Fréderike Geerdink
15 August, that’s a day of celebration in the PKK. When I was in a language camp in Qandil in the summer of 2016, with lessons early in the morning under the walnut trees for cover, there was cola and even baklava from the village we could see in the distance, on this day. Surely, the start of the armed struggle against the state on 15 August 1984 was worth a party. That’s a staggering four decades ago today. Four decades of adjustment, in which the weapons have only become less important, but remain crucial for survival.
This Monday, CNN Türk, one of the channels obedient to the state, aired an item in which one of their journalists was guided into a cave in the Metina region that the PKK had used. She uttered the word ‘terrorist’ a lot, as prescribed, and said it was obvious that the ‘terrorists’ lived ‘in the dirt like mice’. It’s rather disgusting to speak about people like that, and meant to dehumanise the people who had stayed there so it’s easier to kill them.
Approval
If there had been a journalistic grain in her body, she would have asked some questions about the backgrounds of the tunnel, for example what it says about the warfare that is taking place in the mountains. She didn’t of course. This kind of embedded journalism means that any item can only be broadcast after the army has scrutinised it and given its approval, so there’s not much journalistic about it. So, shall we?
The tunnels that the PKK digs, or rather constructs with explosives, are a way of the guerrilla forces to adjust to the drone warfare that the state has been waging for years. Currently, the state uses armed drones and they are relatively new, but before that, for years they used reconnaissance drones. That’s when the PKK expanded their tunnel system as one of the ways to protect them against this innovation. This is basically the core of guerrilla fighting: to constantly adjust to the technically more advanced and militarily more powerful enemy.
Forest
And trust me, they don’t ‘live in the dirt like mice’. I haven’t been in a PKK tunnel, but I have visited several caves and stayed in them over night, and I made a video myself in such a cave – check how clean that is! They were sweeping the floor everywhere, even in open spaces in the forest that were used for gathering. As one guerrilla fighter put it to me when she showed me how she washed her clothes in a make-shift bathroom in the forest: “We may be living in the mountains, that doesn’t mean we don’t give importance to hygiene.” Hospitals are far away, so hygiene also contributes to staying healthy.
The tunnel that CNN Türk showed, a PKK spokesperson told me, was not recently taken because, he said, since 16 April this year, when the latest Turkish offensive started, no new tunnels have been taken. He said the tunnel shown was most likely the Gire Orte tunnel, and he added: “Comrades fell martyr there due to the use of chemical weapons in 2023”. I have written about the PKK’s claims about the use of chemical weapons by the Turkish army, but I assure you the Turkish public won’t hear about it, and certainly not via CNN Türk.
Patriarchal
But warfare is much more than weapons, and that’s what I want to draw attention to on this 40th anniversary. The PKK hasn’t just adjusted to technological developments, they have adjusted ideologically as well. And this change has rendered the weapons less important. In the beginning, the PKK was fighting for an independent Kurdish state, but that goal was given up in the 1990s. In a changing world, a new analysis was made. Nation-states, including a potential Kurdish one, are a concept of the 20th century and are part of the problem, not of the solution. Nation-states are patriarchal structures and need to be dismantled. For details, I can refer you to my book about the PKK, This Fire Never Dies. (No, the PKK didn’t read, scrutinise and approve it before publication.)
And this change, the guerrilla fighters believe, is what ultimately gives them strength. I’ve done two interviews about the struggle with foreign media recently, and they asked me about the ‘determination’ of the fighters. Yes, they are determined, but the Turkish army is determined too. That’s, in the eyes of the guerrilla fighters, not what distinguished them and will ultimately bring them their victory. Their ability to adjust to changing warfare helps them survive in war, but their ability to adjust their ideology and make it future proof instead of building on outdated concepts, is what will make them win.
Humanity
Their ideology, they have explained to me time and again, is in line with what humanity is made of. They are investing in building an alternative to the nation-state, in which justice is done to the diversity that human societies have always been made of, especially in the Middle East, cradle of many civilizations and religions, and culturally and linguistically diverse. Humanity is not about competition, they say, as capitalism – a natural component of the patriarchy – makes us believe, it is about community.
The ideology rooted in that believe, is life over death. And life, they say, is what will prevail. The weapons are only needed to defend it. Also after forty years.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan.
