The Kurdish Women's Relation Office (REPAK) released a statement marking the 10th anniversary of the triple murder of three female Kurdish revolutionaries in Paris, France.

The statement by Sulaymaniyah-based REPAK includes the following:

“Ten years ago, on the 9th of January 2013, the PKK founder and pioneer Sakine Cansız (Sara), KNK French representative Fidan Doğan (Rojbin) and Leyla Şaylemez (Ronahi) were murdered by a Turkish state gunman. This happened at the Kurdistan Information Center near the Paris Gare du Nord.

Despite all doubts and objections, the Turkish state was not prosecuted for this murder, because the French judiciary closed the case after the death of the shooter. The French state decided not to shed light on these murders, although all the information and documents revealing the role of the Turkish Intelligence Organisation MIT in this assassination existed.

This irresponsible and politically calculating attitude of France led to what?

10 years later, this time on 23rd December 2022, three Kurds, including Emine Kara, another pioneer of the Kurdish Women's Movement, were murdered because of a new terrorist attack in Paris. Just like in the first Paris massacre in 2013, the incident was insinuated as an 'internal showdown'. This time the button was pressed to create the perception of an isolated incident committed by a 'racist Frenchman' without any investigation. However, it is obvious that the same Kurd-hating Turkish state is behind this murder.

Since the first Paris massacre 10 years ago, the Turkish state has systematized the murder of Kurdish pioneers because they know they can get away with all their crimes against Kurds.
In the last 10 years, the Turkish state has committed similar political murders in different countries and has never been prosecuted for any of them. To recall briefly: Seve Demir, Fatma Uyar and Pakize Nayır who were executed on 4th January 2016 in Silopi district of Şırnak. Hevrin Xelef, who was murdered on 12th October, 2019 in Northeast Syria. On 23rd June 2020, Kongra Star Coordination Member Zehra Berkel, Emine Veysi and Hebûn Mele Xelîl in Kobani. On 17th June 2021, Deniz Poyraz was executed in the Izmir HDP Party Building. On 22nd July 2022, YPJ commander Jiyan Tolhildan, Roj Xabur and Barin Botan were murdered in Qamişlo, Rojava. On October 4th, 2022, Nagihan Akarsel, an academic and member of the Jineoloji Research Center, who was shot dead on the street in Sulaymaniyah, Autonomous Kurdistan Region.

The murders of Kurdish pioneer women by the Turkish state are not limited to these examples. In the last ten years, many Kurdish women guerrillas and members of the Self-Defense Forces have

been martyred as a result of the fascist Turkish state's cross-border invasion attacks against Southern Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) and Northeastern Syria, which violate international law. With its war of aggression, the Turkish state doesn’t only violate international law, but also commits war crimes by using prohibited weapons. The Turkish army killed dozens of female guerrillas with banned chemical weapons in the war against the guerrillas. No sanctions have been imposed on them for these war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of international conventions. No investigation has even been launched. Because it is a NATO member state and its crimes are in the interest of the global patriarchal-capitalist system.

Prisons are another area where the Turkish state is practising policies of extermination against Kurdish pioneers, activists and Kurdish women. In Turkish prisons, where there are the highest number of female political prisoners in the world, especially political prisoners are subjected to systematic persecution and condemned to death in solitary confinement. The bodies of sick prisoners who do not receive treatment are gradually released from prisons. In 2022 alone, 22 sick prisoners died in prison. As in the case of Garibe Gezer, the deaths of female political prisoners who were killed as a result of severe torture are made to look like suicide. Prisons in Turkey, which is a party to the so-called European Convention for the Prevention of Torture, have become a hell on earth. No rights or laws are recognized.

The Kurdish Women's Movement has a long and deep-rooted history of struggle. The Turkish state sees the biggest threat in the Kurdish women’s movement, which has made significant progress towards freedom by rejecting all gender norms and dismantling the patriarchal system. However, no attacks are able to prevent the pioneering mission of the Kurdish women’s movement, which is becoming clearer day by day, worldwide.The Kurdish Women's Movement, which has become the symbol of the Women's Revolution with the Rojava revolution, has recently led to the universalisation of the Jin Jiyan Azadî freedom formula in the social uprising led by women in Rojhilat Kurdistan . It has become more and more understood and accepted, that we liberate life by ourselves by repairing our veins that have been cut off from life by the patriarchal system to the extent that women organize autonomously and become xwebun, that is, ourselves.

It’s a new stage in the history of revolution that all victims of the exploiting system see their own freedom under the leadership of women. This reconnection of women with life also means the weakening of women's ties with the patriarchal system.

The reality of the patriarchal state with its centralised power systems, feels threatened by our development, knowing its successes are the end of them; ultimately, because of this reason, they attack very violently. We can see this situation all over the world. In 21st century Afghanistan, the symbolic country of the policies of women's genocide, women are banned from attending universities and working in NGOs, and women are excluded from all areas of life and imprisoned at home. A similar development is currently taking place in Iran. The social uprisings that started in response to the murder of Jina Amini by the Iranian morality police are now in their fourth month. So far, 500 people have lost their lives and tens of thousands have been arrested. Iran has imposed the death penalty against the protesters to intimidate the insurgent population. Iranian regime forces are also particularly brutal towards female protesters and use sexual violence as a weapon. In Tehran, for example, a 14-year-old young girl named Mahsume died in a detention center after being tortured and raped.

For a long time, the state hid its true face and defended itself as an administration of democracy, for the people. The state has manipulated and monopolised our society's conditions in its blind and dirty dependency on patriarchal capitalism, resulting in an extremely limited material opportunity for social change, as well as the development of a deep unbelieving mentality towards the hope of life 'without the state'. The state declared itself to be the most sacred, the most indispensable, and expected infinite obedience from society, especially from women. However, this perception is now crumbling, and it is becoming more and more apparent that the state is the most effective tool to protect the interests of monopolised power and capital, not the interests of the people. The reality of the capitalist nation-state lies at the roots of the fundamental problems in our world. The patriarchal state produces injustice, exploitation, rape, extortion, war and destruction. Women are shouting louder and louder that the system has already lost the chance of reform and that what is needed - is a women's revolution.

It is the folly of these regimes to think that they can use violence and rape to restrain people who want to free themselves from the chains of the system and the rape culture of the patriarchal system. We as women have been forced to live under the rape culture that has become more and more institutionalised and systematised since patriarchal civilisation. With their states, their prototypical family institutions, and the gender ideologies they have created, they have deemed us worthy of a life with the largest slave status the system has maintained since the day we were born. Their real war is against us women. With us as women who are sick of their lies, who don’t submit to them, who don’t accept their tyranny. Their biggest fear is organised women who are on their way to freedom. That is why they kill, imprison, discredit and marginalize them. Since all states feed on the same mentality, they cover up each other's crimes and work hard to keep the truth in the dark.

But in vain - we will not bow down, we will not forget what you have done and we will definitely take great revenge. We will take it by lighting the fire of women's revolution, by putting the JIN JIYAN AZADÎ formula into practice, by developing our self-defence and by universalising women's struggle and organisation.

The winner will be a free life led by women. Patriarchy and fascism will lose.”