Analar, yoldaşlar, tanrıçalar

Çağlayan, Handan, Mothers, Comrades, and Goddesses: Women in the Kurdish Movement and the Formation of Women’s Identity, 2007 (2nd ed. 2009), İstanbul: İletişim Publishing, 278 pages. ABSTRACT The fact that the Kurdish identity is not recognised officially in Turkey and the reactions caused by this fact are among the important issues of the country’s agenda. Since 1984, the conflict between the Kurdish movement and the state security forces has grown and 40 thousand people have lost their lives. The significant feature of the Kurdish movement is the active participation of women. This book looks into the political mobility that gave rise to visibility of Kurdish women in the public field with the identity of “Kurdish woman”. The book claims that women are not passive elements mobilised by the Kurdish movement. The formation of the “Kurdish women” identity and political activities of women is dealt with in the approach of new social movements which considers collective identity, collective action and agent as interacting constructions. Moreover, in order to reveal the interaction between the constitution of Kurdish woman identitiy and Kurdish identity, this study also benefits from the debates focusing on the mutual constitution of national identities and gender. It’s not ignored that the majority of those who speak on behalf of the ethnicity in construction of the ethnic identity and in the political processes based on this identity are men; and this subordinates women and causes a new patriarchal control on them. Nevertheless, it is put forward that political and social mobilizations empowered women. It is alleged that women’s participation as agents might influence the discourse and structure of the movement. It is argued, in the book, that re-definition of the honor has played a significant role on the process wherein the women have passed beyond the boundaries of the patriarchal impediments It is also underlined that the acceptance of women in public domain was only possible by the condition of being sexless. These allegations are based on the relevant literature, an investigation into the basic documents of Kurdish movement, oral history interviews with forty women. The importance of the book comes from the fact that it analyses the life experiences of the Kurdish women, who are made invisible twice and being marginalized due to the official identity policies and the gender system in which the women are subordinated, by taking into account the amazing process whereby the Kurdish woman turned herself into a political subject; as such, the book makes the voices of the Kurdish women be heard.