The Colonization of Jineolojî: How Western Media and Liberal Feminism Framed Kurdish Women According to Eurocentric Sovereignty

The thesis investigates how the sociopolitical agency of Kurdish women has been constructed within the Kurdish movement compared to their framing by Western media and liberal feminism. It is argued that the narrative deeming Kurdish women ‘liberal heroines’ resulted from a neocolonial bias upholding Eurocentric values for the purpose of soft-hegemonic influence over the Middle East. The case study involves the 2014-2015 resistance by the Kurdish all-female Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) against the Islamic State (ISIS) in the city of Kobanê. Kurdish female activists interpreted their victory as the demonstration that democratic confederalism—a governance model based on direct representation, gender equality, and ecology—in Rojava (northeastern Syria) functioned as a viable alternative to liberal Eurocentric sovereignty, considered patriarchal and capitalist. It is maintained that Western narratives depoliticized Kurdish women’s anti-statism by focusing on aesthetics and gender stereotypes: the Western audience was presented Kurdish female fighters as easy-to-digest caricatures and allies against ISIS in the ‘war on terror’, despite their strive for a radicalism incompatible with liberal sovereignty. Dependency theory and world-system analysis highlight how the Western monopoly over the recognition of sovereignty for underdeveloped countries disadvantaged stateless nations such as Kurdistan. The main first-hand sources referenced are the Montevideo Convention (1933), the Rojava Social Contract (2014), and the writings by Abdullah Öcalan—leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Chapter 1 retraces the formalization of sovereignty in Europe. It is argued that positivism justified colonialism as ‘exportation of civilization’. Since Western countries dominated world-system economy, they assumed their model of governance as the rational and thus universal path to sovereignty. The Republic of Turkey during the presidency by Mustafa Kemal adopted assimilated Kurds into the Turkish ethnic identity to modernize the country under the principle ‘one nation, one state’. Kurds’ vulnerability derived from the post-World War I neocolonial interference by Western powers over the self-determination of populations previously encompassed under the Ottoman Empire. Chapter 2 illustrates how Kurdish women developed their ‘gender-nation continuum’—later incorporated into Kurdish national identity. Historically, Kurdish women were subordinated to patriarchal hierarchies both in the statal context—as Kurds without citizenship—and in tribal communities—as female relatives relegated to domesticity. Their intersectionality influenced the Kurdish quest for autonomy. Öcalan’s arrest in 1999 was pivotal for the shift of the PKK aim from Kurdi-stan secession to democratic confederalism within already established boundaries. It is enquired how PKK women’s wings coalized with Öcalan against separatist male-led factions for leadership over the movement. Eventually, female members became the PKK vanguards and developed Jineolojî (women’s science): an epistemological framework challenging the dominance of patriarchy in knowledge production. Chapter 3 discusses the case study. In the siege of Kobanê context, it is investigated how exoticist Western media reframed Kurdish female fighters from promoters of the anti-capitalist Rojava ideals into vessels for liberal values. The main frictions between Jineolojî and liberal feminism are examined. It is concluded that Kurdish female fighters’ resistance against ISIS was supported only insofar as it served the interests of the US-led coalition in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. Chapter 4 presents the results of the research, clarifies its limits (methodological and geopolitical), and it provides starting points for further academic analysis.