish “Jina Serbilind” (Proud Woman) magazine, which became the first women’s magazine.
In 1995, it was decided to hold a women’s congress in Kurdistan’s mountains. Sakine played a key role in the preparatory committee for the first congress of the Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Union (YAJK). They prepared the movement’s bylaws, program, and reports in Metina, in Beshiri village, in a large historic cave symbolically called the “Women’s Temple.” The congress included representatives from all regions, with 350 female delegates participating. It was the first historical experience and step of the Kurdish women’s freedom movement in Kurdistan’s mountains.
This monumental step came after Kurdish women’s militarization. It was an army that would break through all inequalities, shatter the wall of fear, bring women out of their homes, and lead them to struggle. Beyond its military aspect, this army fundamentally uprooted the prevalent conservative mentality in Kurdistan and showed men the standards by which women wanted to live. In all these steps, Sakine was a collective pioneer. She deeply understood that Öcalan had addressed history’s deepest contradiction and that democratic change was impossible without this radical revolutionary approach. Regarding this step, Sakine said:
“Women’s militarization wasn’t limited to just being an armed force. The creation of the freedom army meant ideological and political development, action, will, and the creation of power and morale. It also meant creating grounds for unity with the people. It meant addressing people’s main demands, organizing collectively according to people’s needs, creating an organization that would encompass all of these.”
After gaining extensive practical experience in Kurdistan’s mountains, Sakine returned to the cadre training academy with a wealth of experience and theoretical foundation, where new perspectives and analyses were needed. At the exact time when Turkey and international forces were preparing a conspiracy network to expel Öcalan from Syria, during a Media TV panel with Abdullah Öcalan, Sakine, and several female comrades, the project of women’s liberation was announced. This is considered one of the most fundamental stages in the Kurdish women’s freedom movement’s struggle, occurring precisely when the movement’s ideology was being rendered increasingly meaningless by neoliberal propaganda waves globally.
This stage had been formulated in both theory and practice over many years to answer the question “how to live?” and required historically redefining the relationship between men and women in Kurdish society and beyond. Turkish journalist Maher Sayan, in an interview with Öcalan, described this relationship as “fire and gasoline,” referring to the transformation from a traditional master-slave relationship between a dominant man and a traditional woman to a free relationship. According to the women’s liberation ideology, this new relationship was based on principles of patriotism, struggle, organization, free will and thought, and ethics-aesthetics. This step would change not only Kurdish society’s destiny but the entire region’s, now having global reverberations. This was the historical, philosophical, and practical dialogue between Abdullah Öcalan and Sakine Cansız.
Building solidarity across struggles
Following new dialogue and sociological analysis with Öcalan, she moved her struggle to Europe in 1998, where she continued organising and opened a broader front in lobby work. She made significant steps both among Kurdish people’s friends and in diplomatic struggle. She was the first Kurdish woman to visit Bilbao upon arriving in Europe, meeting with Basque women. Basque activist women and academics noted Sakine’s strong personality and broad intellectual horizon. She built comradely relationships not only with Kurdish homes but also with leftist, socialist, and internationalist figures, opening broad avenues for struggle, resistance, and collaboration. She introduced them to Kurdistan and the freedom movement, finding support for the freedom struggle.
Especially after the international conspiracy against Öcalan and his imprisonment in İmralı‘s solitary confinement, Sakine conducted lobby work country by country while explaining the difficult post-conspiracy period within the movement and society. Particularly regarding the paradigm shift to Democratic Modernity, which was both a strategic step and carried its own risks. Sakine worked day and night to maintain organizational unity and fulfil the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement’s strategic role in resolving historical issues, providing genuine leadership for women within the movement, whilst also protecting the movement and leading the process of socializing Kurdistan’s revolution. For this, alongside other leading cadres, she maintained a decisive position in all subsequent congresses and at the movement’s turning points.
The Spirit of A Revolutionary Lives on
When discussions were held in Europe about establishing a Women’s Foundation and its name, it was suggested to name it after Sakine, just as many institutions were named after Rosa Luxemburg. At that time, Sakine said: “Why are they planning to kill me?” She sensed that those who couldn’t eliminate her in prison or in Kurdistan’s mountains had pursued her to Europe. In the center known for ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’, they succeeded in their conspiracy against her.
On January 9, 2013, at the Kurdistan Information Center on Paris’s busiest street, Sakine Cansız (Sara), Kurdistan National Congress member Fidan Doğan (Rojbin), and youth movement member Leyla Şaylemez (Ronahî) were assassinated by a member of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT.
Later, the killer died in a French prison under mysterious circumstances, leading to the case’s closure. The occupiers attempted to silence the voice of Kurdish women and the Kurdish people through the assassination of Sakine and other pioneering women. Their goal: to strike a deadly blow against the inspiring mind of this movement. However, Sakine, just as she had learned to succeed, became the voice and spirit of millions in the face of both death and her killers, as people poured into the streets to express their feelings about this massacre. She dreamed of being showered with flowers when received in Kurdistan as a guerrilla fighter. She carried the pain, suffering, and tragedy of her people in her bag, transforming it into hope, energy, awareness, and organization as she traveled from city to city, mountain to mountain, country to country. Yet she also understood that the path to peace is a long one.
Öcalan assessed this massacre and said:
“In reality, they wanted to use this massacre to prevent my peace efforts. That is, those within the state who don’t want the issue resolved through democratic means wanted to disrupt the process. Sakine’s life is an example. Women’s freedom is Sakine’s struggle. I will ask for accountability for Sakine, and I will reveal this…
Necibe Qeredaxi was born in Southern Kurdistan (Iraqi Kurdistan). Since 1997, she has worked as a journalist in print media and Kurdish TV and radio outlets as well as a producer and presenter in Iraqi Kurdistan and Belgium. She is a member of KNK ( Kurdistan National Congress) and since 2016 a member of Jineoloji Academy as an educator and researcher.
A longer version of this article was published by Jineoloji Academy on January 14, 2025.
- A. Ocalan, Beyond the state and violence. ↩︎
- Dalal Amed, “Women’s History Lessons in the Kurdistan Freedom Movement”. ↩︎