Orientalist Discourses & the Fetishization of Kurdish Women
“‘Angelina Jolie of Kurdistan’ dies fighting ISIS in Syria” marked the headlines of Western newspapers — such as Metro UK & BBC News — following Asia Ramazan Antar’s death in 2016. A member of The Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), Antar
simultaneously engaged in armed combat against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, while also pushing for laws which made violence against women and forced marriage illegal in Rojava (Gol, 2016). However, Western journalism's conditional recognition of the Kurdish feminist struggle often relied on the portrayal of Kurdish women fighters as “heroines – even as angels,” in turn neglecting to understand the circumstances of their YPJ membership (Şimşek & Jongerden, 2018). Headlines drawing parallels between Antar and Angelina Jolie subscribed to Orientalist discourses which primarily sought to objectify, fetishize, and exoticize Kurdish women. As such, this analysis of Western representations of Kurdish women fighters highlights how these Orientalist discourses are upheld “at the expense of silencing Kurdish women and their geopolitical imaginations,” (Şimşek & Jongerden, 2018). Insofar as women such as Antar are perceived exclusively through the Orientalist Western gaze, the contours of the Kurdish feminist struggle remain ambiguous in the Western arena.
Any discussion of Kurdish women fighters must begin with contextualizing their revolutionary cause. Indeed, the Kurdish feminist struggle is inextricably tied to the Kurdish liberation struggle. It therefore comes as no surprise that the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK) emphasizes women’s freedom as the foundation of individual and national liberation (Göksel, 2019). The YPJ can be observed as a manifestation of this ideology, as the women’s militant units in Rojava were a primary force in the fight against the IS in Syria. Through such armed combat, practices geared toward gender equality became significant in Rojava, infiltrating
“every stage of sociopolitical structuration” in the region (Çağlayan, 2020). This bolsters Nadje Al-Ali & Latif Tas’ (2017) argument that “gender-based mobilization is central to articulations of a desire for peace,” in the context of Kurdistan and Turkey (Al-Ali & Tas, 2017). Such mobilization is evident in the Kurdish climate in the forms of political
movements which have been established. As such, the YPJ’s concentrated combat against the IS can be understood as being emblematic of a national liberation front, while also inculcating overt feminist values in Rojava.
That Western depictions of YPJ members failed to address the historical, political, and social foundations of their struggle is a testament to the strength of Orientalist discourses. For Edward Said (1978), Orientalism as a Western style of thought serves the purpose of “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient,” (Said, 1978). In this understanding, the authoritative position assumed and upheld by the West imposes a state of subordination upon the East, such that the “Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action,” (Said, 1978). To describe the parameters of the YPJ’s resistance through Western notions of beauty and attraction — especially when the standard of such beauty is a Western White woman — reaffirms ‘Eastern’ subordination. Indeed, the focus on feminine beauty is a remnant of the patriarchal ideals which surpass geographical boundaries. Yet the West/East dichotomy cannot be ignored in the case of Asia Ramazan Antar. To the extent that her worth rests upon her physical likeness to Angelina Jolie and not her commitment to the Kurdish feminist and liberation struggle, strong elements of Orientalist fetishization can be crystallized.
The prevalence of the ‘beautiful’ Kurdish female soldier provides crucial insight into the Orientalist perceptions of Middle Eastern women. The threads of fetishization and
exoticization can be traced back to Gustave Flaubert’s presentation of Kuchuk Hanem between 1849-51. As Said (1978) argues, Kuchuk Hanem’s eroticized presence “produced a widely influential model of the Oriental woman… she never represented her emotions, presence, or history,” (Said, 1978). The strength of this Oriental gaze means that Middle Eastern women were, and are, observed exclusively through the lens of sexuality and eroticism, and are consequently fetishized. This remains true regardless of the veil, for Muslim veiled women continue to be exoticized by the West through the imaginations of
‘unveiling’ the ‘oppressed’ Muslim woman, perhaps due to the perceived power which comes with doing so. In both instances, the magnification of the beauty and/or sexuality of the Middle Eastern female soldier can work to undermine their revolutionary capacities and individual agencies. This can be exemplified by The Observer’s reduction of the PKK’s
“politically influential female guerrilla units to empathetic, passive yet emotional Oriental women awaiting orders from ‘the moustachioed Kurdish leader,” (Azeez, 2015). Therefore, not only do Western portrayals of Kurdish women fighters objectify the women of the YPJ, but they do so at the cost of their revolution.
For Bahar Şimşek & Joost Jongerden (2018), such illustrations “[confirmed] a geopolitics that was based on an ontological distinction between a modern West and a backward East,” particularly when considering the YPJ’s fight against the IS (Şimşek &
Jongerden, 2018). The vague descriptions offered by Western media in reference to the YPJ, following fetishistic headlines, engulfed the women’s Kurdish unit under the banner of the War on Terror. This systematically excluded the sociopolitical history of the Kurdish struggle with which the YPJ’s feminist aims coalesced. Instead, Western framings served to draw parallels between ‘beautiful’ Middle Eastern women and ‘beautiful’ American/Western women in order to showcase the supposed universality of the Kurdish feminist struggle. This struggle, once divorced from its specific context, could be represented through Western liberal discourses in which women were “supported by the West in fighting villainous Muslim men who symbolized the barbarous Middle East,” (Şimşek & Jongerden, 2018).
By homogenizing the Middle East to resemble Western narratives of Eastern backwardness, the emancipatory framework of the YPJ regarding the geopolitical standing of Kurdistan could be dismissed entirely. Magnifying the physical beauty of Kurdish women such as Asia
Ramazan Antar strengthened one-dimensional narratives vis-à-vis the YPJ — in turn enabling the imposition of Western narratives on the East (Said, 1978). These narratives not only undermine the revolutionary rigor underpinning the YPJ cause, but also reproduce the image of the Middle East as inherently violent, backwards, and dangerous.
Western representations of Kurdish women, such as Asia Ramazan Antar, have therefore exemplified Orientalist discourses pertaining to the fetishization of Middle Eastern women. Propagating the idea that a Kurdish woman’s identity carries significance to the extent that parallels can be made with Western beauty standards elucidates such fetishization. In doing so, the West not only assumes authority over Middle Eastern narratives, but also
systematically silences the YPJ’s dual aims of feminism and national liberation. The resultingclimate is one in which the threads of transnational feminist solidarity can be difficult to devise, inasmuch as Western depictions of the Kurdish struggle continue to prevail.
About the image: Zehra Doğan, "ÖZDİNAMİK" (Self dynamic). Ballpoint pen, coffee, turmeric, parsley juice, on newspaper. 2017, Diyarbakir prison. Courtesy of the Artist.
This art piece, taken with Zehra Doğan’s permission, illustrates the act of reclaiming the Kurdish sociopolitical project for emancipation; both in terms of national liberation and feminism. Made during Doğan’s incarceration as a political prisoner, this piece showcases the Kurdish revolutionary rhetoric on her own terms. By controlling the narrative in this way,
Western depictions of Kurdish feminism can be rejected in favor of a form of feminism for, and by, Kurdish and Middle Eastern women.
Works Cited
Al-Ali, Nadje, and Latif Tas. “War Is like a Blanket: Feminist Convergences in Kurdish and Turkish Women’s Rights Activism for Peace.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, vol. 13, no. 3, 2017, pp. 354–75, https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-4179001.
Azeez, Govand Khalid. “The Thingified Subject’s Resistance in the Middle East.” Middle East Critique, vol. 24, no. 2, 2015, pp. 119 35, https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2015.1023505.
Çağlayan, Handan. Women in the Kurdish Movement Mothers, Comrades, Goddesses. 1st ed. 2020., Springer International Publishing, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24744-7.
Göksel, Nisa. “Gendering Resistance: Multiple Faces of the Kurdish Women’s Struggle.” Sociological Forum (Randolph, N.J.), vol. 34, no. S1, 2019, pp. 1112–31, https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12539.
Hartley-Parkinson, Richard. “‘Angelina Jolie of Kurdistan’ Asia Ramazan Antar dies fighting Isis in Syria.’” Metro UK, 2016.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. First Vintage Books ed., Vintage Books, 1978.
Şimşek, Bahar, and Joost Jongerden. “Gender Revolution in Rojava: The Voices beyond Tabloid Geopolitics.” Geopolitics, vol. 26, no. 4, 2021, pp. 1023–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1531283.
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