#kurdish resistance

[chaiaurchaandni]

white american liberals love seeing poc as victims who constantly have to beg for a shred of white liberals' attention so they may throw some solidarity our way. the moment we refuse to audition for their sympathy and instead empower ourselves to fight back directly against our oppressors, these same liberals are not so comfortable with the idea of us as victims or innocents - how dare we resist or have our own agency? if a poc takes up a rifle after seeing their entire family be killed, and then is bombed by the killers for fighting back against the killers, then is that poc a victim? oh but how could they be? - they had a gun. the gun becomes our symbol of liberation and hope, not mindless vengeance, but as a means for the destruction of the power structures that our oppressor rests on. stop prefacing your support of poc with condemnations of our resistance. negotiations will never free oppressed people because our oppressors do not have a conscience. you cannot reason with somebody who thinks you are inherently worth less. resistance is the only way forward.

remember that the violence of the oppressed is in no way morally equivalent to the violence of the oppressor. and the oppressed do not have to justify the means of our resistance to the oppressors / the sympathizers of the oppressors.

[victusinveritas]

[kropotkindersurprise]

November 7, 2024 - For several days heavy riots have raged in the streets of Kurdish cities in the south-east of Türkiye, after the Erdoğan government removed elected Kurdish mayors in the cities of Mardin (Mêrdîn), Batman (Êlih), and Halfeti (Xelfetî), and replaced them with AKP trustees. The removed mayors are accused of being assosciated with a terrorist organisation, which is the excuse the AKP always uses to suppress Kurdish political parties. [video]

[jewkbox]

Thd Kurdish women fighting ISIS

All-female battalions of Kurdish soldiers have been instrumental in fighting ISIS

"In Syria, the women of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) have been recognized for their all-female fighting force. This force, known as the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) have been heralded for their bravery on the battlefield. Al Jazeera reported that Kurdish soldiers from the YPJ had singlehandedly killed over 100 Islamic State fighters.[1] In the defense of Kobani, it was reported that up to 40% of the resistance fighting force against ISIS was made up of Kurdish women."

By the way, 98% of Kurds are Sunni Muslims.

[heretic-child]

“The hypocritical political positions of Erdoğan and Netanyahu have further damaged the fragile international solidarity between the Palestinian and Kurdish movements. Both leaders publicly display sympathy with the oppressed populations in the other’s country, all the while continuing their violent policies at home. Erdoğan repeatedly calls Netanyahu a “terrorist” over his inhumane policies in Gaza and against the demonstrators at the border. In response, Netanyahu points to the destruction of the Kurdish towns of Cizre, Nusaybin and Sur since 2015 and a long history of Kurdish oppression, quipping that he is “not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villagers in his native Turkey.” Strikingly, this theatrical display of animosity between Turkey and Israel seems to end when it comes to their economic relationship, which dates back to the Cold War and currently appears to be stronger than ever.”

The Kurdish Movement’s Relationship with the Palestinian Struggle

[nando161mando]

🔥 Qamishlo: During a protest against the attacks on Rojava the youth sends their greetings to the resistance in the mountains of Zap:

"War in Kurdistan, war is hot like fire

It's like hell for the enemies

We salute the Zap resistance from the bottom of our hearts and send our greetings from the bottom of our hearts

We salute the guerilla resistance from the bottom of our hearts and send them our greetings from the bottom of our hearts

Hey hey hey

Let's say who are we sending our greetings to?"

Zap Zap Zapê

Let's say who do we not forget?

Zap Zap Zapê

[indizombie]

Muslim women students experienced the hijab ban as a denial of their autonomy and agency. As the PUCL team listened to the Muslim girls’ stories close up and large, what became clear was that for them, the hijab is a visible carrier of their self-identity and a way of remaking their own world by freely negotiating with their culture’s normative values and practices. However, they have also had to struggle with their teachers’ negative assumption that they are unaware of being oppressed by their own faith and by a community that does not value education for women. Journalists and political leaders repeatedly asked, “Are they coming to college for studying or for their religion? Let them go to their madrasas if they want to prioritise the hijab.” In insisting simultaneously on their right to education as well as the right to wear the hijab, they are confronting the dominant discourse on the hijab that has obstructed their educational possibilities that have in recent years opened up in Karnataka. In doing so, they are invoking an alternative discourse of gender justice. In this respect, their struggle is at one with the rallying cry ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ (Women, Life, Freedom) of Iranian women who are protesting the custodial killing of Mahsa Amini, a young woman, by the notorious Iranian ‘morality police’ for wearing her hijab ‘too loosely.’ The slogan ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ originates in the Kurdish resistance movement in Turkey and reflects similar struggles of women for complete autonomy and liberation. As Apoorvanand and Alishan Jafri argued, ‘Though the contexts of the protests in Iran and India are different, women in both countries are making the same statement. They are telling the state that they want to live their lives as free, thinking individuals – not as dull identical clones. In both cases, it is a battle between individuals and the state for ownership of the self.’

People's Union of Civil Liberties, 'Closing the Gates of Education: Violation of rights of Muslim women students in Karnataka'

[envolvenuances]

That video that circulates pictures of Socialist Afghanistan and Iran under Zehedi's dictatorship post USA-backed coup of 1953 as the same because women dressed in western clothing and were allowed work and study kinda pisses me off

[rainbowgod666]

So according to israel, their "land" is all of syria, Iraq, part of Iran, and fucking KURDISTAN, which is PARTLY IN TURKEY, which is literally NEVER GOING TO LET THAT SHIT OFF.

Exactly this. The limits of the lands Israel thinks were "promised" to them are drawn with a red line in this picture:

They won't stop with Palestine. They want all of these lands. Israel is a terrorist state and it doesn't have any right to exist.

[genlosscharliie]

if it makes any of my fellow arabs (especially those living in the levant and adjacent areas) feel better: greater israel is fundamentally an impossible thing to achieve. israel cannot not take on all the different forces working against it and especially not while holding the public opinion in their favour.

this is not wishful thinking. to achieve this, they would have to defeat: palestinian resistance, lebanese resistance (alongside the lebanese army), hezbollah, syrian opposition militias, syrian regime armies, turkish militias, russian forces, iranian forces, & (their biggest threats) kurdish and bedouin forces. not to mention they would be threatening the safety of jordan, iraq, egypt, and turkey in the process, so their armies are likely to mobilise at the very least (alongside the fact that fighting turkish militias would be fighting a nato member).

don't let zionist propaganda or a nihilist mentality make you think they're some unstoppable force; they're already experiencing losses in the ground invasion of lebanon against hezbollah (separate from the lebanese army, btw). they're not invincible, don't let them convince you that they are.

keep hope, and support your arab friends wherever you can. we will win this, for freer homelands and our liberation. i love you all who share my struggles, and those who don't just sit back and watch.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #6 – Exordia by Seth Dickinson

This is a book I have been looking forward to for quite literally years, from someone who is easily one of my favourite working authors. I also read the short story the book was expanded out from before I even knew it was going to be a book, and so went in spoiled on the broad strokes of what turned out to be the climax of the whole thing. All to say my opinion on this is unlikely to match that of the typical reader, I guess.

Anyway, Exordia is a glorious spectacular mess that has no right to cohere anywhere near as well as it does. It’s target audience is small, but I’m certainly somewhere in it. Please ignore all the marketing it’s so bad you have to wonder if someone at Tor just has it out for the author.

Exordia is a, well, a profoundly difficult book to give any sort of plot summary for. The first act involves Anna, a 30-something survivor of the Anfal Genocide now living a rather unimpressive life in New York City, until one day in the early 2010s she sees an alien eating the turtles in Central Park. Then there’s a cat-and-mouse hunt between terrifying alien snake-centaurs for the future of free will in the galaxy, and the plot jumping to kurdistan, and six more POV characters from as many different nations, and nuclear weapons, and oh so many people dying messily. The first act is an oddly domestic and endearing piece of table setting, the second is (to borrow the idiom of the book’s own marketing) Tom Clancy meets Jeff Vandermeer or Roadside Picnic, and the third is basically impossible to describe without a multipage synopsis, but mostly concerned with ethical dilemmas and moral injuries. It’s to the book’s credit that it never bats an eye at shifting focus and scale, but it does make coming to grips with it difficult.

This is, as they say, a thematically dense book, but it’s especially interested in the fallout of imperialism. The Obama-era ‘don’t do stupid shit’ precise and sterile form of it in particular – the book’s a period piece for a reason, after all. The ethics of complicity – of being offered the choice of murdering and betraying those around you or having an alien power with vastly superior destructive powers inflict an order of magnitude more misery to you, them, and everyone in the same general vicinity to punish you for the inconvenience – is one that gets a lot of wordcount. It is not an accident that the man most willing and able to collaborate with the overwhelming powerful alien empire in hopes of bargaining some future for humanity is the National Security Council ghoul who came out of organizing surveillance information for the drone wars. It’s also not a coincidence that the main (if only by a hair) protagonist is someone with a lot of bitter memories over how the US encouraged Iraq’s kurdish population to rebel in the ‘90s and then just washed their hands and let them be massacred (the book couldn’t actually ship with a historical primer on modern kurdish history, so it’s woven into the story in chunks with varying amount of grace. But it is in fact pretty thematically key here).

Speaking of complicity, the book’s other overriding preoccupation in (in the broadest sense) Trolley Problems. Is it better to directly kill a small number of people or, through your inaction, allow a larger number to die? Does it matter is the small number is your countrymen and the larger foreigners, or vice versa? What about humans and aliens? Does it matter whether the choice is submitting to subjugation or killing innocents as a means to resist it? What about letting people around you die to learn the fundamental truth of the cosmos? Does the calculus change when you learn that immortal souls (and hell) are real? This is the bone the story is really built around chewing on.

All that probably makes the text seem incredibly didactic, or at least like a philosophical dialogue disguised as a novel. Which really isn’t the case! The book definitely has opinions, but none of the characters are clear author-avatars, and all perspectives are given enough time and weight to come across as seriously considered and not just as cardboard cutouts to jeer at. Okay, with the exception of one of the two aliens who you get the very strong sense is hamming it up as a cartoon villain just for the of it (he spends much of the book speaking entirely in all caps). There definitely are a couple points where it feels like the books turning and lecturing directly at the reader, but they’re both few and fairly short.

The characters themselves are interesting. They’re all very flawed, but more than that they’re all very...embodied, I guess? Distracted with how hot someone is, concerned with what they ate that morning or the smell of something disgusting, still not over an ex from years ago. Several of them are also sincerely religious in a way that’s very true to life to actual people but you rarely see in books. The result is that basically comes as being far more like actual humans than I’m at all used to in most fiction (of course, a lot of those very human qualities get annoying or eye-roll inducing fairly quickly. But hey, that’s life). Though that’s all mostly the case at the start of the book – the fact that the main cast are slowly turning into caricatures of themselves as they’re exposed to the alien soul manipulation technology is actually a major plot point, which I’m like fifty/fifty on being commentary on what happens to the image and legacy of people as they’re caught up in grand narratives versus just being extended setup for a joke about male leads in technothrillers being fanfic shipbait.

Part of the characters seeming very human is that some (though by no means all) of the POVs are just incredibly funny, in that objectively fucked up and tasteless way that people get when coping with overwhelming shock or trauma. It’s specifically because the jokes are so in-your-face awful that they fit, I think? It manages to avoid the usual bathetic trap a lot of works mixing in humour with drama fall into, anyway.

Speaking of alien soul manipulation technology – okay, you know how above I said that the points where the book directly lectured the reader were few and far between. This is true for lectures about politics or morality. All the freed up space in this 530 page tome is instead used for technobabble about theoretical math. Also cellular biology, cryptography, entropics, the organization of the American security state, how black holes work, and a few dozen other things. This book was edited for accuracy by either a doctoral student from every physical science and an award winning mathematician, or else just by one spectacularly confident bullshitter with several hundred hours on wikipedia. Probably both, really. I did very much enjoy this book, but that is absolutely predicated on the fact that when I knew when to let my eyes glaze over and start skimming past the proper nouns.

The book has a fairly complete narrative arc in its own right, but the ending also screams out for a sequel, and quite a lot of the weight and meaning of the book’s climax does depend on followthrough and resolution in some future sequel. Problematically, the end of the book also includes a massive increase in scale, and any sequel would require a whole new setting and most of a new cast of characters, so I’m mildly worried how long it will be before we get it (if ever).

The book is also just very...I’m not sure flabby is the right word, but it is doing many many different things, and I found some of them far more interesting than others. I’m not sure whether Dickinson just isn’t great at extended action scenes or if I am just universally bored by drawn out Tom Clancy fantasies, but either way there were several dozen pages too many of them. The extended cultural digressions about the upbringing and backstories of each of the seven POVs were meanwhile very interesting! (Mostly, I got bored of the whole Erik-Clayton-Rosamaria love triangle Madonna complex thing about a tenth of the way into the book but it just kept going.) It did however leave the book very full of extended tangents and digressions, even beyond what the technobabble did. Anna herself, ostensibly the main protagonist, is both utterly thematically loadbearing but very often feels entirely vestigial to the actual, like, plot, brought along for the ride because she’s an alien terrorist’s favourite of our whole species of incest-monkeys. The end result is, if not necessarily unfocused, then at least incredibly messy, flitting back and forth across a dozen topics that on occasion mostly just seem unified by having caught the author’s interest as they wrote.

It’s interesting to compare the book to Anna Saves It All, the short story it was based on – quite a lot changed! But that’s beyond the scope of this already overlong review. So I guess I’ll just say make sure to read the book first, if you’re going to.

[metamorphesque]

ASALA: VAN Operation, September 24 (part 2)

Please, make sure to read the first part.

Though violence is condemned, it is the cruel truth that it is the only language to which the world listens.

Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) is an Armenian underground organization, the aim of which is bringing the Armenian Question into the international political and legal dimension, and liberation of Western Armenia.

Now, why am I telling you about this today? Well, today - on September 24th marks the 43rd anniversary of the Van Operation (24/09/1981), carried out by 4 Armenian ASALA soldiers - Vazgen Sislyan, Hakob Julfayan, Gevorg Gyuzelyan and Aram Basmajyan. 

On this day in 1981, four Armenian youths, aged 20-24, armed with pistols, automatic rifles, and explosives, seized the turkish consulate in Paris, holding it under their control for 15 hours.

4 Soldiers of The Van Operation taking off their masks

I will do my best to walk you through the operation hour by hour:

At 10 a.m., in two groups (Gevorg Kyuzeleyan-Aram Pasmajyan, Vazgen Sislyan-Hakob Julfayan), the young men headed to the “Balzac” café, where they were set to meet and enter the consulate.

At 10:55, the two groups met and reorganized (Vazgen-Aram and Gevorg-Hakob);

by 11:15, they had entered the consulate. Each took their designated position. Vazgen covered the door while Aram, showing a bomb, shouted that the consulate had been taken over by ASALA's "Yeghia Keshishyan Suicide Commando." Gevorg repeated the same message in French. A turkish policeman attacked Gevorg, leading to an exchange of gunfire in which the policeman was killed (he was the only fatality). The other turkish guards were disarmed. Gevorg called several newspapers and news agencies, informing them that the operation was carried out by ASALA for political reasons, and that the consulate was under their control with 59 hostages. Initially, the news agencies did not believe the claim, as it seemed impossible that four people could seize the consulate located on the second floor of a five-story building, especially given that the entire building was under French police control and the consulate itself was guarded by turkish security. The French news agency “AFB” responded, saying that theoretically, any institution in Paris could be seized, but the turkish and israeli consulates were impossible to take over, even in theory.

About an hour after the operation began, journalists gathered on Hosman Street. Meanwhile, a French policeman entered the building from the back and shot Vazgen, wounding him. Vazgen resisted and forced the officer to retreat. Hakob was also wounded, and his injuries were severe. Most of the hostages were guarded by Aram, while Vazgen told the others about the Armenian people's struggle and the 1915 massacres.

At noon, Commissioner Brousard, one of the most skilled experts in the French police, requested negotiations over the phone. Papers outlining the group's demands were thrown out of the window. The demands were purely political: the release of Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish political prisoners held in turkish prisons.

At 12:15, one of the hostages approached the window, threw a letter down, and informed the police that the message was for them. The street had already been cordoned off with iron barricades. Reporters had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the consulate.

At 1:00 p.m., one of the hostages was instructed to approach the window again and drop a new letter, this time for the reporters.

At 1:40 p.m., the police requested that the hostages on the upper floors be allowed to move downstairs. The young men agreed, but Gevorg approached the window and informed the police that bombs were placed at all the entrances of the consulate, warning them not to attempt any attacks.

At 2:20 p.m., a French hostage who had a heart condition was provided with medication as his condition had worsened.

At 3:00 p.m., arrangements were made for the children of the hostages to return home from school.

At 4:00 p.m., Vazgen’s condition deteriorated, and medical assistance was requested over the phone from the police. The police refused the request.

At 4:10 p.m., one of the turkish hostages approached the window, declaring that the deputy consul was wounded and might die if no doctor was sent, placing responsibility on the police.

At 4:20 p.m., a doctor arrived but refused to go upstairs out of fear.

At 4:25 p.m., they contacted the police again, demanding political asylum ("asile politique") for Vazgen. The police entered into negotiations with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

At 5:35 p.m., there was no official statement about "asile politique." One of the hostages approached the window and declared that if "asile politique" was not granted, the lives of the deputy consul and the hostages would be in danger.

At 5:55 p.m., the police officially announced on behalf of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that "asile politique" would be granted if the deputy consul was released.

At 6:20 p.m., Vazgen entered negotiations with the police over the terms of his surrender. He demanded that upon arriving at the hospital, he be allowed to speak with his comrades by phone. The police initially refused but later relented.

At 6:35 p.m., Vazgen left the consulate. The police tried to put him in an ambulance, but Vazgen resisted, standing on the sidewalk and raising the victory "V" sign with his right hand. Gevorg waited behind the window with a hostage. Vazgen tried to shout but was too weakened by blood loss. Soon after he was taken to the hospital.

At 6:50 p.m., Vazgen spoke with his comrades from the hospital and was taken to surgery.

At 7:15 p.m., food was requested for the hostages.

At 7:53 p.m., the body of the turkish policeman was removed. Interestingly enough, the hostages that were assigned to remove the body, willingly went back in after doing so, firmly deciding to stand by the cause.

At 9:00 p.m., turkish protesters tried to approach the consulate. Gevorg, Aram and Hakob threatened to throw grenades. The police halted the protest, which had about 2,000 participants. On the opposite side of the street, Armenians were also demonstrating.

At 10:10 p.m., food was delivered by the police.

At 11:00 p.m., the police demanded negotiations several times, but the group refused.

At 11:15 p.m., the deadline set by the young men for meeting their demands passed, and the noise from the turkish protesters became more frenzied.

At 11:20 p.m., gunfire was heard inside the consulate. At midnight, it was reported from inside that another wounded soldier wished to surrender, for whom "asile politique" was again demanded.

At 12:50 a.m., the police announced that the French government had decided to grant the right of political asylum to the second fighter.

At 1:00 a.m., the police were informed that the wounded fighter, like Vazgen, should descend and remain on the street. Hakob Julfayan exited. Heavily wounded, he was unable to stand on the street.

At 1:20 a.m., Hakob called his comrades from the hospital and was taken to surgery.

At 1:30 a.m., Gevorg negotiated with the police, demanding "asile politique" for the remaining fighters. The police declared that all four fighters had been granted that right. The only issue left was how they would surrender. The police demanded that they lay down their weapons and come out. Gevorg and Aram refused. At the same time, the hostages declared that if the fighters surrendered in such a manner, the police would open fire on them. By now, the hostages fully understood why the operation was happening; the boys had shared the harrowing history of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and the countless other atrocities. So, when ASALA fighters Gevorg and Aram were ready to leave, the female hostages, of their own accord, surrounded the two in an effort to shield them from being shot by the police. This same pattern can be observed in many of ASALA’s operations: hostages, journalists, and even those injured during the operations later became supporters of the Armenian Cause.

At 2:20 a.m., Gevorg and Aram surrendered. After holding 59 hostages for more than 15 hours, the four fighters of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) entered into negotiations with the turkish government, mediated by the French government. Naturally, the turkish government did not meet their demands.

However, it was the trial of these four soldiers that painted the operation in colors of victory. It was the first political trial since the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian. The trial of the four fighters became a platform for condemning Turkey for its crimes against humanity.

The Armenian cause was vigorously defended by a constellation of prominent lawyers in France, including Leclerc, Tejan, Signar, Patrick Devedjian, Aslanyan and Peshtimaljian.

Entering the court smiling, the handcuffed defendants all made the victory "V" sign with their hands. Defendant Kevork Guzelian told the court: "Whatever your verdict, our action is already a victory."

At the trial, the widow of France’s national hero, Missak Manouchian, Mrs. Meliné, delivered a speech condemning genocidal Turkey, and with the judge’s permission, kissed the foreheads of the four fighters, an exception made especially for her. Letters from Charles Aznavour and Henri Verneuil were also read. The singer Liz Saryan was also present at the hearings. The benevolent attitude of the president of the court was remarkable, who throughout the trial urged the audience to refrain from labeling the action of ASALA as “terrorism” and the heroes of the brigade as “terrorists”. They might have been labeled as terrorists, but their actions had nothing to do with terrorism; they were part of a struggle for liberation from an occupying genocidal state. Would anyone call the partisans of Belarus, France, Greece or Yugoslavia, who fought against fascism, terrorists, too?

“It is very important that the society understands the essence of the case, the origins of the Armenian question. Terrorism and genocide are what was committed against the Armenian people, but the people sitting in front of us are not terrorists, they are the descendants of the victims of terrorism and genocide," — said Devejian during the first court hearing

The long trial of the battle group was in itself a great anti-turkish war. The trial of “VAN” turned into a trial of the Turkish government.

The “VAN” operation and the political trial that followed it played a major role in bringing the Armenian issue to the international political arena, globalizing the territorial claim and the violated rights of the Armenian people, creating a new wave of condemnation of the reality of the Armenian genocide, strengthening the pride and spirit of struggle among Armenians.

The four fighters– Vasken Sako Sislian, Kevork Abraham Guzelian, Aram Avedis Basmajian and Hagop Abraham Dzhulfayan – were convicted on 31 January 1984 to 7 years in prison (including the years of their stay in detention pending trial). During the reading of the verdict, the majority of the participants also got up upon hearing the words “accused, stand up”. Singer Rosy Armen sang “Wake Up, Lao”, (a popular Armenian revolutionary folk song) and she was joined by the many voices of those present. In 1986, while still serving their sentence, three of the fighters - Vazgen, Gevorg and Hagop graduated from the Sorbonne University in Paris. Of the four fighters, three survived prison; Aram Basmajyan committed suicide in 1985. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (his symbolic grave is located in Yerablur, in the symbolic pantheon of martyrs under the shadow of ASALA’s memorial monument at the entrance to the Armenian Pantheon of Immortals).

Vazgen, Gevorg and Hakob were released early in August 1986 and returned to Lebanon. Years later, all three settled in Armenia. Gevorg Kyuzelian became the commander of the "Metsn Murad" detachment and participated in the Artsakh Liberation War. Vazgen Sislyan also made contributions to the liberation battles.

When all the hope has slipped away, It’s the mad who find a way.

[kropotkindersurprise]

May 21, 2023 - Turkish police harass a group of Kurdish men for dancing halay to Kurdish music in an Istanbul park. One of the racist cops starts pepper-spraying one of the men for arguing, causing some other to fight back. When they run away the racist cop draws his handgun and starts firing in the air before giving chase. The cops managed to arrest four of the group, made them lay facedown on the ground with their hands cuffed behind their backs, while the cops played Ottoman military marches on their car stereo. [video]

[scottishcommune]

@staff appear to have nuked the blog @int-revolution which was posting updates from the revolution in Rojava, as well as about ongoing Kurdish resistance to the aggression and colonial expansion of the Turkish state. If this is the case, @staff are, through the censoring of information, helping Turkey in its campaign of genocide against the people of North and East Syria.

[heretic-child]

[rootjin]

y‘all need to stop saying „woman, life, freedom“ instead of jin, jiyan, azadi and here is why:

The struggle of women in Iran against a repressive theocratic regime cannot be separated from the struggle of Kurdish women against NATO-backed authoritarianism in Turkey and IS extremism in Iraq and Syria.

The iconic slogan of the protest movement - "jin, jiyan, azadi" or "woman, life, freedom" - has its roots in Kurdish women's over 40-year struggle against NATO-backed authoritarianism in Turkey and IS extremism in Iraq and Syria. Kurdish women in Iran, who were the first to use it in early protests, have an equally strong history of resistance against foreign intervention, repressive regimes and religious fundamentalists.

However, this history has been erased from mainstream narratives about the protests - but it is important for understanding how the uprising fits into the longer history of revolutionary struggles in the region.

The slogan "Jin, jiyan, azadi" has its origins in the Kurdish resistance movement in Turkey. It reflects the unique role of women in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and in groups influenced by its ideas.

The meaning of ideas and symbols can change when they transcend borders and goals. But for Iranian women on the street today, "jin, jiyan, azadi" is as revolutionary a sentiment as it was for the Kurdish women who originally developed and spread it. In both Iran and Kurdistan, women are leading mass movements in unprecedented ways, and women's insistence on freedom from male and state violence is at the center of a struggle for the freedom of an entire society.

For women in the region, these parallels are clear. Women in northeastern Syria defied the constant threat of Turkish shelling and drone attacks and organized a mass march in Qamishlo in solidarity with women in Iran. Kurdish feminist political prisoners in Turkey cut their hair and expressed their support for the uprising in their court defenses.

Yet internationally, mainstream media, politicians, brands and celebrities are dividing these women's revolutions by erasing the Kurdish roots of this slogan and the struggle it represents. It is common for "Woman, Life, Freedom" to be written in English or "zan, zendegi, azadi" in Farsi without even mentioning the original Kurdish words.

Western leaders who proudly say "woman, life, freedom" to opportunistically support women in Iran have criminalized the movement that gave birth to "jin, jiyan, azadi" and are providing Turkey with the weapons with which to attack these women.

Real solidarity with the women's resistance requires us to remember that "jin, jiyan, azadi" is not a hashtag or a current trend. The phrase is a political philosophy that represents countless women from all walks of life who are on the frontlines of the struggle for a democratic, peaceful and pluralistic Middle East, free from all forms of oppression and exploitation.

In order to support these women, it is necessary to stand with them all against all the threats they face. Likewise, it is necessary not to allow their struggles against the various manifestations of patriarchy, imperialism, oppression and war to be divided, commodified or decontextualized.

IT‘S CALLED JIN JIYAN AZADI AND IT‘S KURDISH!

KURDISH WOMEN HAVE BEEN KILLED FOR NOT ONLY SAYING THIS BUT ALSO FOR LIVING AFTER IT.

KURDISH WOMEN ARE STILL BEING KILLED FOR BELIEVING IN THIS IDEOLOGY.