Rote Zora Communique - July 1995

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at etext.org>

Rote Zora Communique - July 1995

You Have The Power, But The Night Belongs To Us

     In the night on 24.7.95, we bombed a shipyard belonging to
the Lurssen corporation in Lernwerder near Bremen. This firm
supplies arms to the Turkish government, which is waging a
murderous war against the Kurds.
     Lurssen has been giving military assistance to Turkey for
years now. At the moment they are producing high-speed attack
ships in Lernwerder and in the Turkish naval shipyard at
Tazkisac, and the firm also exports production techniques and the
necessary military know-how to all parts of the world.
     Germany supports the Turkish government in its war against
the Kurdish population by being the number two arms supplier
behind the USA. In the last 5 years alone, Germany has delivered
1.5 billion DM of military equipment (as part of a military aid
accord which lasted from 1990-1995) in order to strengthen its
imperialist interests in the strategically important "NATO
partner country, Turkey". German arms corporations secure their
profits through large-scale projects such as observation posts
along the border with Syria, where the Turkish regime practices
extortionary water policies, or by giving the Turkish regime a
gift of 450 former East German panzers which then end up being
deployed in Kurdistan. 700 German weapons firms are directly
involved with production in Turkey today. In the war against the
Kurds, villages have been systematically burned down for at least
the last 5 years. According to the Human Rights Association
(IHD), more than 1,300 Kurdish villages had been forcibly
evacuated or destroyed by October 1994. In the last few months,
there have been continuous raids and expulsions in addition to
torture and the summary execution of villagers in the Dersim
region. As early as the 1960s, many refugees fled to Germany from
this region to escape systematic policies of impoverishment and
destruction. Today, Kurdish cities are increasingly bombarded by
fighter jets and refugees are detained in concentration camps
outside the major Kurdish cities.
     Despite massive protests by Kurdish immigrants and even some
Members of Parliament, arms sales to Turkey continue unhindered
and even the European Council in Strasbourg is "reluctant to
impose sanctions against Turkey" (FR, 27.6.95). Also, it has
become increasingly difficult for people to flee from these
policies of destruction and seek refuge in Germany and Western
Europe (particularly after the adoption of the Schengen
Agreement). Interior Minister Kanther has called it a "great
success" that "because of the tightened restrictions on asylum
practices, fewer people have the possibility of seeking refuge
from political persecution in Germany" (FR, 22.6.95).
     With the banning of the PKK last year, the German government
launched a unique means of racist persecution and criminalization
against an entire group of immigrants, the Kurds.

The Problem Of Solidarity

     We see it as our task to break through the passivity of many
women's group and other leftist associations here with respect to
the Kurdish resistance movement and the massive repression
against Kurds seeking refuge here and those Kurds who are
supporting the resistance back home. This lack of action is
usually based on criticisms of the PKK. Women say they can't
identify with the PKK - nor can we - and unfortunately our
solidarity is usually made dependent upon this question. We would
like to discuss political solidarity which is not dependent upon
support for or the denunciation of liberation movements. All too
often, our identifications are based upon our own projections,
and this blocks our view of the actual social confrontation in
its entirety. This is not a suitable basis for solidarity. On the
contrary, as soon as a different reality is seen behind the
projection, the solidarity usually comes to an end.
     The women of Kurdistan, who for good reasons fight either
within or outside of the PKK against their oppressors and for
total liberation, and all oppressed and fighting people who are
struggling against the Turkish regime and its German imperialist
arms suppliers, deserve our support.
     As people living in Germany, we must fulfil our
responsibility and intervene if we don't wish to be part of the
war against the Kurds which is massively supported by Germany.    
 In order to examine, in its full dimension, this war against the
population and against women, we must break away from the
viewpoint of reducing this to a military confrontation between
the Turkish state on the one side and the PKK on the other, a
view which both the mainstream media and the PKK perpetuate.     
For its part, the PKK doesn't seem to place much importance on
coming up with a clear formula or program for social
liberation. They and their German supporters call for "national
liberation" as a priority and they seek to achieve victory in an
armed struggle against the Turkish military. In this struggle,
the "new humanity" will be formed, with the aid of the party.     
Yet by only looking at this confrontation between both warring
sides, the social situation there becomes hidden, particularly
what confrontations the women are in and what goals they
association with the liberation struggle.

The Goals Of The War

     The Turkish government and its military are waging a war
against the Kurdish people in order to break their resistance
against oppression and their support for the guerrilla. The war
against Kurdish people is designed to destroy their way of life,
which is still very much connected to subsistence level social
reproduction.
     Farmers and shepherds are gunned down with their animals in
the fields by Turkish soldiers, villages are attacked and the
winter rations are destroyed. From the air, forests and pastures
are deliberately bombed and set on fire. Tanks destroy entire
landscapes. The Turkish government has essentially "banned" the
Kurds' means of reproduction and is enforcing this ban
militarily.
     In the mountain regions, shepherding has been the
predominant way of life for centuries, taking the animals to
higher ground in the summer and spending the winter in villages
in the valleys. In many parts of the 300km long border between
Turkey and Iraq, many people must make their living by smuggling
and cross-border trade. But this way of life has been taken away
from them through persecution. In order to eliminate all possible
logistical support for the guerrillas, huge "security zones" have
been established in this region and military operations have
virtually depopulated the area, with all border villages reduced
to rubble. Nearly all Kurdish families have children or relatives
who have been taken away by the military and tortured or killed.
So it's no surprise that nearly all families have at least one
member in the guerrilla, and they are supported.
     In the decades before the PKK became strong, military
occupation and limited warfare in Kurdistan had the effect of
forced displacement, thereby creating an internal colony ripe for
exploitation. Due to the pressures of the global market and IMF
and World Bank debts, the Turkish government, up to this day, has
had to use war to push through its murderous demographic
policies. By doing so it hopes to destroy the old networks of
solidarity which have continuously given life to the Kurdish
resistance.
     The war and destruction were planned a long time ago, and
yet "modernization" has not halted this. In fact, change has
actually brought improvements since "modern", that is,
imperialist forms of exploitation allow for better utilization of
a people deprived of their subsistence. The escalation of the war
in the last few years began with the expulsion of hundreds of
thousands of small farmers and their families to create export
zones in the new GAP region. [The GAP, or East Anatolia Project,
is a huge system of dams designed to create export-oriented
agriculture such as agro-industry cash crops, the creation of
cattle, leather, tobacco, and other industrial zones, tourist
regions, etc.] The more than 4 million people who live in the 6
GAP provinces are generally dependent on their harvests and
subsistence farming. Their small farms are being increasingly
bought out by the state as part of its "land reform" and handed
over to investors and large land owners in the GAP region.     
In our fundamental rejection of authoritarian modernization, we
assume that "development zones" such as the GAP region are not
being developed to fulfil the wishes of the Kurds or to improve
their standard of living. [In a report published in 1994 by
journalist Lissy Schmidt, who was later assassinated by Iraqi
intelligence agents, 70% of the affected population rejected the
project in a survey conducted at the time construction was
beginning.] Because for the majority of the poor population, this
project has resulted in a loss of their land and the devaluation
and destruction of their capabilities and previous means of
production and survival.

The War On Women

     The war is not only being waged in those areas where the
guerrillas are strong, but rather it is also concentrated in
places where women have a relatively strong and free position in
the society: against the people in the mountains, where there is
a tradition of semi-nomadic pasture agriculture, and against the
people of the Yezidi and Alevi religions, who increasingly reject
patriarchal and religious forms of oppression. Up to this day,
the strong position and resistance of women against their
exploitation by (Kurdish) land owners has been particularly
significant.
     After being expelled from their villages, Kurdish women were
deprived of their independent fields of labor. They lost their
roles of social significance and found themselves living as
refugees in slums in Kurdish and Turkish cities, and increasingly
in virtual concentration camps as well. Under these conditions,
their traditional network of solidarity broke down and they
became increasingly isolated in the society, dependent on men and
threatened by male violence and "modern" forms of patriarchal
(especially sexual and small family) oppression.
     Worse than the women's loss of independence and their
dependence on their job-seeking husbands, the newly-created
strategic hamlets and concentration camps gave rise to new forms
of patriarchal violence: militarist control, hunger, disease,
infant mortality, humiliation, dependence, food rations, torture,
and rape. This impoverishment and insecurity is to the benefit of
violent patriarchal control, and has been taken up by Islamic
groups who propagate and push through the oppression of women. 

The Resistance Of Women

     Even after the destruction of thousands of villages, the
Turkish government, to this very day, still has not been able to
defeat the resistance of the Kurdish people. Although their
traditional subsistence has all but been eradicated, the power of
women has not yet been wiped out. The women cling to this and
further develop it in the cities. "More and more Kurdish cities
are becoming powder kegs, more and more people are part of the
propertyless masses whose means of subsistence has been destroyed
and who don't even have the opportunity to work as day laborers
in the cities. In many places, they have even been able to
mobilize the regular city inhabitants." [Lissy Schmidt, 1992/93]
It was women, recently driven out of the mountains, who were the
organizers and driving force behind the 'Serhildan', the Kurdish
Intifada, which lasted from late 1989 until March 1992. It was
they who resisted against the Turkish military with stones,
sticks, and pure anger. [The uprising organized by women in
Sirnak in February 1991 was particularly significant. The
military gunned down hundreds of miners to enforce a ban on
private coal mining and distribution, after which hardly any
government building escaped the angry attacks of the women (and
men) who broadened their resistance into a popular uprising by
the time of Newroz.] Ever since then, Newroz celebrations are
marked by massive military deployments and are "guarded" by
German tanks. Cities, the new centers of resistance, are
bombarded from the air, and ever more people are kidnapped by
death squads, tortured, and killed. Many of the women who have
been driven into the cities build new groups and structures of
solidarity and resistance in human rights and prisoner support
associations, neighborhood committees to oppose the death squads
and publicize hungerstrikes by prisoners, and by engaging in
their own hungerstrikes to oppose the torture and disappearance
of relatives and friends. Everywhere they develop a great power.
Another part of women's resistance is the struggle for better
living conditions and human dignity.
     Many young women go to the mountains and join the guerrilla,
into illegality, to fight against the repression, expulsion, and
war of the Turkish military and also to struggle for their own
liberation from traditional patriarchal oppression.

Kurdish Women And The PKK

     A significant reason for the massive participation and
organization of women in the struggle of the PKK is that fact
that the war directly affects them and their families and friends
and is waged in their villages and cities. Even before the war,
life in Kurdistan was determined by the colonialist politics,
carried out in conjunction with Kurdish land owners. Increasing
amounts of land, the foundation of pasture agriculture, were
taken away from village ownership and "capitalized", the people
were terrorized with racist bureaucratic and militarist
repression, and they were victims of systematic social neglect.
The raw materials and harvests of their agricultural labor were
plundered. That's why more and more people were forced to
emigrate starting in the 1950s. In this process of so-called
underdevelopment and repression, and in the growing resistance to
this, many women felt a desire for more freedom, diversity,
experience, etc., and they increasingly rejected the traditional
village structures which regulated and oppressed them. With the
dissolution of the extended family, the focus on the power and
opinions of the oldest woman - who always made the women into
defenders of patriarchy - also began to decline. Among the young
women, many fought against the patriarchal oppression in their
family as well and thus decided to join the PKK in order to break
out of this. ["At home, my father gave the orders, and when he
wasn't there, my brother did. In the guerrilla, I can decide
things for myself, perhaps even become a commander!" - a young
female PKK guerrilla]
     Many women associated all of their hopes for total
liberation from this situation of destruction and oppression with
the PKK, because the PKK's military successes were the only
proven and serious force which could resist the Turkish military
and organs of repression. The main reasons for their supporting
the PKK are the Turkish politics of nationalism, chauvinism, and
racism. [Kurds were called "mountain Turks", their language,
history, traditions, etc. were banned, students who spoke in
Kurdish were beaten by Turkish teachers, and so on.] But among
the Kurds themselves, they developed a sort of pride of the
oppressed, and their resistance created an identity which crossed
social divisions. Ever since the days of Ataturk, Turkish
authorities have tried to wipe out everything Kurdish and make
all memories of such things impossible. The experience of Kurds
who saw their daily cultural self-consciousness and their history
being broken felt a stronger desire for their "Kurdish identity".
In other words, they want to be and live like that which was
forbidden to them, and repression could not stop them from this.  
     In the words of one prisoner in Diyarbakir in 1983: "All the
hatred for the oppressors which boiled up inside me since my
early childhood has done me good. It was only after I went to
prison that I learned about my country and my history, about our
collective 'guilt', that is, being Kurdish." Not only in
Kurdistan, even here in Germany aid is given to the Turkish
repressive machinery, as relatives who sometimes can only speak
Kurdish are ordered to "speak Turkish!" when they visit jailed
relatives German prisons.
     An "identity" becomes resistance, something illegal to be
pushed through. Even traditions, such as the Newroz festival, for
example, are given new life as forms of resistance, but also as a
form of hope of a future free society, because although the war
mobilizes lots of strength and self-consciousness ("identity"),
it also prevents and destroys many things, it creates feelings of
sorrow, weakness, limitations, and the struggle to survive.     
Official PKK propaganda equates women's liberation with their
participation in the military wing of the national
liberation struggle. In order to prevent the progressive
radicalization of many young women against both old and new power
relations from turning against the PKK itself and its own power
structures, the party for several years now has been using lots
of propaganda, pressure, and "education" with the help of the
women leaders of the YJWK to reintegrate women into modernized
patriarchal family norms. [The YJWK is the Union of Patriotic
Women of Kurdistan, the PKK's women's organization. The following
is a quotation from 1992 concerning the situation of immigrant
Kurdish women: "Kurds as people from a strange society have
different social and political characteristics than other
peoples, such as Greeks, Yugoslavians, Turks, etc."] Their reform
consists of rebuilding the family according to "national
traditions" with a folklore identity, a "strong Kurdish culture",
and a means of discipline to prevent things from going too far or
becoming a "Western" form of "women's emancipation" which the
party looks down upon.
     Solidarity and collectivity are certainly lively aspects of
women's struggles. In many independent initiatives, acting in
solidarity and cooperation with one another, women have taken on
responsibilities and struggled for collective, self-determined
structures, even in the mountains, even against their male
comrades. This calls into question the eroded and largely
scattered family and its patriarchal values, as well as the
party's power and its principles of discipline and subordination.
That's why the "collective" of the family is termed the building
block of the nation state, and moralistic pressure is exerted to
get the women back in line. [Here, "collective" means
subordination to the desires of the patriarchal leadership in the
family and the party.] According to the PKK's party program from
1978: "Any analysis of Kurdistan which does not view the national
conflict as the main conflict is only serving the forces of
colonialism and reaction." Even today, PKK women leaders seem to
have taken this view to heart. [From a PKK women's text in
Germany for March 8, 1994: "It is important that women recognize
and carry out their responsibilities as bridges to education in
the family in the service of the revolution."]
     Although we understand and accept the fact that many Kurdish
women strive for a "Kurdish identity" as a driving force of their
resistance against racist Turkish oppression, we think it's
fiction to believe that a true "Kurdish identity" can only be
developed in a "liberated Kurdistan". The party ideology exploits
this need for an "identity", in that it builds on the Turkish
politics of denying and eliminating Kurdish historical
consciousness and offers people fleeing from the war myths about
their history instead of supporting their struggle to defend and
link up to their living history - for example, the resistance to
their expulsion. If the PKK - or the Turkish occupiers, for that
matter - has its way, the earlier diversity of Kurdish culture
and its decentralized means of production and self-reliance will
disappear, because only then can they implement their proposals
for modernized control. The war is a means of destroying diverse
social structures and it creates the necessary polarization and
forced standardization for the future power and exploitation
needs of the party. All of this is buried beneath the PKK myth of
an ancient history and the "creating of the Kurdish nation" and
the conservation of certain Kurdish traditions. By signifying
what is "Kurdish" and what isn't, everything which contradicts
the power of the party will be oppressed, even to the point of
erasing people's historical consciousness. [With the
naturalization of the notion of being "Kurdish", Kurdish people
become an ethnic group and the party decides what "Kurdish" is.
All undesirable conduct which "contradicts Kurdish nature, the
Kurdish nation, and the Kurdish people" is opposed, even to the
point of isolating and oppressing those people who choose not to
be "Kurdish".] But the history of Kurdish life and struggle is
very changing and diverse, indeed this is what characterizes it.
It was exactly this relatively autonomous decentralization and
heterogeneity which prevented its destruction at the hands of the
centralized violence of the Ottoman Empire and modern-day nation
states and imperialist exploitation interests. That's why the
destruction is aimed at the people's fundamental necessities for
living.
     We reject the reformulation of commonly understood living
resistance to the oppression of the Kurdish people which seeks to
change their Kurdishness in the resistance to repression, the
exploitation of their life necessities, their language, and their
culture into a national ideology and a rigid culture, because
that only serves the specific aims of the party to achieve power
and future exploitation in a state of its own, and this merely
conceals social and anti-patriarchal contradictions and
struggles.

A Critique Of Liberation Nationalism

     In contrast to colonial and imperial nationalism, which
creates and utilizes control, liberation nationalism gives rise
to resistance by various social groups against the colonialists
and the imperialists. In that sense it is identical to a
resistance to all forms of oppression. It mobilizes liberation
utopias in people towards a common struggle against exploitation
and occupation, it creates a culture of resistance in opposition
to the dominant ruling culture which robs people of their way of
life, their language, their history, their experiences, etc.     
Nonetheless, we see in "national liberation" few
possibilities for creating a society on its way to eliminating
exploitation and both patriarchal as well as racist oppression.
For the PKK, "national liberation" means taking power in
Kurdistan and taking possession of it resources like water, oil,
and minerals in order to secure its own hold on the modernized
exploitation of people and resources.
     The struggles of people against authoritarian modernization
(for example, their resistance to forced resettlement and bans on
trade and agriculture) are turned around by the PKK into
"national" aims: they are to be directed against the Turkish
regime, but not against "modernization", which is destructive and
which worsens the gap between the land owners and those without
property. Social demands disappear behind the dominance of the
national demand of an independent state. For example, the PKK
didn't support the resistance to the forced resettlement from the
GAP region, and even their own early attacks against GAP
engineers were simply directed against Western/Turkish
exploitation plans. The farmers, and their subsistence way of
life in "traditional society", were often dismissed as
feudalistic and regressive people who did not fight against large
land ownership and redistribution. Appeals to tradition, it
seems, are only made if they serve the aims of the nation state.
Even large land owners can be "progressive" if they support the
aims of creating a nation state. The focus of the struggle on
national power leads to the destruction of subsistence living and
makes the future society dependent on the imperialist global
market.
     The guerrilla structures, which are separate from the
society, are focussed on military counter-power against the
Turkish army and the goal of national separation makes a
guerrilla formation necessary which will fight against "foreign
domination", and consequently its armed attacks will only be
directed against military and police targets of the occupying
force. This prevents the formation of a guerrilla formation which
can orient itself to social liberation interests and against
exploitation and patriarchal and racist oppression.
     Even though many women in Kurdistan view the formation of an
independent women's army within the PKK as a necessary and
welcome step towards equality, that is not an organization in our
opinion. This independent organization of women cannot change the
fact that the militarist formulation is separated from the social
struggles and must remain a pillar supporting and renewing
patriarchy. We do not wish to support the myth of the
revolutionary quality of "armed struggle". But "armed struggle",
with its militarist approach and weaponry, will not lead to
liberation, only a connection to social struggles against social
exploitation and oppression will.
     Our solidarity mainly goes out to those women who are not
willing to sacrifice themselves to national-ethnic slogans in
their struggle for a liberated society without exploitation or
the oppression of women.

Thoughts On Internationalism, Anti-Racism, And Feminist
Solidarity

     Today, the radical wing of the feminist movement in Germany
is hardly visible, rather it is broken and splintered into little
groups who have little effect. Many women who used to be active
have turned their political needs into career responsibilities or
a job and their change is only limited to their personal daily
surroundings and is therefore pretty much gone.
     The major social breaks over the last few years have left us
with little ground to stand on, so it seems easier to stay
amongst ourselves and just self-critically debate the weaknesses
of our past political formations. And the critiques from
immigrant women and women from the Three Continents of the
metropolitan white lesbian/women's movement led to us having to
make our own contradictions - our own racism, anti-Semitism,
hetero-/sexism, productivism - a theme before our movement could
become strong again.
     The previous feminist self-understanding of the politics of
the first person (as women, we are ALL, albeit it to different
degrees, oppressed and "objectively" opposed to patriarchy) was
called into question by our analysis of our metropolitan women's
reality, in that we aren't just victims or subjects waging
resistance, but rather that we are also responsible for and
benefit from patriarchal forms of domination and exploitation.
The - necessary and important! - discussion about our own
differences took us off our pedestal: We are not the ones with
the full picture, the ones already more "liberated" or
emancipated than the women of Eastern Europe or the Three
Continents. Because our "liberation" is, at the same time, a form
and expression of our complicity in the oppression of our
sisters.
     This realization was crucial for us: We no longer speak of
revolutionary demands or on behalf of ALL women, but rather just
for US, and we prefer to leave out the word "revolutionary" -
this needs to apply to everyone, otherwise your view of
liberation is just the building up of your own privileges. But
this retreat into a position where at least there were four walls
which helped to determine relevance also isolated other women
once again.
     We have given support, at least verbally and sometimes more
deeply, to the demands of immigrant women and socially
discriminated women. We have noted, respected, and struggled
against the differences between us as they are represented within
ourselves, that is, our own racism, anti-Semitism, productivism,
hetero-/sexism. But this often just leads to merely stating these
problems, as if correct speech were always a reflection of a
correct consciousness.  As if there could even be a "right" or
"wrong" consciousness unless women fight against this.
     At this point, our own increased sensibilities and
willingness for self-criticism appeared deceptive. It was simply
a reflection of the insecurity which results from the process of
dissolution ("deregulation") of old metropolitan social
structures and the new offensive of patriarchal power and
exploitation in which the ruling powers and those who swim with
the tide seek to integrate our previous feminist demands. With
our retreat back to US and our focus on sensitizing our own
consciousness, we found ourselves in line with the dominant
social trend of increased individualization and the dissolution
of collective social experiences. In some of our praxis as well
as in our theoretical work, we saw the destruction of the social
collectivity which had previously been the basis of our
resistance.
     We can only win back a fighting revolutionary perspective if
we go beyond our own interests and find external links for our
struggle to eliminate sexist violence and patriarchal domination,
and if we create networks with women and their structures here
who are affected by racist mistreatment and social
isolation/exploitation. We must - while respecting our
differences - open ourselves up to these women in a concrete way,
women whose racist, sexist, legal, and social discrimination has
made them subject to the worst forms of exploitation and
violence, making them prime targets for authoritarian
modernization, against which they resist with their counter-
strategies and their fighting subjectivity. Denying rights to
immigrants and criminalizing them is a strategic weapon of the
ruling elite. They utilize this to reformulate their exploitation
and violence in the society at large, thus hoping to restabilize
their hold on power. An illegal labor force and sexual favors
almost for free, regardless of what violence must be used, reduce
the costs of reproduction for everyone. That means that we nearly
all profit from this, thereby reducing the labor costs for all
types of exploitation (including that of women and immigrants)
across the board in society.
     Women here must not stay put at demanding a equal right to
stay for women refugees, independent of men, and then close their
eyes to the exploitation of these women. Supporting the struggles
waged by immigrants also means resisting their second-class
status and criminalization, that means fighting to repeal the so-
called "foreigner laws" (and any type of "law" which is
discriminatory) with all our possibilities and with all the
weapons and forms of resistance which we have developed, because
we don't want to be a part of exclusion and exploitation.
     Besides, it's fun and exciting to resist "from below" the
small social circles and individualization which have been
prescribed to us, and to resist the ("post-Fordist") trend to
dissolve social collectivity by forming new associations and to
always break out of our contradictions and our inclusion in the
power structure of this inhumane system. By "opening up to" other
women, we don't just mean their different form of subjectivity or
their different - less dependent on dominant productivism and
"independent of the individual" and more in tune with social
reproduction - values, activities, and struggles. But rather we
should try sometimes to see things through different eyes and to
learn things when we are confronted with our productivist and
racist values and activities. It's important to be aware of our
differences and to respect these, but it's just as important to
break out of our increasing isolation and to develop some
fighting together, to prevent old and new forms of patriarchal
domination and capitalist value systems from completely taking
over. Our view of women's liberation and our view of communism
here and now can only become visible and liveable if we break out
of our divisions of oppression, which play women off against each
other, and join forces in a network of resistance structures. [We
hope this context makes it clear that we do NOT have a Marxist
conception of social struggles as a "progressive development" on
the way to a "classless society" in mind. We view "communism" as
a critical notion of struggle for a society in which we abolish
the patriarchal-capitalist cult of productivism and its greed for
ever more modernization and technology, which "only" sees value
in the reproduction of human life according to that which is
useful and that which isn't useful, according to which humans
have no intrinsic "right" to existence, and a society in which
all forms of exploitation, domination, and violence and the
racist and sexist foundations of these have been eliminated.]
This interconnectedness of the various struggles for a right for
EVERYONE to exist, regardless of their capitalist value, their
social or cultural background, their passport, and so on, can
help us to extricate ourselves from our integration into this
system of domination or make use of this for the cause of
collective liberation (for example, our easy access to
information and our ability to deal with official bureaucracy, as
well as our assured social status). In our dealings with this
system, which to the eyes of women who have come or fled here
seems like a complex web of racist and sexist exploitative power,
we learn to know better the personifications and responsibilities
of this power and this makes them attackable by us.

Solidarity With Kurdish Women

     We are still far away from such mid-term goals, but there
are already networks of solidarity which have been built up by
immigrant women themselves.
     Not just "exchanges" with Kurdish women, but rather
practical solidarity in our relations with them can help build
our contacts to Kurdish women and this can strengthen the
network.
     The war in Kurdistan has led to sharpened national divisions
between people of different ethnic backgrounds, both in Turkey as
well as here. In associations of Turkish, Kurdish, and German
women, we need to struggle to break down these barriers.
     There are several ways to show practical solidarity, and we
can carry out a variety of public and subversive protests: 
- A right to stay for ALL! Actions to disrupt state racist
policies, to prevent deportations and new deportation prisons, to
remove the anonymity surrounding those individuals responsible
for these things.

- Attacks on the corporations responsible for these things. 

- Actions against racists, fascists, sexists, and exploiters
responsible for underpaid illegal labor (including women!). 

- Solidarity actions against the banning of the PKK and Kurdish
associations. Nearly all networks of Kurdish solidarity are
affected by the party ban and are directly affected by German
government repression. For the unhindered and self-determined
organization of immigrants!

- Tourism is a modern form of colonialist exploitation. The
tourism industry will this year again promote "Vacation Land
Turkey '95". We connect actions calling for "No Tourism to
Turkey!" with the aim of cutting into the massive profits which
German agencies make, rather than attacking small Turkish travel
firms. The silence of the PKK with respect to the actions this
spring directed against Turkish immigrants only strengthens
racist and nationalistic tendencies in Germany, and it makes the
tensions between Kurds and Turks even worse. This is in
fundamental contradiction to our aims.

- Actions to prevent the economic cooperation between Germany and
Turkey, from public protests to attacks on corporations and
politicians who are responsible for this bloody business.

     Lurssen is a mid-sized firm which makes 100% of its money by
building warships. At the present time, Lurssen is building a new
"high-speed attack ship" which can carry missiles and machine
guns. This is part of a package of three "Dogan" brand speed
boats produced by Lurssen, two of which are being produced in the
Turkish port of Tazkisac. The financing of this production - via
the German firm Hermes - totals 400 million DM. At least since
1987, Lurssen has been doing business with the German state-
sponsored Turkish military, having already produced at least 10
Dogan craft, made either in Tazkisac or at Lurssen's own docks.   
     In addition to warships, Lurssen also provides other
necessary military equipment to regimes all around the world:
construction plans, licenses, know-how, training, all the way up
to entire wharfs. More than 130 ships over the last few decades
have been built according to Lurssen's specifications and
licenses. "The Lurssen wharf has sent more warships onto the seas
and trained more people to serve on warships than any other wharf
in the world", according to one Lurssen spokesman at an arms show
in Malaysia in 1994.
     Lurssen's murderous business practices have been publicly
criticized in the past in press releases and protest actions
against arms exports, most recently the symbolic blockade action
at the end of 1994 in response to Lurssen's arms sales to
Indonesia.
     Although a public campaign has developed over the past few
years in opposition to German military and economic assistance to
Turkey, mainly aimed at a few major German firms which do
business with Turkey, Lurssen has tried to remain quietly in the
background and carry out its business. We won't let them do this! 

Lurssen: Stop Your Murderous Deals With The Turkish Government! 

No arms sales to Turkey!
So government support for the Germans arms industry!
Stop all German military and economic "aid" to the Turkish
government!

No tourism to Turkey! (Or to anywhere else for that matter!) Lift
the ban against the PKK and stop persecuting Kurdish
associations!

A right to stay for all Kurds! (And for all other people who
migrate or flee here!)
Fight against the "foreigner laws" and all other laws which
discriminate against people and thus open the door for
exploitation and violence!
Recognize the independent grounds of fleeing for women and grant
them the right to stay!

Show practical solidarity with the resistance of women in
Kurdistan and of Kurdish immigrants here!

Against nationalism! For international women's gangs!

Rote Zora - July 1995


[Translator's Note: The above text from the Rote Zora, instead of
being an attack on Germany's role in the dirty war in Turkey and
Kurdistan, is primarily a stinging critique of the PKK. I do not
agree with a lot of the criticisms made in this text, some of
which are just plain wrong. The idea, for example, that PKK units
only aim at military targets and don't carry out social
liberation/political organizing is simply not true. Then comes
the usually cries of nationalism, making it seem as though the
Kurdish resistance movement is something for "Kurds only", yet
another gross misconception. The PKK, some of whose founders were
Turkish, has fighters of several nationalities in its ranks, and
one of the party's best characteristics is its commitment to
internationalism and its refusal to follow narrow national aims.
And Rote Zora's critique of Kurdish women organized in the PKK is
borderline to patronizing. It seems that Kurdish women who are
willing to fight and die for their party, the PKK, are somehow
fooling themselves, and they haven't yet discovered real (German
autonome?) feminism. Instead of praising the incredible gains in
women's liberation which have been made in Kurdish society since
1978, despite the counter-attacks by Islamic and feudal forces,
Rote Zora stick to their German feminist superiority, despite
claims that they have come off their pedestal. Why are no
critiques of bourgeois German/Western feminism offered alongside
the anti-PKK stance? Certainly one can make constructive
criticisms of the PKK, but just as Zora claim that the PKK
distort reality to fit their vision of society, isn't that
exactly what the RZ women are doing here? Trying to point out all
the ways in which the outlook and organizational approach of
Kurdish women and the PKK differ from the German radical-left and
why these differences are mistaken. In any case, Rote Zora
carried out a fine action, and we hope this text will inspire
reflection and discussion. Please note that the comments in
brackets in the above text are footnotes from the original RZ
communique.]

 ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
   ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++
     ++++ see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++

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Arm The Spirit is an autonomist/anti-imperialist collective based
in Toronto, Canada. Our focus includes a wide variety of
material, including political prisoners, national liberation
struggles, armed communist resistance, anti-fascism, the fight
against patriarchy, and more. We regularly publish our writings,
research, and translation materials in our magazine and bulletins
called Arm The Spirit. For more information, contact:

Arm The Spirit
P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1P7 Canada

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