The Press and Communication Center of the People's Defense Forces (HPG-BIM) spoke to guerrilla Baran Nûjiyan in a three-part interview series for the new format "Şervanên Azadiyê". Baran Nûjiyan has been part of the HPG in the mountains of Kurdistan since 2019. Born to a German mother and a Portuguese father, Baran Nûjiyan grew up in both countries, but mostly in West Germany. As a result, he had many contradictions as a child and found the injustices in the world to be extreme from an early age, he says. Looking back, he realizes that he asked many questions even as a child. But as he got older, the contradictions receded into the background. "They were always there somewhere. It was always a feeling of not quite belonging. A feeling of not wanting to accept the system as it is and life as it is,” says Baran Nûjiyan. A conscious search did not develop at that time, but the feeling of problems looking for a solution was always there.

"It was also the influence you grew up with," says Baran Nûjiyan. The system has affected young people in all forms: whether consumer society or pop culture. There are many facets of dissuading people from the search for truth and solutions as early as childhood.

“There was always a feeling that was in the background. Only later, at the age of 24, working in the restaurant business, did this childhood feeling of injustice become stronger: the desire to seek a real life. At this point, I had a sudden feeling. It made me really reflect: What am I actually doing and what is the purpose of my life? At that time, I was working as a chef in star restaurants, and before that I was happy and determined about my job, but at that point I questioned everything as a whole. I asked: What is actually the result of my actions and my life? The work I do, what are the consequences of it, what values ​​do I really create with it? This made me very quickly want changes and search for them intensively. And without having previously had great access to resistance movements, alternatives, perspectives, I simply embarked on a search.”

At first he had discussions in his environment and asked many questions, says Baran Nûjiyan. He looked for solutions in books and went to various political projects and campaigns. "I was looking for an exchange and very quickly realized that I'm not the only one with this feeling."

The more intense this discussion became, the more he realized the scope and depth of it. “First of all, there were things that were in front of you, many isolated problems. But the system behind it, i.e. the big picture, only slowly came to the surface - the more I searched and did research. There were left-wing groups that I looked at here and there and sporadically took part in. Ecological connections, for example, where I learned a lot and saw a lot of willingness and interest to change something. The system as it is,  capitalist modernity as it is mainly lived in Central Europe, is unacceptable and a change is needed. That was actually what these groups all had in common, that was their common denominator.”

Baran Nûjiyan talks about many practical things he tackled during this phase. Over time, however, it became apparent that there had only been limited success and equally limited results. "Most of the time I was in anarchist movements and that's exactly what happened there." In early 2018, Baran Nûjiyan got to know the Kurdish freedom movement. It was the time of the war against the occupation of Afrin by Turkey and the demonstrations at that time had aroused his interest. The first formative experience was the realization of differences in approach. "At the demonstrations of the Kurdish movement, you could see that it was just a cross-section of a society that's out on the streets here. From the smallest children to people in their 80s, who take to the streets together for a cause to which they are fully committed and who do not shy away from immense police violence and do not let themselves be stopped. A very different connection to the fight. That caught my attention and made me try to find out more about it. Initially I was talking about the Revolution in Rojava.”

At first, that was exciting because in Germany everything is in a theoretical framework, says Baran Nûjiyan. There are many discussions about how the world would be right now and where appropriate paths can be taken. “But we were mostly far away from practice. We were also relatively far removed from society itself. In knowing ourselves, where is our stand? What is the system and what has it done to us? And how do we find an alternative? We were very superficial there.”

The first encounter with the Kurdish movement came through the Rojava revolution, explains Baran Nûjiyan. Initially, the approach was limited to theoretical aspects, through books. “What is the system that is being set up there like?” was one of the questions he was looking for answers to. In addition, the news from the region was followed. "During that time, we built up an anarchist group and it was always a topic that occupied me and I got involved in the work. It was a feeling of solidarity. But the more I learned, the more profound the subject became.”

At the end of 2018/beginning of 2019, Baran Nûjiyan took part in further campaigns and made initial contacts with the Kurdish movement. During that time, he also started to read the writings of Abdullah Öcalan. “And that made an incredible impression on me. I had read all sorts of theories beforehand, looking for solutions, but there was a certain randomness about it,” says Baran Nûjiyan.

He describes it as saying that the gap between theory and the reality in which one lives is too big to bring the two together. Getting into Öcalan's philosophy, on the other hand, initially brought him to recognize himself as a person and his positions in this world. "What is my story? Where do I come from, where can I classify myself? As soon as the day is determined by capitalist modernity, one is ‘cut off and isolated’ from everything. Only what is current in life in Central Europe and what is current is of value, but who decides that? We don't decide it ourselves. Those were the first steps that drew me in. Above all, to see the depth of this philosophy of freedom, the many lessons that were also drawn from previous struggles all over the world, from all experiences that were made in various revolutionary projects, currents and achievements in socialist struggles and reflecting the lessons from everything. Why hasn't the revolution in Russia brought the results it initially promised? Why, perhaps even after a military victory, have so many battles failed to become a real alternative to the system? There is exactly a really deep analysis and to draw conclusions from it, to let these experiences flow into thinking and to take new steps, to open a new alternative that was what extremely convinced me at that point. And it was also a point where I decided relatively quickly to get closer to the movement and come to Kurdistan within a very short time.”