Kurdish Women's Movement

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 @Dlrdrk1.

• Figures Abbreviations and acronyms Locations in Kurdish Map Acknowledgements Preface Introduction: The Kurdistan women’s revolution – A social history from belowPART I: HISTORY1. Mapping the Kurdistan of women 2. The Kurdistan Revolutionaries 3. Berxwedan jiyan e! – The Diyarbakır 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: THEORY10. ‘Struggling woman’: Ideology and identity 11. Building ‘democratic modernity’ 12. Jineolojî: ‘A science of woman and life’PART III: PRACTICE13. 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. Başûr: ‘Freedom is more than the absence of dictatorship’26. Rojava: A women’s revolution 27. Resistance or feminicide: Women against Daesh 28. Şengal: 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

'Dilar Dirik is one the foremost writers, scholars and participants in the Kurdish women's movement. Her revolutionary work against all forms of state and social oppression and exploitation is unsparing in its truth-telling and expansive in its political orientation - a true people's historian from below'