Ayten Dersim, a member of the Kurdistan Free Women's Party (PAJK) Coordination, while Çiğdem Doğu, a member of the Executive Council of the Kurdistan Women’s Communities (KJK). The two women spoke about the martyrs of June and the struggle for socialism in an interview with Medya Haber TV.

Part one of this interview can be read here, and part two here.

Ayten Dersim: As a Movement, from the very beginning, we have been grounded in socialist culture and socialist consciousness. The conditions of that period, real socialism… we were influenced by it as well. President Öcalan evaluates this extensively in his manifesto. To be a socialist is, at the same time, to be communal. But being communal does not necessarily mean being surrounded by dozens of people. That is a crude interpretation. President Öcalan says he lives as a socialist on Imrali. And the more we come to understand him each day, the more we grasp what that truly means. We have spoken at length about what the “Imrali system” represents, what is being attempted through this system. We have discussed its implications from the perspective of international powers.

Socialist struggle involves communal life. A socialist way of life includes free thought. It is about constantly producing, making oneself useful, continuously growing intellectually and making all of that a lived reality. That is why President Öcalan critiques and evaluates many socialist movements. He says they were left incomplete, that they were insufficient. That is why the capitalist system surpassed them. When real socialism collapsed in the 1990s, many people said, “Capitalism has won.” But President Öcalan said, “No, real socialism was defeated.” This is a very important distinction. If you say “capitalism won, imperialism won,” then you are legitimizing it, giving it a mission, as if saying, “it was right.” But what really happened was the defeat of real socialism, not the victory of capitalism.

Why? Because real socialism failed to socialize its ideology, its philosophy, and its understanding of democratic freedom. It was sacrificed to a party, made dependent on a party. That party then defined itself as the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In truth, it failed to develop democracy. The ideas were insufficient, narrow. President Öcalan evaluates this. A system that is not socialized ends up confronting capitalist modernity as a mere bloc, built on walls, bans, prohibitions. Is that not what happened? It relied on expanding the military. Its logic for defeating capitalism was to grow the army and empower the party. It was not a truly communal life. It reduced socialism to crude egalitarianism. It said, “everything for the party.”

We must recognize that this was not genuinely socialist life. In that sense, socialism cannot be confined to a space, reduced to a container, or seen as belonging to a single location. Because it also involves socialization. Socialism is socialization. Socialism is democracy. To understand both the present and socialism itself, we must look to history, starting from the formation of the first human societies.

The real issue is the unity of words and life

What was the nature of early human society? These communities lived for thousands of years. How did they live? Was there oppression in that era? Denial? Hierarchy? Social classes? No. And yet, they endured for millennia. That means there was a free way of life. Perhaps the concept of “freedom” did not yet exist, because there was no oppression to resist. But there was communal life.

This is why a socialist life must naturally transcend individualism, reject power, yet continue to struggle in proportion to that rejection and be rooted in the understanding that the dominant system is a form of fascism against humanity. All of this requires deep awareness. It is not enough to say, “I am a socialist,” or “I lived like a socialist.” There are thousands of such claims. There are many socialist parties. But the real issue is the unity of words and life.

What has President Öcalan done in the 27 years of the Imrali process? Through thousands of pages of defense writings, he brought to light the answer to the question, “What is the history of humanity?”, not only for the Kurdish people but for the peoples of the Middle East and all of humanity. Because history, as written by those in power, does not reflect the reality of society.

That is why, in all of his defenses, he said: “I am not writing history anew. I am revealing the history that has never been written.” Because the histories of peoples have not been written. The history of women has not been written. He always reminded us of this. How did we develop as a movement? President Öcalan said, “The history of women’s enslavement has not been written. Nor has the history of their freedom but it is waiting to be written.”

Socialism is also socialization

In order to write the history of freedom, one must first become free. Without liberation, how can the history of freedom be written? President Öcalan constantly guided us toward history. He defines history as follows: “History is hidden in the present, and we are hidden within history.” In other words, a person, or humanity, exists through their history.

Capitalist modernity, however, claims that history begins with itself. Everything that came before is labeled “barbaric,” “backward,” or “primitive.” It denies humanity to what existed before. President Öcalan does not do this. He traces humanity back thousands of years, asking: How did humanity become human? As revolutionaries, as militants, as women, if we do not pursue these questions, how can we understand? That is why President Öcalan, by returning to history, asks: “How did women live? How were they defeated? How were they enslaved? How were they stripped of their womanhood?” Because slavery became internalized through the enslavement of women, did it not? And we are still fighting against that.

There is a mode of existence shaped by slavery that has been embedded within us. Socialist life because socialism is not separate from democratic culture, is it? Also cannot be separated from communal life. Socialism is also socialization. Socialization means being in greater connection with others, sharing with everyone. But it also includes resisting what you see as wrong or inadequate. In this sense, President Öcalan redefined and deepened the concept, placing it once again on the agenda of humanity and women alike. From this, we understand: without grasping, internalizing, and embracing socialist culture and socialist ethics, it is impossible to build a new society, a free and democratic society. Because you are rejecting the given society. But if you reject it, what will you build in its place?

Here we are, facing capitalist modernity. Its scope is vast, it cannot be confined to a single program. So then, as women, how will we exist in opposition to it? How will we achieve freedom in terms of our identity and our gender? We must present an alternative. And that alternative cannot be just a program. You must have an ideology, a philosophy. What kind of life you envision ideologically and philosophically matters. That is what we call socialist life. A socialist is someone who rejects all forms of domination, all traditions, all enslaved modes of living and who also consciously understands how to construct a socialist life in their place. So as a woman, how do I want to live? For example, I do not want to be a man’s slave. I do not want a man to dominate me. But in order to form my own self-confidence as a woman, I must develop women’s consciousness. I must return to where women lost themselves. I must return in order to recognize it, and through that recognition, establish my own existence today. To be oneself, to exist, to be “xwebûn”... These are all expressions of what a socialist culture embodies.

Socialism is also organization

We are facing a society that has been emptied of meaning, plundered, and assimilated. In terms of social cohesion, this is true for both the Kurdish people and the peoples of Turkey. The people of Turkey today have also been distanced from their own identity. If the peoples of Turkey and the Middle East were truly conscious of their identities and existence, the system of domination would not be able to expand itself so comfortably.

This is true for Turkey as well. What we are facing today is not merely the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). People see what is being done there. But the real issue is the formation of awareness and organization. Socialism is also organization. It is not just a body of thought. Many people have ideas, but those ideas must find their way into organization. Organization is the struggle to realize oneself socially, to assert one’s presence in the world. It may be temporary or permanent, but it is the ability to maintain one’s existence wherever one is.

Socialism encompasses this as well. But in order to do so, one must also deeply understand both the system of power and the system of slavery. Because what we carry within us is an internalized form of slavery, it has been embedded inside us. Today, capitalist modernity presents certain types of women to the world under the name of freedom and liberation. These are caricatured, distorted figures, personalities and representations that have gone completely off course. The characters used in TV shows, advertisements, fashion, and clothing… In response, we must create our own model.

To be a socialist means to embody a model. It requires humility, but also the ability to internalize it. It means expressing one’s ideas freely and genuinely, while also being able to empathize with the other. The goal is not simply to impose one’s own opinion. That is exactly what President Öcalan has done. The socialist thought he cultivated within himself, the philosophy of a free life, was presented to the world, reaching beyond the walls of Imrali.