From Zin the Mythical Heroine to Zilan, the First Kurdish Female Suicide Bomber: The PKK’s Creation of a New Feminist Figuration

Abstract

This article examines how the <i>Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan</i> (PKK) and its leader Abdullah Öcalan draw inspiration for their national struggle, through an appropriation of the female figure Zin from the 1692 classic Kurdish love myth <i>Mem and Zin</i> written by Ehmedê Xanî (1650-1707), turning her into a symbol of love for the nation. Based on interviews with some fully-fledged members of PKK and Abdullah Öcalan’s written works, as well as observations from fieldwork conducted in the mountainous areas of Iraq, this article will analyse how an old love story has become entangled with the PKK’s national struggle and its pursuit of a new human type, one that might truly represent a new type of freedom fighter. In this re-configuration, love for the opposite sex must be transformed radically into love for the native land, with death as a consequence if sacrifice is seen as necessary. Drawing on the work of Donna J. Haraway, Elisabeth Grosz and Rosi Braidotti, this analysis examines how history, nature, geography, myth, and nostalgia are employed in the re-configuration of gender and love, and in the creation of a new feminist figuration that recalls Haraway’s cyborg figure.