Guerrilla Onur Artos was killed in the Zap War in South Kurdistan on 2 July 2022. The People's Defense Forces (HPG) announced this on Tuesday in an obituary to the Kurdish woman guerrilla whose real name was Şükran Arvas and who was a member of the Free Women's Units (YJA Star). The HPG honored Onur Artos as a courageous militant and selfless advocate of apoism, and expressed their condolences to the fighter's family and the Kurdish people.                            

 Code name: Onur Artos

 First and last name: Şükran Arvas

 Place of birth: Wan

 Mother and father names: Azize – Gurgin

 Date and place of death: July 2, 2022 / Zap

Onur Artos was born to a family close to the Kurdish liberation struggle in a hamlet in Wan-Westan (tr. Van-Gevaş). However, she grew up in Istanbul. Her parents migrated there during the "counter guerrilla" in Kurdistan in the early 1990s. They rejected the village guard system into which they were supposed to be integrated and were forced to emigrate because of that. Over 3,000 Kurdish villages were burned down and razed to the ground because their residents refused to collaborate with the state in the war against the Kurdish movement.

The violent flight from her homeland left its mark on Onur Artos. "She grew up with an awareness of the enemy's genocidal, colonial reality and was alert to the state's efforts to destroy the Kurdish language and culture and assimilate our people," said the HPG in its statement, adding: "Her heart beat for Kurdistan and her longing grew with every connection of people from her environment to our movement. At the same time, she developed sympathy for the guerrillas and dealt with many political and social developments."

Onur Artos dropped out of school because she wanted to escape the system on the one hand, and support her family financially on the other. "She wanted to find answers to her questions by questioning the policies of the system that turns women into commodities and separates them from their essence. She admired the women's liberation movement that had been formed with the ideology of our chairman. Contradictions that our comrade Onur experienced in many ways, she overcame with the Revolutionary Youth," wrote the HPG, adding that Onur Artos was actively involved in the Kurdish youth movement. "She was a rebel and resistant Kurdish woman who defied the pressure of the enemy."

In 2012, she was arrested and spent two years in a Turkish prison. She saw her imprisonment as a way to achieve moral and political self-improvement. After her release in 2014 - the time when the terrorist organization "Islamic State" overran Iraq and Syria and carried out massacres against the Kurdish population - she joined the guerrillas. She went to Qendîl, where she received basic military training and dealt with ideological issues. "As part of the women's liberation movement, comrade Onur strengthened her self-confidence because she perceived the difference between the woman in the system and the liberated woman more clearly than before. She was enthusiastic about everything new that she learned during her training and integrated effortlessly into the life of the guerrilla. She also completed training with the women's journalists' association RAJIN (Ragihandina Azad a Jinan) and became involved in the media work of the women guerrillas in Qendîl."

In 2018, Onur Artos came to the central party school named after Mazlum Doğan, where she studied Abdullah Öcalan's theory on the role of women in armed struggle. The following year, she joined the Hêzên Taybet, a special unit in the guerrillas that requires ideological depth and an explicit willingness to make sacrifices. As a member of this unit, she was deployed in the Zap region, where she fought both in the guerrilla's war tunnels and with mobile teams in the field, defending a strategically important area.

The Turkish army's most comprehensive invasion operation in southern Kurdistan was launched in April 2022. Although it focused mainly on the Zap, it also included Avaşîn and Metîna. Tayyip Erdoğan described the operation as "the most comprehensive war in the history of our republic". In the winter of 2022/2023, the occupiers had to withdraw from parts of the Zap region after heavy losses. The Turkish state's second major offensive in the region has been ongoing since last summer. Onur Artos fell in an enemy attack during the peak of the Zap's defense. The HPG emphasize: "Making the resistance of Hevala Onur and all other fallen soldiers of the Kurdish liberation struggle a success is the best way to remain connected to the memory of our friends."