Reporter: Matthew Carney
High in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq, near the Iranian border, a volleyball game is under way. These are the woman guerillas of the PKK or Kurdistan Workers Party.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): The only thing you want to do as you approach the enemy or as the enemy approaches you is to kill so as not to get killed yourself.
America and Europe call them terrorists, but to many of the 20 million Kurds of the Middle East, they are freedom fighters. This is the first time in five years they’ve let a camera in to film their mountain sanctuary. The PKK is surrounded on all sides - Iran, Turkey and Syria all want to wipe them out. Even the other Kurdish parties in Iraq, along with their American allies, want to see the back of them. Today is the anniversary of the Kurdish uprising which began in Turkey 20 years ago. To mark the event, 50 new recruits are being sworn in to the ranks of the PKK. After three months of training, they’re ready to take a pledge to the movement and their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, or Apo, as they know him.
RECRUITS’ PLEDGE (TRANSLATION): Our slogan is freedom for our leader Apo, peace for Kurdistan, my people, my martyrs, my flag, my party. On my honour, I swear, I swear.
The new recruits are learning the martyr’s salute. During the 1980s and 1990s, the PKK was involved in a bloody struggle for Kurdish liberation inside Turkey. 30,000 people lost their lives. The campaign ended in 1999 with the capture of their leader, Adbullah Ocalan. From his prison cell in Turkey, he declared a unilateral cease-fire and directed his fighters to retreat from Turkey to these positions in Iraq. But last June, the PKK announced the cease-fire over. It might not be long before these recruits face death.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): We commemorate all our martyrs and we bow to their memory.
The PKK has spent the last five years building up its ranks. There’s about 10,000 fighters in these mountains. Half of them are women. Unlike most of the Middle East, there is absolute equality between the sexes here. This group came from Iran. 18-year-old Leyla Zirek says in Iran she had no freedom as a Kurd or as a woman.
LEYLA ZIREK (TRANSLATION): When I was a child I used to see women in my neighbourhood. Indeed even, my mother. At home they would force her. She could do nothing without my fathers permission. I used to think, why should women be controlled by men? When I found the PKK through friends, I knew I’d found my dream. This was the "better place" I’d always hoped to find.
Leyla’s family doesn’t know she’s here. She fled the family home one night never to return.
LEYLA ZIREK (TRANSLATION): They wouldn’t like it if they knew Id joined the party. They wouldn’t give permission, they might even kill me.
For 21-year-old Roj Toldhidan, it was different. The Iranian authorities tortured her father to death because of his involvement in the Kurdish struggle. Roj wants to continue her father’s work.
ROJ TOLDHIDAN (TRANSLATION): My struggle is for the freedom of all peoples, not just Kurds. But our party is our only hope.
Roj says her decision to join was easy. In Iran she had nothing to live for and, if she stayed, she was expected to marry. For her, this was another reason to leave.
ROJ TOLDHIDAN (TRANSLATION): My ambition was to be free, but I didn’t find that freedom. So I said, "Let me do something." There are things you can do, like marriage and so on. But in marriage the woman is oppressed. I always ran from oppression. How could I accept it from a man?
Later in the day, the guerillas provide their own entertainment. The songs and dances celebrate the life and thoughts of their supreme leader Apo. Although Ocalan has dropped the PKK’s demand for an independent Kurdish state, he’s still revered by these young guerillas. At the height of their war with Turkey, Ocalan motivated his fighters to the extremes of suicide bombings and kidnappings. Now he’s directing the party to move away from armed struggle towards political struggle, to work to bring true democracy and representation to the Kurdish minorities in the region. The new military commander is Murad Karailluh. Like Ocalan, he was a founding member of the PKK and now one of Turkey’s most wanted men. Murad admits that abandoning the armed struggle and the movement’s Marxist orientation has not been easy.
MURAD KARAILLUH, PKK MILITARY COMMANDER (TRANSLATION): It has definitely been difficult. The PKK is a movement with a 30-year history. But our leadership has now totally overcome this and replaced it with a new paradigm. A paradigm has been developed based on democratic, ecological and gender revolution.
But the international community is not convinced the PKK has changed. For a start they maintain an army of 10,000 armed and trained fighters. They have also announced that when the cease-fire with Turkey was called off last June they would target tourist and financial centres inside Turkey. Turkey has already accused them of such attacks. It doesn’t sound like the end of armed struggle but, according to Murad, it’s just self-defence.
MURAD KARAILLUH (TRANSLATION): For us the basis is that problems should be resolved democratically and politically, through dialogue. But if the Turkish Government comes here, we will defend ourselves against it in a guerilla fashion.
You can only get a sense of the PKK’s precarious position when you walk to their outposts on the mountain tops. Here they watch and wait, ready to signal an attack is coming.
MAN (TRANSLATION): Between us and Iran there are about 7km. A 2-hour walk. There is some communication for diplomatic reasons. That road goes to the US base about 5km away. About 1.5h walk, but we have no contact.
In recent months, the Americans have moved in closer to the PKK positions. George Bush has already labelled them evil terrorists and seems certain to support any attack by their important ally, Turkey. The Turks have said they will eradicate the PKK, who they see as the biggest threat to their national security. But it is going to be a difficult job to root out the PKK out of these mountains. In five years, the PKK has effectively set up its own mini state and infrastructure. They’ve built medical and dental clinics and hydroelectricity is generated and supplied throughout the area. It’s a huge logistical job to keep all the camps fed and supplied, but the PKK is well funded, mainly from Kurdish communities in Europe and the Middle East. This unit of about 30 fighters is led by commander Cicek and, like all the units, men and women live in separate quarters. She says calling off the cease-fire after six years was justified because Turkey had not responded in any way and, in fact, has never stopped attacking them.
CICEK, MILITARY COMMANDER (TRANSLATION): There was a cease-fire for six years with the aim of bringing peace and democracy to Kurdistan and Turkey. Everyone in the world should know that the Kurdish people, that is, the Kurdish fighters, have no other choice. There is no alternative.
Cicek is barely 5-foot high but she says, in her 10 years of fighting, she has killed countless Turkish soldiers. Cicek joined the movement when she was just 11. Her village was near the town of Cizre in Turkey, a hotbed of Kurdish resistance. She says her family’s story of repression and abuse is typical of the 10 million Kurds living in Turkey.
CICEK (TRANSLATION): When I was a child, we had no schools and no roads. We were deprived of everything. From the age of four until I joined the Party, my father, my brother or a relative or a neighbour was always in prison. So even as a child I began to ask why.
Many in Cecik’s camp are battle-hardened. Helin Garzan is Cecik’s deputy and was one of the few to survive from Cecik’s original fighting unit of the 1990s. Helin, like most, says she’d prefer a political solution and will only fight if forced to.
HELIN GARZAN, DEPUTY MILITARY COMMANDER (TRANSLATION): I’ve given more than half my life to this struggle and I’ve reached this stage now. I mean, for a political solution to be achieved, I would give whatever I can. And I’d want that to happen. But even if it doesn’t happen, I am ready to fight, to struggle until the very end.
But despite the threats, the atmosphere in Cecik’s camps, like most I visited, is serene if not surreal. The guerillas spend much of their day reading the works of Western political philosophers and, of course, the latest thoughts from their leader Apo. The PKK ideology is a curious mix of Marxist, existentialist, anti-imperialist and feminist beliefs. Unlike most groups in the Middle East, they do not use religion to further their cause. They are not struggling for a Kurdish state anymore but for a higher calling - a new democratic era where the oppression of minorities in nation states fades into the past.
MAN (TRANSLATION): A state, in fact, is not a solution, not for us, not for other peoples. It will not be a solution for oppressed peoples. It is in fact seen as the source of the problem.
The ideology here seems such a throwback to last century that it’s easy to forget the PKK is still a fanatically disciplined group that demands sacrifices. Marriage is banned because, according to the party program, it’s a bourgeois concept based on ownership and is an instrument of patriarchal and imperialist power. Sex is also forbidden until truly free gender relations exist and that won’t happen until the revolution arrives.
ZILAR SIBARK (TRANSLATION): Within this framework we believe that only after men and women rid themselves of the dominant male mentality, can women and men adopt the kind of relationship where they can live together sociologically and say, sexually. But we haven’t yet reached the conclusion that this level has been achieved.
In this room at the women’s centre of the PKK, they’re trying to put the revolution into practice. 20 men are being re-educated so they view woman as equals. They’re coming to an end of a year-long course. This is an assessment session and women like Zilar Sibark are in charge. They’re having problems with one student.
ZILAR SIBARK (TRANSLATION): He has different views that are not generally accepted. Our comrade has adopted an attitude of silence. Our comrade Munzur has not participated since we started these platforms. We have discussed the wrongness of this.
They are debating whether he should be released from the women’s centre and sent back to his guerilla unit.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): Why has it reached this point, built up like this? Is this honesty? It’s hypocrisy. We should let this person go. We know about his character.
The men argue that he should have a second chance at re-education.
MAN (TRANSLATION): People talk about this and that being said. It often happens in meetings too and it bothers me greatly. I say we can’t reach conclusions from something he’s said.
Zilar, a central committee member knows it’s a massive task to try and change thousands of years of history, particularly in this region where Islam and a feudal political culture have deeply entrenched attitudes. But here at least, she believes she’s having some success. Demhat, a Kurd from a small village in eastern Turkey says at first it was a real challenge to think of women as equals. He says his mentality has changed.
DEMHAT (TRANSLATION): Entering a woman’s world, feeling and living like a woman, requires an intense effort. You can see plainly that women have a broader approach in resolving situations. She can be stronger, more resilient, more patient than men. While a man is pragmatic in approaching a solution, assessing how he can use it for his own benefit, his own system.
It’s much like a commune at the women’s centre. Men and women share domestic duties. But most of the day is set aside for study and discussion. The woman, like all in the movement, are trying to construct their society by following their leader’s ideology. Here the women are studying Apo’s feminist texts. His ideas are paramount, even though they do study other feminist theories.
ZILAR SIBARK (TRANSLATION): We don’t consider it quite right that they consider the problem only within the context of being anti-male, opposing men. That’s not our philosophy. We even aim to include men and to transform them in the process.
It is hard to reconcile the world of the Qandil mountains with its talk of peace and understanding and the PKK, the terrorist organisation, whose members once blew themselves up and massacred civilians. But they are desperate to sell their new message of democracy and moderation. Last year, Murad Karailluh gave the PKK a new name - the Kongra Gel, or the Kurdistan People’s Congress, to differentiate it from its violent past. It is difficult to know if the change is genuine or whether the PKK is just responding to a very different security environment since September 11 and the invasion of Iraq. Murad talks about making big concessions and has his own road map to peace but, outside of these mountains, it seems no-one is listening. American and Turkey have dismissed the changes as meaningless.
MURAD KARAILLUH (TRANSLATION): If the conditions outlined in the road map are fulfilled, we want to bring the guerillas into the political arena and move violence off the agenda. What’s the priority now? The acceptance of the existence of the Kurdish people in Turkey. The guarantee of that at a constitutional level.
While Turkey has offered token concessions to its Kurdish citizens it says it won’t negotiate with terrorists. Instead they have massed 1,000 troops inside Iraq with the express purpose of annihilating the PKK. With America promising to help its ally Turkey to eliminate them, the future looks bleak. But Murad remains defiant.
MURAD KARAILLUH (TRANSLATION): A regular army would need years to dislodge the guerillas. We’ll make an effort to prevent that happening. We’d make tactical moves if necessary. But if they come to annihilate us, in the end we won’t surrender.
But there is another reading to Murad’s optimism. America is committed to its war on terror and it’s probably only a matter of time before America moves with Turkey to destroy the PKK, the Kongra Gel and everything else here. The only cause for delay is America’s battle in the rest of Iraq.
High in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq, near the Iranian border, a volleyball game is under way. These are the woman guerillas of the PKK or Kurdistan Workers Party.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): The only thing you want to do as you approach the enemy or as the enemy approaches you is to kill so as not to get killed yourself.
America and Europe call them terrorists, but to many of the 20 million Kurds of the Middle East, they are freedom fighters. This is the first time in five years they’ve let a camera in to film their mountain sanctuary. The PKK is surrounded on all sides - Iran, Turkey and Syria all want to wipe them out. Even the other Kurdish parties in Iraq, along with their American allies, want to see the back of them. Today is the anniversary of the Kurdish uprising which began in Turkey 20 years ago. To mark the event, 50 new recruits are being sworn in to the ranks of the PKK. After three months of training, they’re ready to take a pledge to the movement and their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, or Apo, as they know him.
RECRUITS’ PLEDGE (TRANSLATION): Our slogan is freedom for our leader Apo, peace for Kurdistan, my people, my martyrs, my flag, my party. On my honour, I swear, I swear.
The new recruits are learning the martyr’s salute. During the 1980s and 1990s, the PKK was involved in a bloody struggle for Kurdish liberation inside Turkey. 30,000 people lost their lives. The campaign ended in 1999 with the capture of their leader, Adbullah Ocalan. From his prison cell in Turkey, he declared a unilateral cease-fire and directed his fighters to retreat from Turkey to these positions in Iraq. But last June, the PKK announced the cease-fire over. It might not be long before these recruits face death.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): We commemorate all our martyrs and we bow to their memory.
The PKK has spent the last five years building up its ranks. There’s about 10,000 fighters in these mountains. Half of them are women. Unlike most of the Middle East, there is absolute equality between the sexes here. This group came from Iran. 18-year-old Leyla Zirek says in Iran she had no freedom as a Kurd or as a woman.
LEYLA ZIREK (TRANSLATION): When I was a child I used to see women in my neighbourhood. Indeed even, my mother. At home they would force her. She could do nothing without my fathers permission. I used to think, why should women be controlled by men? When I found the PKK through friends, I knew I’d found my dream. This was the "better place" I’d always hoped to find.
Leyla’s family doesn’t know she’s here. She fled the family home one night never to return.
LEYLA ZIREK (TRANSLATION): They wouldn’t like it if they knew Id joined the party. They wouldn’t give permission, they might even kill me.
For 21-year-old Roj Toldhidan, it was different. The Iranian authorities tortured her father to death because of his involvement in the Kurdish struggle. Roj wants to continue her father’s work.
ROJ TOLDHIDAN (TRANSLATION): My struggle is for the freedom of all peoples, not just Kurds. But our party is our only hope.
Roj says her decision to join was easy. In Iran she had nothing to live for and, if she stayed, she was expected to marry. For her, this was another reason to leave.
ROJ TOLDHIDAN (TRANSLATION): My ambition was to be free, but I didn’t find that freedom. So I said, "Let me do something." There are things you can do, like marriage and so on. But in marriage the woman is oppressed. I always ran from oppression. How could I accept it from a man?
Later in the day, the guerillas provide their own entertainment. The songs and dances celebrate the life and thoughts of their supreme leader Apo. Although Ocalan has dropped the PKK’s demand for an independent Kurdish state, he’s still revered by these young guerillas. At the height of their war with Turkey, Ocalan motivated his fighters to the extremes of suicide bombings and kidnappings. Now he’s directing the party to move away from armed struggle towards political struggle, to work to bring true democracy and representation to the Kurdish minorities in the region. The new military commander is Murad Karailluh. Like Ocalan, he was a founding member of the PKK and now one of Turkey’s most wanted men. Murad admits that abandoning the armed struggle and the movement’s Marxist orientation has not been easy.
MURAD KARAILLUH, PKK MILITARY COMMANDER (TRANSLATION): It has definitely been difficult. The PKK is a movement with a 30-year history. But our leadership has now totally overcome this and replaced it with a new paradigm. A paradigm has been developed based on democratic, ecological and gender revolution.
But the international community is not convinced the PKK has changed. For a start they maintain an army of 10,000 armed and trained fighters. They have also announced that when the cease-fire with Turkey was called off last June they would target tourist and financial centres inside Turkey. Turkey has already accused them of such attacks. It doesn’t sound like the end of armed struggle but, according to Murad, it’s just self-defence.
MURAD KARAILLUH (TRANSLATION): For us the basis is that problems should be resolved democratically and politically, through dialogue. But if the Turkish Government comes here, we will defend ourselves against it in a guerilla fashion.
You can only get a sense of the PKK’s precarious position when you walk to their outposts on the mountain tops. Here they watch and wait, ready to signal an attack is coming.
MAN (TRANSLATION): Between us and Iran there are about 7km. A 2-hour walk. There is some communication for diplomatic reasons. That road goes to the US base about 5km away. About 1.5h walk, but we have no contact.
In recent months, the Americans have moved in closer to the PKK positions. George Bush has already labelled them evil terrorists and seems certain to support any attack by their important ally, Turkey. The Turks have said they will eradicate the PKK, who they see as the biggest threat to their national security. But it is going to be a difficult job to root out the PKK out of these mountains. In five years, the PKK has effectively set up its own mini state and infrastructure. They’ve built medical and dental clinics and hydroelectricity is generated and supplied throughout the area. It’s a huge logistical job to keep all the camps fed and supplied, but the PKK is well funded, mainly from Kurdish communities in Europe and the Middle East. This unit of about 30 fighters is led by commander Cicek and, like all the units, men and women live in separate quarters. She says calling off the cease-fire after six years was justified because Turkey had not responded in any way and, in fact, has never stopped attacking them.
CICEK, MILITARY COMMANDER (TRANSLATION): There was a cease-fire for six years with the aim of bringing peace and democracy to Kurdistan and Turkey. Everyone in the world should know that the Kurdish people, that is, the Kurdish fighters, have no other choice. There is no alternative.
Cicek is barely 5-foot high but she says, in her 10 years of fighting, she has killed countless Turkish soldiers. Cicek joined the movement when she was just 11. Her village was near the town of Cizre in Turkey, a hotbed of Kurdish resistance. She says her family’s story of repression and abuse is typical of the 10 million Kurds living in Turkey.
CICEK (TRANSLATION): When I was a child, we had no schools and no roads. We were deprived of everything. From the age of four until I joined the Party, my father, my brother or a relative or a neighbour was always in prison. So even as a child I began to ask why.
Many in Cecik’s camp are battle-hardened. Helin Garzan is Cecik’s deputy and was one of the few to survive from Cecik’s original fighting unit of the 1990s. Helin, like most, says she’d prefer a political solution and will only fight if forced to.
HELIN GARZAN, DEPUTY MILITARY COMMANDER (TRANSLATION): I’ve given more than half my life to this struggle and I’ve reached this stage now. I mean, for a political solution to be achieved, I would give whatever I can. And I’d want that to happen. But even if it doesn’t happen, I am ready to fight, to struggle until the very end.
But despite the threats, the atmosphere in Cecik’s camps, like most I visited, is serene if not surreal. The guerillas spend much of their day reading the works of Western political philosophers and, of course, the latest thoughts from their leader Apo. The PKK ideology is a curious mix of Marxist, existentialist, anti-imperialist and feminist beliefs. Unlike most groups in the Middle East, they do not use religion to further their cause. They are not struggling for a Kurdish state anymore but for a higher calling - a new democratic era where the oppression of minorities in nation states fades into the past.
MAN (TRANSLATION): A state, in fact, is not a solution, not for us, not for other peoples. It will not be a solution for oppressed peoples. It is in fact seen as the source of the problem.
The ideology here seems such a throwback to last century that it’s easy to forget the PKK is still a fanatically disciplined group that demands sacrifices. Marriage is banned because, according to the party program, it’s a bourgeois concept based on ownership and is an instrument of patriarchal and imperialist power. Sex is also forbidden until truly free gender relations exist and that won’t happen until the revolution arrives.
ZILAR SIBARK (TRANSLATION): Within this framework we believe that only after men and women rid themselves of the dominant male mentality, can women and men adopt the kind of relationship where they can live together sociologically and say, sexually. But we haven’t yet reached the conclusion that this level has been achieved.
In this room at the women’s centre of the PKK, they’re trying to put the revolution into practice. 20 men are being re-educated so they view woman as equals. They’re coming to an end of a year-long course. This is an assessment session and women like Zilar Sibark are in charge. They’re having problems with one student.
ZILAR SIBARK (TRANSLATION): He has different views that are not generally accepted. Our comrade has adopted an attitude of silence. Our comrade Munzur has not participated since we started these platforms. We have discussed the wrongness of this.
They are debating whether he should be released from the women’s centre and sent back to his guerilla unit.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): Why has it reached this point, built up like this? Is this honesty? It’s hypocrisy. We should let this person go. We know about his character.
The men argue that he should have a second chance at re-education.
MAN (TRANSLATION): People talk about this and that being said. It often happens in meetings too and it bothers me greatly. I say we can’t reach conclusions from something he’s said.
Zilar, a central committee member knows it’s a massive task to try and change thousands of years of history, particularly in this region where Islam and a feudal political culture have deeply entrenched attitudes. But here at least, she believes she’s having some success. Demhat, a Kurd from a small village in eastern Turkey says at first it was a real challenge to think of women as equals. He says his mentality has changed.
DEMHAT (TRANSLATION): Entering a woman’s world, feeling and living like a woman, requires an intense effort. You can see plainly that women have a broader approach in resolving situations. She can be stronger, more resilient, more patient than men. While a man is pragmatic in approaching a solution, assessing how he can use it for his own benefit, his own system.
It’s much like a commune at the women’s centre. Men and women share domestic duties. But most of the day is set aside for study and discussion. The woman, like all in the movement, are trying to construct their society by following their leader’s ideology. Here the women are studying Apo’s feminist texts. His ideas are paramount, even though they do study other feminist theories.
ZILAR SIBARK (TRANSLATION): We don’t consider it quite right that they consider the problem only within the context of being anti-male, opposing men. That’s not our philosophy. We even aim to include men and to transform them in the process.
It is hard to reconcile the world of the Qandil mountains with its talk of peace and understanding and the PKK, the terrorist organisation, whose members once blew themselves up and massacred civilians. But they are desperate to sell their new message of democracy and moderation. Last year, Murad Karailluh gave the PKK a new name - the Kongra Gel, or the Kurdistan People’s Congress, to differentiate it from its violent past. It is difficult to know if the change is genuine or whether the PKK is just responding to a very different security environment since September 11 and the invasion of Iraq. Murad talks about making big concessions and has his own road map to peace but, outside of these mountains, it seems no-one is listening. American and Turkey have dismissed the changes as meaningless.
MURAD KARAILLUH (TRANSLATION): If the conditions outlined in the road map are fulfilled, we want to bring the guerillas into the political arena and move violence off the agenda. What’s the priority now? The acceptance of the existence of the Kurdish people in Turkey. The guarantee of that at a constitutional level.
While Turkey has offered token concessions to its Kurdish citizens it says it won’t negotiate with terrorists. Instead they have massed 1,000 troops inside Iraq with the express purpose of annihilating the PKK. With America promising to help its ally Turkey to eliminate them, the future looks bleak. But Murad remains defiant.
MURAD KARAILLUH (TRANSLATION): A regular army would need years to dislodge the guerillas. We’ll make an effort to prevent that happening. We’d make tactical moves if necessary. But if they come to annihilate us, in the end we won’t surrender.
But there is another reading to Murad’s optimism. America is committed to its war on terror and it’s probably only a matter of time before America moves with Turkey to destroy the PKK, the Kongra Gel and everything else here. The only cause for delay is America’s battle in the rest of Iraq.