Page 110 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

What do female members of the PKK say?

The main reason for our concentration on this change of language
and behavior on the subject of women on the part of the PKK is to
expose the organization's hypocrisy. The PKK has adopted this talk and
these policies regarding women simply because that is the easiest way

of meeting its needs for militants and looking good in the eyes of the
West. Yet the words of women inside the organization in fact reveal
the very opposite of this.

Necati Alkan has interviewed a large number of female PKK mem-
bers and has produced an important collection of these. Some of these
read as follows:

The female PKK member code-named Zelal says:

I criticized Öcalan for his attitudes and policies. I criticized the
organization's internal democracy and people's backwardness...

They put me in jail for two months. When I came out, Öcalan
accused me of speaking against him, in the presence of 500 people
in a training area and said ‘One has no right to say anything
against a deity. If you speak against a deity, you will be struck
down.' In other words, he ascribed divine status to himself. I
wanted to leave the organization, but they threatened me with
death. I had never been so terrified in my life. 29

108 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK