YPJ: A Life Based On The Will Of Women

The following article “Kadının iradesi hayatın içinde” was written by Dîlan Welat for ANHA and appeared in Özgür Gündem. It has been translated into English below.

Fîdan Lewend and Bêrîtan Warşîn are Arab women and members of the YPJ and spoke to us about their lives in the organization. Fîdan joined the YPJ a month ago in Tirbesiyê and is undergoing training at the local Şedhit Şilan Academy. She explains that she joined the YPJ because women faced all forms of violence within society and had been reduced to the status of slavery by social customs, and that by taking part in the organization she wanted to be saved from the system of male hegemony and to find a place where the will of women was being expressed.

Fîdan went on to describe how before joining the YPJ she was unaware that this was a system designed for all peoples and had thought that it was a system that only existed for Kurds. She stressed that in the YPJ Kurds, Arabs, and Syriacs lived together as sisters and that no one was discriminated against, stressing that she would fight within the ranks of the YPJ against violence against women until the very end.

Bêrîtan is also from Tirbesiyê  and is undergoing training at the same academy. She explains that she took her name from the martyr Bêrîtan who died in the mountains of Kurdistan and by whose story she was very affected, adding that she wanted to take a place on the battle front in order to show that war was not just a man’s work. Addressing all women, she called on them to come join the ranks of the YPJ and to join in the struggle.