Kurdish female fighters versus ISIS - A textual and image analysis

Program: MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES Course: Master’s Thesis in Media and Communication Studies

Malmö University Date: 30.10.2020 Supervisor: Michael Krona Course Director: Erin Cory Examiner: Jakob Friedrich Dittmar Student: Perisan Kevci Word count: 16.247

1 Keywords: Kurdish female fighters, YPJ, media representation, new paradigm, ‘jineoloji’, , , ISIS

Table of Contents

1 Introduction ...... 5

2 Background ...... 6

2.1 Who are the ? ...... 6

2.2 Who are ISIS? ...... 8

3 Previous Research ...... 10

4 Theoretical Framework ...... 15

4.1 Theory of Representation ...... 15

4.2 Gender Theory ...... 17

4.2.1 Gender Roles in Western Media ...... 18 4.2.2 The Search for ‘Real Women’ ...... 19

4.3 Kurdish Theory and the Concept of Women’s Liberty...... 20

4.4 Methodology ...... 24

4.5 Research Design ...... 27 4.5.1 Visual analysis ...... 29 4.5.2 Content analysis ...... 30

4.6 Ethical Issues ...... 30

4.7 Role of the Researcher ...... 31

4.8 Reflections ...... 32

5 Analysis ...... 33

6 Discussion and Conclusion ...... 52

7 Bibliography ...... 57

8 Appendix 1 ...... 64

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Letter to the examiner, Mr. Jakob Friedrich Dittmar

Thank you very much for your response to my thesis.

I have tried to address all your comments. Due to time restrictions, I could not address some of the smaller comments. The changes that have been made are highlighted in yellow. It was a marathon against time and I am sure if I had more time, I would be able to implement all your comments. It is very yellow in the text, which show that I have tried to integrate all comments that I received from you.

Thank you for feedback regarding the final version of my thesis.

3 Abbreviations

ISIS Islamic State in and IS Islamic State YPG People’s Protection Units YPJ Women’s Protection Units PYD Democratic Union Party PKK Kurdistan Worker’s Party KRG Kurdistan Regional Government

Abstract

The relationship between media, gender, war, and society has been the subject of much research, with the primary focus being on the analysis of media texts. Kurdish female battalions (YPJ) have received considerable international media attention. The role of female fighters in the conflict in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, is different from what normally is perceived in the Middle East. These fighters have established a life according to the doctrine of 'jin', 'jiyan', 'azadî' –Kurdish words for ‘women’, ‘life’ and ‘freedom’. This study examines the representations of Kurdish female fighters struggling against ISIS, with the aim of answering the following questions: Which of the multiple interpretations of Kurdish female fighters are conveyed? How have these female fighters been represented in UK and US media? To answer these research questions, content and visual analyses were conducted. Data consisted of news articles from national media outlets in the UK and US. The data was examined with a frame analysis. The results showed that the juxtaposition of Kurdish female fighters with ISIS terrorists allowed for their depiction as exceptional and heroic.

4 1. Introduction

Media representation is a complex concept. Hall (1997), who made great contributions to our understanding of the concept, has said that representation connects meaning and language to culture. The relationship between media, culture and society has been the subject of numerous studies.

One of the world’s most brutal terrorist organizations, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), was first given international news coverage in 2011. This organization garnered considerable attention in the global media. Since then, countless research papers and dissertations have focused on the brutality of this organization. Far fewer studies have focused attention on the Kurds, especially Kurdish female fighters, who were major partners of the global alliance to fight ISIS.

Since 2013, many Kurdish female fighters in Rojava, the Kurdish self-ruled region of North-Eastern Syria (officially called the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria), have fought against ISIS as part of Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) – all- female battalions falling under the umbrella organization of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Their battle can be summarized with the Kurdish words ‘jin’, ‘jiyan’, ‘azadî' – ‘women’, ‘life’ and ‘freedom’ – which also summarizes their ideology.

This thesis investigates how Kurdish female fighters struggling against ISIS are represented in news coverage. Few studies have focused on Kurdish female fighters; thus, the aim of this thesis is to contribute to current research and discussions. The overall aim of this study is to attempt to understand and frame the analysis of Kurdish female fighters’ war against ISIS, and discover the hidden force that may contribute to victory against one of the biggest threats to the people and stability of the Middle East.

Kurdish women have been integral to the survival of the Kurdish people, who remain the largest nationality without a state and are often rendered invisible historically. While there are no reliable statistics, most sources suggest there are around 40 million Kurds. Over the last few years, many news stories, reports, and photos have been published on Kurdish fighters in Rojava. Several of these reports highlighted women’s participation in the armed conflict.

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This study is about the media representations of Kurdish female fighters and their participation in the war against ISIS, with a focus on US and UK media from 2014 to 2019.

The main research questions were as follows:

- How are Kurdish female fighters struggling against ISIS represented in US and UK media coverage? – a textual analysis - Which of the multiple interpretations of Kurdish female fighters are conveyed visually? – an image analysis

The first research question is highly western perspective, and the established myths about fighters must be taken into consideration, which comes from the postcolonialism, the ‘historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism’ (Britannica, 2020). The western cultural frames shall also not be neglected when it comes to the representation of the Kurdish female fighters. Everyone sees from their windows and their interpretation.

After presenting the theory underlying my analysis, I discuss the methodology. Then, I present the results and outline my main conclusions. The results show that female fighters are represented in UK and US media as sexualized, modern-day heroine figures.

2. Background

2.1. Who are the Kurds?

To answer the question of who Kurds are, it is helpful to have a map to hand. However, it must be underlined that millions of Kurds have been displaced forcibly across , Iraq, , and Syria:

6 Figure 1. Map of Homeland of Kurds, source bbc.com

Kurds are one of the indigenous peoples of the Mesopotamian plains and highlands, in what is now officially called south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, northern Iraq, north-western Iran, and south-western Armenia. The Kurdish diaspora has settled mostly in Europe and Northern America (Baser, Toivanen, Zorlu, & Duman, 2019, p 13).

However, the Kurds are forced to be bilingual due to the strict assimilation policies of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Many Kurds are not able to get medical help if they are not able to speak the official language of the country, they reside in. However, such cases are rarely recorded in official statistics.

The Kurdish language in public life was banned in Turkey officially until the beginning of the 2000s. It is notable that such political, linguistic, and other forms of oppression remain visible today. Kurds have even been killed because ‘of being Kurdish’; for example, in 2015, a young Kurdish man, Selim Serhed, was killed by Turks after singing in Kurdish at a stage in . (Diyarbakirsoz.com, 2015).

One of the longest Kurdish uprisings – which continues today – has been driven by the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). The military war against Turkey started in 1984 with

7 the aim of creating a nation of , Syria, Iran, and Iraq, exactly where they have always lived (ui.se).

The PKK has waged a military struggle for Kurds to receive the same rights as Turks, Arabs, and Persians, alongside the emancipation of . It is noteworthy to underline that the PKK is outlawed by the European Union and the United States of America (Official Journal of the European Union, 2009; US Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism, n.d.). As a result, some states regard them as ‘terrorists’, whereas others see them as freedom fighters.

Kurds within Rojava, a region in north-eastern Syria, were somewhat forgotten until they organized themselves and filled the vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Syrian regime from the region in 2012. In 2014, they received global attention when they began fighting ISIS (Baser et al., 2019, p 16).

Kurds in Rojava succeeded in establishing an autonomous system of governance that challenged the traditional system of the nation states in the area. This model, developed based on the ideals of the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, emphasized bottom-up democracy, active citizenship participation, and equal representation of men and women (Baser et al., 2019, p 16).

2.2. Who are ISIS?

The terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) emerged as an off-shoot of Al-Qaeda in Iraq soon after the 2003 US invasion. ISIS was shaped by a Jordanian jihadist, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who later became the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The aim of this organization was to fuel war between Sunnis and Shiites and then to establish a caliphate (Moubayed, 2015, p 12/97). While Al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, his vision was realized in 2013–2014, when ISIS overran South Kurdistan (officially called Northern Iraq) and north-eastern Syria in just a few weeks (Moubayed, 2015, p 12).

The ideological roots of ISIS, Moubayed (2015) argues, can be traced back to the early years of . Islamists believe that the goal of true believers is to establish a state

8 ruled by the laws of and governed by a caliph. This goal has been passed down through generations of Islamists (2015, p 12).

In mid-2014, ISIS launched attacks in Rojava. These attacks were repelled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), a female- only military unit affiliated with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) (Moubayed 2015, p 197). After ISIS advanced into the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq in August 2014, several offensives were launched in other areas. Towns inhabited by minority groups like the Kurdish Yezidis fell into the hands of jihadists. In one such town, Shengal (officially named Sincar), ISIS jihadists killed or captured thousands of Yezidis. The Iraqi army and Kurdish of the Kurdistan Regional Government both withdrew from these areas, leaving ISIS to massacre the populace (Moubayed 2015, p 197).

The YPJ and YPG were able to establish a humanitarian corridor for thousands of Kurdish Yezidis from areas around Shengal, allowing them to escape. Subsequently, the PKK and KRG sent forces to defend Yezidi areas and drive out jihadists (Civiroglu & Salih, 2014).

ISIS is not just a terror organization wanting to create a caliphate in the Middle East. It positions itself against the rest of the world, notably by taking issue with Western rules and norms. The character of this organization is exemplified by the now-infamous video released in August 2014 showing the beheading of kidnapped US citizen James Foley (Krona & Pennington, 2019). In the video, Foley, depicted in an orange jumpsuit, is forced to read a scripted message addressed to the US state, while a jihadist (later called Jihadi John) blamed the US for Foley’s death. This video soon went viral (Krona & Pennington, 2019, p. 1-2). While the video was dubbed as a ‘message to the US’, it seems pertinent to it a message to the whole world – it was a critique of how a handful of wealthy people financed and used the poor in the Middle East as instruments for their inhumane politics.

However, the war waged by ISIS was not only to ‘establish a caliphate’ – it was also to prolong the slavery of women.

9 3. Previous Research

There is limited (albeit sufficient for the purposes of this thesis) research written about Kurdish women fighting ISIS. However, they have received considerable global attention in daily news websites, newspapers or magazines. The lack of scholarly research may reflect the acuteness of the situation – more time must pass before sufficient research is done on the struggles of these Kurdish women. The news coverage was limited as well, although this is normal in journalism – normally, news stories are short and only the most sensational stories could pass the agenda setting of the medium.

Kocer (as cited in Baybars-Hawks, 2016) argues that the representations of women fighters in Kobane (a Kurdish town in north-east Syria) embody broader dominant media frames constructing women based on difference – namely, as sexualized, exotic, oriental or ‘abnormal’ objects (p 164–165). Kocer further claims that despite rich and diverse cross-cultural ethnographic evidence of women’s participation in violent conflicts, women are still represented as victims in dominant media frames. Confining women to victimhood deprive them of their agency (as cited in Baybars-Hawks, 2016, p 166). Furthermore, Kocer underlines that looking at the images circulating through international news and social media, we often see beautiful women with long-braided, flower-adorned hair who, despite looking tired, carrying guns, looking fierce, and showing confident smiles, are shown in feminine settings such as cleaning armour (p 167).

One interesting point made by Kocer is that reporters are culture and image brokers, but they cannot be the sole brokers of representations of women. Women are diverse and multifaceted, which can make it difficult for journalists to separate gender stereotypes when they see women in armed conflicts (as cited in Baybars-Hawks 2016, p 167). In the context of this thesis, reporters are not considered the sole brokers of the representation of Kurdish female fighters as reflected through images and photos – they are merely capturing a moment of what is happening on the war front against ISIS. Kocer remarks that the images of Kurdish female fighters being transformed via global media coverage are raising awareness of their struggles (as cited in Baybars-Hawks 2016, p 169-170).

10 Although women are generally linked to household work, with war being considered ‘men’s work’, there are examples throughout history of women taking up arms to defend their interests. To fully understand the media representation of , it is necessary to look to at their history.

Mojab (2000), in examining the history of Kurdish women, stressed that in the last two decades of the twentieth century, women joined the guerrillas fighting against Turkey and Iran, entered parliamentary politics, published academic journals, and created women’s organizations. However, she further remarked that the patriarchal nationalist movement continues to emphasize the struggle for self-rule at the expense of the struggle for equality. Mojab (2000), herself of Iranian origin, writes that nationalists depict women as the heroes and reproducers of the nation; protectors of the ‘motherland’; the ‘honour’ of the nation; and the guardians of , heritage, and language. She argues that through these depictions of women and the relegation of equal rights to the future, the Kurdish case is by no means different from other nationalist movements (Mojab, 2000).

Mojab (2000) underlines that the Kurds have been subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing, linguicide and ethnocide, with Kurdish women being especially vulnerable in ‘internal’ or ‘external’ conflicts during war. In another article, she argues that in enduring war zones in the Middle East and North Africa, including Afghanistan, Israel- Palestine, Kurdistan (especially, Iraq, Turkey, Iran), Sudan, women are targets of violence. For example, in Afghanistan, the Taliban regime and its rival warlords engaged in selective (Mojab, 2003).

Branded as the inferior gender, women have been subdued physically, psychologically, morally and culturally. Mojab (2000) underlines, however, that images of Kurdish female fighters highlight a different representation – behind the laughing faces, these images communicate the idea of freedom for women, equality, and national pride, with the armour and weapons symbolizing a call to arms. These images can be a means for Kurdish female fighters, through their reflections in the lenses and/or the pencils of journalists, to identify themselves with a political or religious affiliation, such as the tricolour flag of Kurdistan or the symbols of the YPJ.

11 Toivanen and Baser (2016) also studied the media representations of female Kurdish fighters and their participation in the armed conflict against ISIS. They write what the Kurdish female commander, Nesrin Abdullah, said of the conflict in Rojava: Kurdish women are engaging in two struggles – a national struggle and a struggle for women’s rights (p 297). Furthermore, they stress that the representation of female fighters played a significant role in the war against ISIS, with these fighters being glorified for their efforts (Toivanen & Baser, 2016, p 297).

Begikhani, Hamelink, & Weiss (2018) outline the need for a new focus on the realities of women in different parts of Kurdistan in order to gain new insights into the involvement of women in war, their victimization, their everyday life in conflict zones and post-war realities and their experiences of internal or transnational displacement. Begikhani et al. (2018), using a classical feminist approach, examined women’s bodies and sexualities as violable objects in war strategies and women’s active role and participation in war and militant organizations in defence of their communities, their nation and nationalist projects. The nation, Begikhani et al. (2018) stress, is rooted in traditional gender roles, assuming that men are active agents of war (soldiers, warriors and aggressors) while women are passive agents – victims, weepers, and wives who are vulnerable to rape, aggression and slavery. They further note that national liberation appears traditionally to have been the main aim of Kurdish feminist groups. Kurdish women across all regions have begun to be more vocal in political activism as they become aware of the need for liberation from patriarchal structures (Begikhani et al., 2018). Begikhani et al. (2018) also draw attention to what women have achieved in the last 20–30 years. For instance, women have been able to participate more in political life through the introduction of co-chairs for mayors and self-governed areas such as Rojava. This in turn allowed women to gain confidence and a legacy to build on.

Another Kurdish scholar, Caglayan (2007), analysed the roles of women in society and as political actors. According to her, Kurdish women’s basic lifestyle, experiences and social relational networks must be examined in order to understand why they have participated in the Kurdish movement and become political actors. She summarizes their very basically as follows: women and are pressured in both society and their family, with girls being considered less important than boys. Boys were always sent to school, with girls being sent only when able (p 46). Caglayans

12 (2007) further explored the patriarchal nature of Kurdish society and the role of women therein. She notes that society consists of an Islamic lifestyle and secular male order, which define class power and is the product of national traditions (p 40). This is another reason that Kurdish female fighters have rejected a life under ISIS.

Pinar Tank (2017) points out that media framing paints the Kurdish female fighter as exceptional through a focus on her resistance to gender and state oppression, given that many Kurdish women struggle under the traditional patriarchal structures of Kurdish society. Many Kurdish and Turkey have been subjected to honour killings, child or , a culture of and rape. Thus, female fighters are shown as not only combating ISIS, but also as trying to survive and change their society.

Pavicic-Ivelja (2017), in analysing the war against ISIS, argues that the science of women – called jineoloji in Kurdish and a major tenet of Öcalan’s theory of the liberation of Kurdish women – is key to their struggle against ISIS. Pavicic-Ivelja (2017) further writes that the revolution of Kurdish women against ISIS in Rojava is taking place not only through combat, but through dissemination of Öcalan’s ideology.

In an article about the war in Syria and Rojava, Del Re (2015), underlines that the role of women is significant to accurate interpretation of the facts, but remains a controversial issue. Furthermore, Del Re (2015) notes that while the war in Syria ongoing since 2011 has received too little global attention overall, news coverage of Kurdish female fighters has helped to bring some attention to the conflict. Del Re (2015) mentions that ‘attractive Kurdish female soldiers in uniform’ is a subjective concept – beauty is very subjective and its norms differ across cultures (p 84-85).

Kurdish women themselves had ‘a third independent strategy’ (i.e. a strategy not sided with the Basar regime or the US and Russia) to defend their homeland and create an equal society, based on bottom-up democracy and the representation of a feminist struggle against ISIS in Rojava alongside Western state powers. Thus, Simsek and Jongerden (2018) argue (citing Debrix, 2007), Kurdish women function as instruments, with fighting women being represented as the boots on the ground of a Western intervention. According to Simsek and Jongerden, again citing Debrix (2007), the representation of Kurdish women by Western media was a form of ‘tabloid geopolitics.’

13 Tabloid geopolitics is a popular geopolitical narrative that is easy to understand because it uses little text and numerous pictures.

The US intervention in Iraq and its presence throughout the Middle East hinged on a myth – the evidence for starting the intervention never existed, as was later admitted by the US. Therefore, the US found it difficult to clarify why they were in the area at all – as a force to bring democracy or as an occupying nation. Scholars like Simsek and Jongerden (2018) note that the portrayal of Kurdish women fighters by media channels allowed for attention to be drawn away from the impotence and failure of the American military intervention.

This thesis is an attempt to add to the limited academic research on how Kurdish female fighters are represented in the media. As can be seen from the above research, there is comparatively little research on the historical, political, and social aspects of this area of study.

What makes this study unique compared to previous studies is that it points to the similarities between the role of media representations and the role of Kurdish female fighters in propagating moral messages as well as their ability to act as mirrors of Kurdish society. Of course, thousands of years ago, evolution and revolution took place everywhere in the world – some regions were quick to develop in terms of their principles and traditions, whereas others needed a longer time. Kurdish society, when compared to other societies in the Middle East, is unique in its aim to achieve equality for women and its pursuit of democracy.

Reports and photos emerging from the war on ISIS do not lend further credibility to the notion that photography as a medium allows a kind of unfiltered expression of meaning – in fact, every pair of eyes that alights on a photo adds new meaning to it. While photos can arguably communicate an opinion more emphatically of written texts, they remain subject to the biases of the viewer and, indeed, the photographer.

The media representation of Kurdish female fighters changed the course of war. Beforehand, ISIS had gained considerable success, having taken over an area as large as France within several weeks of commencing their attacks, allowing it to gain further support from the traditional segments of Iraqi society. At this point, the role of news

14 media in the conflict zone was no longer just the ‘reporting source’; it had to choose a side or not. Accordingly, media coverage in the conflict zone was able to serve as a vital means of communication to support Kurdish female fighters in changing the rules of the war front. The photos – women preparing for combat – helped to communicate their ideals in opposition to patriarchal norms and the will of regional colonizers to continue with the enslavement of Kurdish women.

However, the ideology of Kurdish women – that is, Ocalan’s theory of a ‘free society’ – is a hidden facet of these photos not clearly visible in the lenses of reporters. Rather, the categorization and interpretation of these photos has been more focused on traditional gender roles and their status as heroes. The focus on Kurdish women’s ideology is exactly how this thesis differs from previous studies. More specifically, the Kurdish ideology – ‘women, liberty and life’ – is a core feature of my framing analysis of their representation in international news outlets and photos (see section 4).

4. Theoretical Framework

To answer my research questions, I conducted textual and visual analyses. The purpose of the textual analysis was to derive meaning from the data set, while the visual analysis was used to strengthen the results of the textual analysis.

4.1. Theory of Representation

I chose a research problem closely connected to theories in media and communication studies, particularly the concept of representation. According to Stuart Hall, ‘Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people’ (1997, p 15).

The theory of representation has many aspects, but it generally deals with how language, signs, images and culture are interwoven, with one being less without the others. There are three different approaches to theorizing representation: reflective, intentional, and constructionist. The reflective approach holds that language reflects a meaning which already exists; the intentional approach outlines that language expresses

15 only what the speaker or writer wants to say; and the constructionist approach suggests that meaning is constructed in or through language (Hall, 1997, p 1-2).

Hall also outlines the concept of mental representation, which holds that meaning depends on the relations between things in the world – people, objects, and events, real or fictional.

In sum, there are two related systems of representation: The first helps us give meaning to the world by constructing a set of correspondences between people, objects, events, and abstract ideas. The second involves constructing correspondences between our conceptual map and a set of signs, arranged, or organized into various languages which stand for or represent those concepts. In other words, the meaning of the link between things, concepts, and signs is the core of the production of meaning in language. What links these three elements is, according to Hall (1997, p 5), representation.

Dyer (2006) studied the representation of social groups and noted that the complexity and variety of a group is often reduced to a few characteristics. Then an exaggerated version of these characteristics is applied to everyone in the group as if they are an essential element of all members of the social group in question. These characteristics are then represented in the media through media language (p 353–360). Dyer (2006) further argues that stereotypes are always about power and that some are more recognizable than others – for example, stereotypes about women are more recognizable, while stereotypes of or middle-class men are difficult to recognize, since they are hidden very well in the language.

Regarding signs, language theorist Barthes (1988), has an interesting point: ‘a garment, an automobile, a dish of cooked food, a gesture, a film, a piece of music, an advertising image, a piece of furniture, a newspaper headline – these indeed appear to be heterogeneous objects.’ What might they have in common, he argues, ‘that this at least all are signs, this car tells me the social status of its owner, this garment tells me quite precisely the degree of its wearer’s conformism of eccentricity’ (Barthes, 1988, p 147).

Although this is dated and semiotics has developed since Barthes, his theory is still important to consider – especially when evaluating images.

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4.2 Gender Theory One is not born a , but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine’ – Simone de Beauvoir (1949 p 8)

The above quotation from Simone de Beauvoir is worthy of applause because of how well it summarizes how gender is produced. is an emancipatory, transformational movement aimed at undoing domination and oppression, as emphasized by Steiner (2014). However, as Steiner (2014) argues, this is a complex and much contested concept. She underlines that feminist media theory applies ‘philosophies, concepts, and logics articulating feminist principles and concepts to media processes such as hiring, production, and distribution; to patterns of representation in news and entertainment across platforms; and to reception’ (p 359). Therefore, does not hide in politics, but is on the contrary explicitly political and addresses power. In comparison with other media theories, feminist media theory takes gender seriously.

In her book, Steiner (2014) writes that gender intersects with other dimensions of identity such as race, class, ability, nationality and sexual orientation, and the inherent power relations within these categories (p 359). The media debate surrounding the digital movement #MeToo was a recent major challenge to patriarchal norms and values. It is an example of the use of digital media in feminist political struggle.

An imperial and colonist approach remains in place in Turkey, Iran, and Syria against Kurds. Their language is banned from all official institutions and they are only ‘allowed’ to speak their language at home, which leaves Kurds in general and particularly women out of the political, cultural, and educational systems. They either have to learn a foreign language in order to get an education or live outside the system in poverty.

17 hooks (1999) recalls that in America, the social status of black and white women has never been the same. This parallels the situation of Kurdish , Iran, Iraq and Syria. If Black and White feminists are going to speak of female accountability, hooks (1999) says, then the word racism ‘shall be seized, grasped in the bare hands, ripped out of the sterile or defensive consciousness in which it so often grows, and transplanted so that it can yield new insights for our lives and our movements’ (p 18).

Although women are prominent in media content, their role is often secondary to that of men. Women are also significantly under-represented in different types of media, such as video games; women are also under-represented within key decision-making roles in media institutions (Hodkinson, 2017, p 244–245).

Hodkinson is not offering a general evaluation of female representation across the world. Instead, he is emphasizing the representation of Western women. Being financial and sexually free is an important step towards equality and a free society. But it is no secret that women earn much less than men do, even for the same position. Thus, more has to be done in the West as well. But how about women in Eastern societies, especially women in the Middle East?

4.2.1. Gender roles in Western media

In her book Gender and the Media, Gill (2007) writes that feminist studies are heterogeneous – while many researchers agree on the influence of the cultural part, they disagree on the theoretical approaches and methods. Specifically, they have different epistemological experiences, different views on power relations, different views on how to look at the relationship between representations of reality and the media's reference to the individual and subjective understanding (Gill, 2007, p 8).

In Gender and the Media, Gill (2007) examines how gender roles are portrayed in Western media, particularly how the media construct masculinity and and the relationship between them. She argues that women are portrayed as objects and are often sexualized when viewed from a male perspective. She also notes that media usually depict the Western white woman and that she can represent "women" while men are assigned the task of representing the world (Gill, 2007).

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Gill also discuss the concept of "women's culture", which includes genres such as soap operas, women's literature and romantic comedies. Such genres have been assigned a lower status in society than other types of culture. This is problematic because it reduces all women's cultural interests to a genre considered inferior to those better represented by the male sex (Gill, 2007, p 18). This leads to the emergence of stereotypical women's interests and does not account for how women are all different, which of course is also expressed in their cultural interests.

Gill (2007) also discusses that women tend to play a more self-sacrificing role than men. Gill notes that the stereotyping of women helps to maintain hegemony concerning the power of men over women. Gill, like Hall, defines stereotyping to maintain unequal power relations.

4.2.2. The Search for ‘Real Women’

In Cultural Representation and Signified Practices, Gledhill (1997) looks at how women are portrayed in soap operas. She notes that women are represented by stereotypes rather than as ‘real women’, which we need to change. Gledhill asks whether reducing stereotyped portrayals of women, the image of women can be redefined. Gledhill rightly notes that women are not a homogeneous group in which everyone can recognize themselves; they are a heterogeneous group that differs in age, sexual orientation, class, ethnicity, etc. She emphasizes that it is not a question of reducing the image of the female sex as perceived in the media, but that the problem is rather to create a new stereotype of the ‘real woman’. But who really has the power to do this? (Gledhill 1997, p 346). Using representations of women to increase sales and improve marketing strategies is widely applied in other media as well, suggesting that the same lenses can be applied to examination of ‘brave Kurdish girls from the Middle East’ in news media as well. The theory from Gledhill could be interpreted as dated source, and lot of things have changed from news-reporting and entertainment-mediums but the political situation in Middle East is much the same, therefore this information is relevant to this thesis.

19 In Western media coverage, the female sex is depicted as ‘the white woman’ while men are assigned to represent the world. This shows a polarized reality. In some ways the polarization could be translated to ‘bad’ versus ‘good’, which can also be applied to understanding the global attention to Kurdish female fighters, with them being presented as being ‘good’ in juxtaposition to the bearded men in black as ‘bad.’ This polarization is correct but it is still a polarization.

In terms of stereotypes, Kurdish female fighters, in their movement towards the liberation of women, have rejected traditional stereotypes and have taken ‘the power’ from men to create their own ‘land’ and territory. This shows that eliminating stereotypes in the Middle East is possible. Girls who were once ‘not equal’ to boys were ‘suddenly’ good enough to fight on the forefront against terrorists and to write in favour of change. From this perspective, they are searching for the ‘real woman and an equal life.’

If stereotypes, according to Hall, are meant to maintain unequal power relations, Kurdish female fighters have certainly begun challenging their stereotypes. Still, the way they were depicted in the media indicate that stereotypes are not easy to change. Indeed, Kurdish female fighters are represented in US and UK media through the construction of sexualized and heroic figures. No new stereotype is being created – they are being represented using the classical lens.

The question of who will be able to change the power relations in the Middle East remains unclear, but Kurdish female fighters are certainly making a powerful attempt in their fight against ISIS.

4.3. Kurdish theory and the concept of women’s liberty

To understand Kurdish women fighting against ISIS in Rojava, it is pivotal to understand their motivation, particularly the ideology of Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed PKK leader and the creator of the term jineoloji – the concept of women’s liberty through creating an equal society. Understanding and analysing the circumstances underlying the revolution of Kurdish women is fundamental, since a lack of

20 consideration of such socio-political factors would preclude an understanding of why Kurdish female fighters gained global awareness.

Kurdish women are the backbone of the Kurdish people. The Kurdish nation, which has experienced so much hardship, would not have been able to stand on its feet had it not been for Kurdish women. Without Kurdish women, perhaps there might not even be a Kurdish nation today. This is not even a matter of reproduction. Besides the women in Rojava fighting ISIS, Kurdish women in Turkey, Iran and Iraq have been very keen to enact the ecological paradigm of Öcalan’s ideology. Colonialism at the state level and backward feudal family structures paralyzed women.

Öcalan’s writing shed light on this issue and the solution he proposed was considered crucial for the advancement of women. The majority of Kurdish men are also convinced that the solution is ‘free Kurdistan and free women as a combined process.’ According to Öcalan, this is wrong – both struggles go hand in hand. Freedom and equality for women must not be postponed. This is exactly what happened in Rojava, where the fight against the ISIS also became the struggle for ‘liberation of women.’

The historical aspects and structures of the family in Kurdistan and the Middle East cannot be neglected. Thus, they need to be thoroughly evaluated. Since the end of 1970s, the PKK – with Öcalan as leader – has recruited women and has given considerable attention to the internal social problems that the Kurdish people were facing.

Öcalan was later captured in a secret operation involving numerous countries and handed over to the Turkish authorities in 1999. From prison, he has developed a democratic solution for the Kurdish question in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria with a focus on the role of a free life for women.

Öcalan, who started the war against Turkey, denounced violence and preached for autonomy and equal rights of women, men, minorities, and all segments in society through a bottom-up democracy which he argued would be superior to the Euro- American one. In brief, the Kurdish leader designed the Rojava model as a new form of self-government. The model consists of a central government and local communities that enjoy considerable political autonomy.

21 In the Middle East, the family structure is important. The dynastic system, Öcalan (2013) argues, should be understood as an integrated whole, where ideology and structure cannot be separated. This system developed from the tribal system but later established itself as the upper-class administrative family nucleus, thereby challenging the tribal system. It has a strict hierarchy, acting a proto-ruling class, a prototype of a state that depends on men and male children (Öcalan, 2013, p 36).

According to Öcalan (2013), in the Middle Eastern civilization it has become so deep- rooted that there is almost no power or state that is not a dynasty and every man in the family perceives himself to be the owner of a small kingdom. This dynastic ideology is effectively why family is such an important issue (Öcalan, 2013, p 37).

Öcalan stresses that the male monopoly that has been maintained over the lives and worlds of woman throughout history is not unlike the monopoly chain that capital maintains over society. He argues that dominance over woman is the oldest colonial phenomenon, with the family becoming ‘the man’s small state’ (Öcalan, 2013, p 37-38).

The family as an institution has been continuously perfected throughout history, solely because of the reinforcement it provides to the power and state apparatus. First, the family becomes a stem cell of state society by giving power to the family in the person of the male. Second, women’s unlimited and unpaid labour is secured. Third, she raises children in order to meet the needs of the population. Fourth, as a role model, she fights against slavery and is a role model to the rest of society. Family, thus constituted, is an institution where successional ideology becomes functional (Öcalan, 2013, p 38).

According to Öcalan’s concept of women’s liberty, the most important problem for freedom in a social context is classical marriage and family. When the woman marries, she is in fact enslaved and this is not a general reference to sharing life or partner relationships that can be meaningful depending on one’s perception of freedom and equality. The absolute ownership of the woman means her withdrawal from all political, intellectual, social, and economic areas (Öcalan, 2013, p 38–39).

The dynastic family culture that remains so powerful in Middle Eastern society today is one of the main sources of its problems, having given rise to an excessive population with the power and ambitions to share in the state’s power (Öcalan, 2013, p 38–39).

22 In Kurdistan, Öcalan (2013) argues, family is considered sacred, but it has been crushed because of a lack of freedom, economic problems, a lack of education, and health problems and so-called ‘honour killings’, which are a symbolic revenge for what has happened to society in general. In other words, women are made to pay for the obliteration of society’s honour (Öcalan, 2013, p 42).

The Kurdish male has lost both his moral and political strength, except for where it concerns women’s honour; thus, he has no other area left to prove his power or powerlessness. The loss of masculinity is taken out on women (Öcalan, 2013, p 42).

One should not discount family, Öcalan argues. If soundly analysed, family can become the mainstay of democratic society. Indeed, not only the woman but the whole family should be analysed as the stem cell of power; if not, we will leave the ideal and the implementation of democratic civilization without its most important element. Family should be transformed, and the claim of ownership over women and children, handed down through the hierarchy, should be abandoned (Öcalan, 2013, p 39-40).

In opposition to the traditional and conventional family structure, Öcalan proposes, capital in all its forms and power relations should have no part in the relationship of couples, the breeding of children as motivation for sustaining this institution should be abolished and the ideal approach to male–female relationships is one that is based on the philosophy of freedom and devotion to moral and political society. Within this framework, the transformed family will be the most robust assurance of democratic civilization and one of the fundamental relationships within that order (Öcalan, 2013, p 40).

This thesis is about how Kurdish female fighters fighting ISIS are represented in Western media coverage – in other words, how they are represented without a Kurdish lens. Thus, bringing in Öcalan’s theory provides another perspective, clarifying how family structures and historical aspects fit into the emancipation of Kurdish women, their role in their society and their struggles on the frontline. This study of Western media coverage would be lacking without bringing in Öcalan’s concepts. Without the architecture of jineoloji (directly translated as the science of women), understanding the ‘angels of Rojava’ would be limited.

23 Some researchers have reflected on Öcalan’s ideology of women’s emancipation. Novellis (2018), for instance, performed a comparison study of women in nationalist guerrilla movements such as those in Sri Lanka and Angola. She found that women's militancy in these countries did not achieve changes in traditional patriarchal structures. By contrast, the militancy of Kurdish women, according to Novellis (2018), led to substantial equality in the PKK, particularly because the party’s ideology actively promotes a subversion of traditional gender structures. While Novellis (2018) stresses that even though patriarchal structures remain unchanged and female militants were handed from a patriarchal family to a patriarchal party, the Kurdish women movement within the PKK has gained a kind of autonomy and have an active influence on the PKK’s ideology and practice.

4.4. Methodology

Visual and qualitative content analyses were carried out. All photographs connected to the selected news articles were analysed. The purpose behind the visual data collection was clear, as the photos served to complement the text and can confirm or challenge the content of the written text. What is not found in the text may be hidden in the photo.

Before going into the methods in depth, I should reiterate the research questions:

- How are Kurdish female fighters struggling against ISIS represented in US and UK media coverage? – a textual analysis - Which of the multiple interpretations of Kurdish female fighters are conveyed? – an image analysis

The research questions were slightly finetuned after the investigation started. As Layder (2013) explains, research questions emerge cumulatively from the research and therefore the more flexible the sampling process is, the more thorough an investigation will likely be.

In order to answer my research questions, I needed a framework to address the research problem. Research methods should be chosen because they are the most appropriate for the problem that is being investigated (Layder, 2013, p 7). In this section, I contextualize my research methods. To interpret and categorize empirical data in a research project, having a theory as an analytical framework is essential. Collins (2010)

24 also notes that a central function of a framework is to give a comprehensive overview of the findings and contextualize them (p 36).

What is qualitative analysis? Denzin and Lincoln (1994) state that qualitative research is a type of scientific research:

Qualitative research is multimethod in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials case study, personal experience, introspective, life story interviews, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts that describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in individuals’ lives (p 192).

Several scholars and theorists have also considered the overall purposes of qualitative research. In this regard, Patton (1985) summarizes:

Qualitative research is an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the interactions there. This understanding is an end in itself, so that it is not attempting to predict what may happen in the future necessarily, but to understand the nature of that setting – what it means for participants to be in that setting, what their lives are like, what’s going on for them, what their meanings are, what the world looks like in that particular setting – and in the analysis to be able to communicate that faithfully to others who are interested in that setting…The analysis strives for depth of understanding (p 1).

The above quote is pivotal to my thesis – It describes how I dealt with the data set. Giving meaning to the situations in images and text is essentially an attempt to try on the shoes of the subjects: How is it for them? What would I say or do if I were in their clothes?

According to Merriam and Tisdell (2015), the researcher is the primary instrument of data collection and analysis in qualitative research. Since understanding is the goal of

25 this research, the human instrument, which is able to be immediately responsive and adaptive, is the ideal means of collecting and analysing data (p 16).

According to Berg (2009, p 338), ‘a content analysis is a careful, detailed, systematic examination and interpretation of a particular body of material to identify patterns, themes, biases and meanings. Other theorists, like Wildemuth (2009), have clarified the distinction between content analysis and qualitative content analysis. She underlines that ‘qualitative content analysis goes beyond merely counting words or extracting objective content from text to examine meanings, themes and patterns that may be manifest or latent in a particular text’ (p 309).

According to Hsieh and Shannon (2005), there are three clear categories for the application of content analysis: conventional content analysis, directed content analysis and summative content analysis (p 1277). Conventional content analysis is ‘a way to describe a phenomenon when existing information or theory on its occurrence is limited’ (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p 1279). This method has researchers examine a text, from which they construct categories (as opposed to using pre-determined categories). Direct content analysis is somewhat less flexible in terms of its ability to identify key themes and categories – this approach assumes that existing theory is helpful and can be used to explain a phenomenon, but still it is incomplete. In general, researchers use this approach to validate or extend current theory. Summative content analysis, according to Hsieh and Shannon (2005), involves identifying and quantifying content or words in the text to better understand their context and use within the text (p 1283).

For this thesis, the conventional content analysis of Hsieh and Shannon (2005) served as the basis. This thesis required consideration of different themes such as personal motivation, women’s liberation and beauty. These themes emerged – linked to the concept of Barthes’ ‘writerly text’ – in relation to how women are formulated in general in the media; therefore, I used these themes to interpret the articles found on the websites of and CNN International.

I used two different news mediums: newspapers and television. I used both because while searching for US papers, some of them were behind paywalls. The material is very restricted and due to time and financial restrictions in gaining more material, I had to take what was available. It is also very important to underline that they are different

26 medium, but due to their position - one could expect already the content from the outset. The fact that this is a research paper there should be a room for error and trials. Therefore, the choose was not changed. Moreover, it was easy to gain access to the CNN archive and due to time restrictions, it was easiest to choose this news source as representative of US news. CNN occupies a centre-left position on the political spectrum, the same as The Guardian. I chose these news outlets for this thesis because it aligned with my research questions and overall aim of examining the media representation of Kurdish female fighters. Nevertheless, while reflecting on the results, I realized how many narratives were written about western women fighting against ISIS in Rojava. Accordingly, one might conclude that CNN and The Guardian were ‘cherry- picking’ stories for their audience in order to create a point of ‘contact’ with that audience. It is of course much easier for their audiences to comprehend these stories when it is ‘one of them’ fighting against ISIS. In this way, audiences could claim the struggle of the YPJ as their own. The worldwide admiration for the YPJ, as reflected in media coverage, might also explain why so many Western European women decided to fight together with the Kurds.

This thesis utilized an interpretivist/constructivist paradigm. This paradigm or ‘lens through which we view the world’ is largely the product of an accumulation of beliefs, ideas and assumptions which influence how we as individuals make sense of things (Collins, 2010, p 38). This lens was applied to the visual analysis. Gillian Rose (2001) says that the famous phrase from John Berger – ‘ways of seeing’ – refers to how ‘we never look at one thing, and we are in fact identifying relations between ourselves and that at which we look.’ According to Rose, the study of visual matters has somewhat veered away from auteur theory (i.e. the notion that a text’s author’s intended meaning is the most relevant for visual analysis). Nowadays, Rose means that there is more a trend towards understanding how audiences construct meaning, and how an image is made and seen in relation to other images.

4.5. Research Design

The research design comprised the two types of analysis I previously outlined: qualitative content analysis and visual analysis of images in news articles.

27 The data for this study consisted of 19 online news articles on female Kurdish fighters in Northern Syria and Rojava from selected national presses in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) – specifically, the websites of The Guardian and CNN International. The selective articles were categorized considering the frames of ‘personal motivation’, ‘liberation of women’ and ‘beauty of women’. The material was, admittedly, highly selective – only 19 articles were found using ‘YPJ’ as a keyword, despite the aim of finding at least 20 articles.

I categorized the data as such because, journalists tend to write news articles using these frames to make their news more appealing. In the context of Kurdish female fighters, 1) personal motivation is primarily about emotions, with their attendance in the war being about how they feel after the loss of a member of family; 2) the liberation of women frames the participation of female fighters as ideological, and 3) beauty of women frames in reference to their women’s physical features.

To collect the data, I searched words such as ‘YPJ’ (Women’s Protection Units, Syria- Rojava) on the internet. Articles published between 2014 and 2019 were obtained in The Guardian and CNN International. I chose publications from both the UK and USA because they covered Kurdish female fighters. Both countries were also involved in supplying military aid to Kurdish forces inside Syria and Iraq.

For the qualitative content analysis, I chose 19 articles from both news outlets and categorized them using the three previous categories (at the beginning there were 20 articles, but after the deep analysis, I found out one article was duplicate, after more search no article according to the specific criteria was not found). Specifically, after data collection, the data set was read through and each article was categorized as in the Excel spreadsheet (see Appendix 1). The same questions were used for every article so that every article was treated the same (see sections 4.5.1 and 4.5.2).

To better understand the context of the text, it is necessary to use a broader perspective including where it was situated and who created it. This offered a reference to what social and political events may have influenced the text at the time. Consideration of location, the production, and historical aspects of the image, and who the journalist is and her/his gender will help to create a greater understanding of the text and the image itself, according to Rose (2001).

28 For the visual analysis, I referred to Rose’s (2001) book Visual Methodologies – An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. As with text, the location and the creator of the photo is important, as are the social and political events at the time the photos were created. Indeed, when evaluating photos, Rose (2001) mentions that it is important to know all aspects of the image, including its production (p 29).

Regarding the process of how to analyse photos, one of the main elements concerns reflection on the potential meanings within the piece. During this stage, it is important to understand the significance of certain images within the piece, as well as how different cultures may read these images or photos.

According to Barthes (1988), there are two texts: the readerly text, the meaning of which is unambiguous and there is no need for interpretation, and the writerly text, which makes room for multiple meanings. In this thesis, during the evaluation of the data, I focused on the writerly text. If we consider the photos as merely belonging to the articles about Kurdish female fighters, we would understand them as part of a readerly text – thus, the formal elements can be easily recognized and not much argumentation is required. However, if we consider the articles as writerly texts, then the door to many interpretations is open, which in turn means the reader can use her/his sensemaking system to interpret and give comments.

Directly after gathering the sample data, initial readings were conducted of each article in order to identify areas for analysis. Through the complementary process of these two analyses, I could fully engage my sensemaking system to interpret the articles.

4.5.1. Visual analysis

The first step consists of a descriptive, formal analysis of the image. This was done to ensure that all applicable elements were considered and incorporated. The emphasis throughout this stage of the analysis is not to apply any level of interpretation beyond the most basic processing of immediate comprehension and requires articulation of everything which is visible to the naked eye. This first stage could perhaps be considered as a content analysis of sorts, as there is at least some potential for replication of results between researchers due to the lack of interpretation required.

The following questions were used in my analysis of every article:

29 1 - Where is it? Who took the picture? 2 - What is seen in the photo? 3 - What kind of emotional and human message(s) does the photo convey to me? 4 - Into which of the three themes can you categorize the photo? (1) personal motivation is primarily about emotions, with their attendance in the war being about how they feel after the loss of a member of family; 2) the liberation of women frames the participation of female fighters as ideological, and 3) beauty of women frames in reference to their women’s physical features)

4.5.2. Content analysis

For the content analysis, the context of the text was considered and a broader look at the piece, including where it was situated and who created it, was used to provide a frame of reference as to how social and political events at the time may have influenced the text. I used the following questions to guide my analysis:

1 - Who wrote this article? (note that this question was not relevant the analysis; it was simply used for organization of the data set) 2 - What kind of message(s) is conveyed in the article? 3 - In which of the three themes can you categorize the article?

Following this, a comparative analysis was conducted to assess whether certain frames were dominant over others in both data sets.

The dataset and the individual analysis together with the specific links can be found in Appendix 1.

4.6. Ethical Issues

According to Polonsky and Waller (2004), when the researcher is dealing with data, there are ethical considerations regarding consent, privacy, and authorship (p. 149). For the content of the articles that I accessed for the data collection, there was no need to request permission to use because they were all available to the public. I referenced authors and never touched the content of the articles in the data collection for this study either.

30 Another ethical consideration concerned the photos. However, since all the articles were open to the public, I did not need to exclude or blur them or request consent from the persons in the photos.

Finally, according to Polonsky and Waller (2004), one thing all researchers need to consider, regardless of the methods used, is how the results are communicated and presented. I made sure to avoid plagiarism and misrepresentation of results.

4.7. Role of the researcher

It is likely that my own biases affected my point of view as a researcher. Since I am of Kurdish origin, this could have affected selection and interpretation of the data. I searched for accessible articles about the Kurds to ensure that data collection and analysis could be replicated by another researcher.

My generation, commonly called the Millennials, grew up with Kurdish women defending themselves and their homes. They struggled against the Kurdish feudal dogmas and the states using strategies such as genocide, feminicide, assimilation to marginalize Kurdish endeavours to obtain nationality. Much of the research conducted until now has been valuable and informative; however, it has lacked a historical perspective on the Kurdish question. This is likely because there is limited information on the Kurds, since many states – especially Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria – destroyed books and literature about the Kurds. Turkey is particularly well-known for this type of policy: ‘There are no Kurds, there are only Kar-Kurt’ (which sounds like the Turkish word for Kurd but means the sound of walking on snow).

I had the same difficulties in obtaining previous literature on Kurds, especially Kurdish women. Thankfully, due to technical advancements, information on groups are not easily erased. Therefore, I tried to insert a historical perspective into my analysis as well. The Kurdish women (or ‘angels’) fighting against ISIS depicted by Western media have a history; they did not fall from heaven or emerge from a deep jungle. They were there before ISIS and they remain there after succeeding in defeating many of the ISIS forces. One should not forget that Kurdish women have had a quiet voice – one could even call it ‘a voice from the grave’. Their political and military presence have given

31 them greater attention. Their ideology can be summed as ‘jin’, ‘jiyan’, ‘azadî,’ (women, life, freedom), which can often be heard at many demonstrations.

It is very difficult to understand ‘the other’ within an already highly heterogenous region like the Middle East, where the culture and language can differ even from village to village. The stories of the Kurdish women struggling against ISIS gained international attention and put a face on the revolution in Rojava. To understand this phenomenon better it is necessary to use all our senses – particularly our eyes, even if they cannot tell a whole story alone. The pictures and news coverage portrayed women in a very positive light, allowing us meaning and hope. The Kurdish female fighters defended humanity against ISIS; therefore they received attention, not because they were beautiful or brave.

As matter of fact, the criteria for beauty are considerably different between the West and Middle East. In the West, having a ‘bikini-style’ body is beautiful, while in the Middle East it is considered more beautiful to be overweight. This is crucial to for my analysis, as it helped me to analyse the images without adherence to either set of criteria. It is pivotal here to underline that the images were described through what can be seen with the naked eye.

4.8. Reflections on learning

I think that the main strength of content analysis lies in its ability to use a wide range of articles. However, to ensure a more representative sample, it would have been better to use a larger selection of articles from different newspapers across different countries. The sample size in this study was limited due to time restrictions.

In my case, the research method was not so well designed and everything was done somewhat rashly. Therefore, collecting data could have been more time-consuming than what was done for this study. I think this is the biggest learning outcome from my application of this method.

Furthermore, due to lack of time, my whole methodological process was too narrow. Further research questions could have strengthened the study.

5. Analysis

32 The content analysis of the articles gave insight into the themes and frames of these articles.

To understand these articles in terms of Hall’s (2001) theory of representation, it is important to underline that humans possess a complex approach to meaning making, which could be a system. This system develops over our lives with our experience grows, enabling us to recognize different indicators as having different conceptual meanings. We then categorize these concepts in relation to how similar or different they are to other concepts. Thanks to this mechanism, we can give meaning to the world around us.

In the context of this thesis, one might say that reporters and image brokers are not solely responsible for turning their cameras on beautiful and feminine women even on the battlefield. For example, in one Guardian article (Townsend & Ochagavia, 2017), young women from the UK are being presented as humanity, with ISIS being positioned as the enemy of humanity: ‘Kimberly Taylor from Blackburn is part of the all-female Kurdish force battling to rout Islamic State’. This news content clearly conforms to theme 2 (liberation of women). This frames the participation of female fighters as ideological. Although there is some description of the women, there is no direct . Rather, greater information is given: ‘She has no body amour or helmet, and is wrapped with an emerald and orange embroidered keffiyeh around her forehead to help her express her femininity.’

The journalist’s writing shows how the ideology of Öcalan (2013) is being reflected through the role of women on the warfront against ISIS: ‘first shall the DAESH be crushed and then the women shall be liberated’ (The Guardian, 2017).

Analysing the photos in terms of Hall’s (2001) theory underlines how people may need these visualizations in order to make sense of the war against ISIS. On the other side, the struggle of the Kurdish female fighters has created a positive perception of the Rojava revolution. Diplomats are investing countless hours in creating such a positive view of their culture, language, and country. In this way, Kurdish female fighters have invested their lives towards boosting interest and increasing awareness of their struggle globally.

33 Even though the femininity of Kurdish female fighters could be depoliticizing and devalue their ideological goals through specific Western marketing strategies designed to increase sales, they will remain in the history books and people can visualize them with their true personal or ideological motivations.

Figure 2: Kurdish female fighter, The Guardian, Photograph: Mark Townsend/The Observer

The young in Figure 2 is smiling towards the camera. The green scarf around her young face gives her ‘neutral’, non-militarized look. Green is commonly associated with springtime, freshness, and harmony. In a way, the colour gives harmony to her face. Moreover, her uniform is touched with the feminine through visibility of the light blue t-shirt.

To Barthes (1968), a ‘text’ is everything that is read or seen. On the other hand, Hall requires that a shared language system is an important element for interpreting meaning. Moreover, Barthes underlines the collective presence of signs, which signify meaning and relate to each other in order to create meaning from context. According to Collins, the reader must describe what he/she sees. The fact that the cultural contexts differ in the audiences of the material for this thesis.

When the above ideas are applied to the photos in the collected articles, the first thing that catches the eyes are the serious, determined but happy faces of the female fighters. Their clothes and uniforms are signs, their scarfs adding femininity to their military clothes. The way they hold the weapons is another sign. Even though we have not seen these women in real life, we still can imagine them thanks to the photos and videos, which gives them meaning and categorization in our mind. This is image is semi-closup which gives the audience for The Guardian a glint of the setting from a war front in Rojava.

34 Figure 2: Kimberly Taylor from UK, under the flag of the YPJ, The Guardian Photograph: Mark Townsend/The Observer

When applied this to the photos in the articles, readers’ interpretation is guided through a conceptual map connecting with other elements within the image to allow for a greater understanding of what it could be, after which the language can be analysed to give an overall picture. One must consider the difficulties of reporting from a battlefield – at the frontline, it is extremely difficult to observe the situation. As such, it may be easier for the reporter to go behind the lines to see how Kurdish female fighters are preparing for the war, such as doing their hair or taking care of their hygiene, which all humans do, in a non-sexualized way.

35 Figure 3: Kurdish female fighter, The Guardian Photograph: Mark Townsend/The Observer

Connecting Hall’s theory of representation to text from The Guardian, the war is being evaluated from the perspective of a young British women, describing herself as a Marxist, fighting ISIS under the umbrella of Kurdish SDF forces. She uses her language to say something meaningful about or to represent her experiences to other people, in this case the readers of The Guardian (Blake, 2018):

“I have never seen anything like it in all my life,” she said from her military base in the Kurdish city of Qamishli, where her unit has repaired since escaping the city. “It was chaos. The bombing was really heavy, especially just before the city fell. They hit the hospital, people were fleeing. I was helping out at the hospital and bodies were just coming in day after day. Seeing women screaming, fainting. Mothers who have lost their sons, daughters who have lost their fathers. These were civilians, not soldiers. It was heartbreaking.

Both the above quote, and the following, make it clear that the young woman is espousing the ideology of Öcalan without naming it directly, describing the system in Rojava as a direct democracy. The quote underlines ‘she is western’ but she wants to help her sisters in Rojava:

“They have built a system of direct democracy and in the heart of the Middle East,” she says. “The region has suffered war and oppression for

36 decades. But in Rojava life is completely different. The people here are tasting freedom for the first time, not just the Kurds, but Arabs and Assyrians too.” Figure 4: Young British Woman, member of YPJ, The Guardian, Photograph: Collect

She emphasizes that she wants to go back home to the UK someday, but she still wants to help the Kurdish people on the front against ISIS. The question of whether she can safely return to a normal life in UK is another topic, as she is afraid of getting prosecuted once back home. But this does not stop her from fighting for humanity in Rojava.

Another Guardian article about another young British woman, Anna Campbell, who fell in battle, talks of the external ‘face of the war’ in Rojava and Syria (Ramaswamy, 2019).

37 Figure 5: Anna Campbells Father, Dirk, visiting his daughter’s friends in Rojava, The Guardia, Photograph: Seb Rabas/BBC

Grief and pain are reflected through her father, who visits Anna’s friends in Rojava. However, he is laughing at the camera anyway. We cannot know the grief in his heart, but his smile at the camera and the fact he is side to side with his daughter’s commander, Nesrin Abdullah, seems a comfort to the eye, but perhaps it is ‘good manners’ involved.

Anna, a British member of the YPJ, seemed to embody Ocalan’s goal of establishing a free feminist society in Rojava in her actions. Two days after the death of her , she left for Rojava to help against ISIS.

In a lesser documentary, Anna may have remained a naive figure who died a futile death fighting someone else’s war, which is often how she was portrayed by the media. Instead, a picture emerges of an emotional and committed activist, the type of child who defended a bumble bee being tormented in the playground by her classmates. “That was her soul’s calling … to protect and nurture,” Dirk says.

The harsh war in Rojava and Syria is once again represented through the lens of Kimberly Taylor, a British citizen fighting for the rights of Kurds (Blake, 2017).

Taylor decided to return to Northern Iraq and South Kurdistan to aid the fight against ISIS after speaking to a Yezidi man who refused to leave because jihadis were holding

38 his two daughters captive: “In that moment, I made a promise to myself that I would commit my life to helping these people,” Taylor said.

A young British member of the Kurdish female battalion, Taylor was also inspired by the ideology of Ocalan, underlining that she fell immediately in love with this ideology, particularly that he had put women at the heart of his vision.

Taylor’s statement can be connected to Gledhill’s points about women, particularly how it is necessary to regard them as a heterogenous group. It can be seen that Taylor is thinking ‘out of the box’ by trying to find ‘the real woman’ in herself. She could even be pursuing a new stereotype of feminist life.

A photo of Taylor contains a close-up picture of her smiling into the camera. A keffiyeh, which is mainly green and red frames her face. The image is silhouetted by dark shapes that could be military vans and or tents. She also wears a military uniform. The colours are very orientalist which gives us the hint that the person wearing it ‘comes or represent Kurdish cultural frames.’

Figure 6: Kimberly Taylor, 27, UK citizen and member of YPJ, The Guardian, Photograph: Nazim Dastan/Dicle Haber Ajansi

The fifth article from The Guardian is an in-depth story of Kurdish women who, due to their personal motivations, joined the war on ISIS – mainly in the aftermath of a loss of a member of the family (Mahmood, 2015).

39 Figure 7: Shireen Tahir, fights the ISIS until her death, The Guardian

In the image above, a young woman, Shireen Taher, dressed in Kurdish military uniform poses for the camera. Her posture is remarkably different from that of other images. The interpretation could be that she is tired and sad, since she is putting her head slightly back towards her back, leaning it on her shoulders. The green scarf and her black hair rests on her left side, giving her a very feminine look.

Tahir could not cope with the loss of both her father and teacher, who were both killed by ISIS. She went from being just a ‘normal girl’ with a handbag full of perfumes and cosmetics, to somebody whose daily reality were bombs and hand grenades (Mahmood, 2015).

Although the major frame of this article was ‘attending the war after a loss of close family’, the images of Tahir emphasize her natural beauty, despite the lack of explicit references to her beauty. It also shows that in Rojava, a woman is ‘free’ to make her own choices and think outside the box, going against the patriarchal family system.

40 Their new family structure is very much interwoven with Ocalan’s doctrine of ‘jin', 'jiyan', 'azadî'.

Figure 8: Hameera Muhammed, a mother of 5 children, takes up arms after the loss of her husband, The Guardian

The equality that Öcalan emphasizes for Kurdish women is seen on the warfront as well. As seen above in the picture, the young woman is ‘doing a man’s job’ – fighting on the front against ISIS. She appears determined and without fear (at least in the picture). She seems ready to begin fighting at any time, her hand resting near her weapons.

Although there are no explicit references to the persistent legacy of patriarchal structures in the Kurdish family (see section 3), there are some reflections of patriarchal thinking within the older generation of women in the article: In the same text, a piece about Berivan Fadhil, who died protecting the Kurdish city of Kobani against the ISIS, there is a connection between what her mother says about her daughter and Ocalan’s theory regarding the Kurdish patriarchal family structure:

41 It was a hard choice, but Berivan’s mother preferred that if her daughter were to be killed, it should be in defence of Kobani rather than from a kidnapping or murder by Isis. It would be a more honourable death for the family.

Through focus on personal and first-hand experience, the narratives in these articles convey a feeling of authenticity and genuineness that make it easier for readers to identify with what is being said or written. This is found, for example, in the following quote by Berivan’s mother, who seems trying to find meaning in her daughter’s death: ‘I’m so proud of her martyrdom – I refuse to get consolation for her loss and would rather be congratulated for her heroic death’ (Mahmood, 2015)

In another article (Skiotis, 2019), an Australian urged support for Rojava in a way that was ideologically aligned with Öcalan – that is, a feminist and green Rojava:

So the YPG/YPJ are democratic, feminist, multicultural and green – hardly qualifying them as terrorists – and have defeated the region’s worst terrorist threat in cooperation with western allies. The west should repay the Kurds by standing up to Turkey’s lies and ensuring the autonomous region is free from aggression.

An image included in this article was as follows:

Figure 9: SDF Fighters on the road to battle, The Guardian, Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images

The naked eye cannot determine if there are any female fighters inside the vans, and male fighters appear to be resting on the back of the truck. The picture remains highly ideological with its prominent display of yellow, green, and red flags representing the

42 Kurdish identity. There are four elements to this image: the weapons, vehicles, fighters, and flags. The dust around the vehicles suggests that they are on their way to a fight. The flags indicate clearly which side they belong to.

In a war, fighters are trained to use force where necessary. How we view soldiers – whether we feel positively or negatively about them – is down to our own sense- making systems and the past encounters we may have had with them. Depending on our political persuasion, we might support these fighters in their fight against ISIS and see them as representative of the fight against oppression and suffering.

In another Guardian article (Owen, 2014), Kurdish female fighters are praised and there seems to be a conscious aimed at raising awareness:

The real boots on the ground defending Kobani are the young women fighters of the YPJ (Kurdish Women’s Protection Units). But you only mention the peshmerga and the Free (Crowds line Turkish road to cheer Kobani bound troops, 30 October) About 35% of the Syrian Kurdish YPG (the People’s Protection Units of Rojava) are women. They number many thousands and the co-commander is a woman

The role of female fighters is very much appreciated by the writer, who also attempts to distinguish the Kurdish renaissance from the rest of the Middle East:

Rojava is the one place in the Middle East where there is real gender equality and the YPJ demonstrates this empowerment of women. They desperately need the heavy arms to defeat Isis (Owen, 2014).

One image used in this article features two women on a field:

43 Figure 10: YPJ members in training, The Guardian, Photograph: Benjamin/AFP/Getty Images

There are three prominent elements in this picture: the weapon and the two young women. At first look, it appears to be a training session, with one woman trying to support the other. The above remarks about representation are applicable here as well.

An article about the prosecution of a Kurdish woman from shows similar critical and reflective tendencies as the previous article (Whyte, 2016). This article, authored by Lara White, reflects on the dilemma of prosecuting someone in Denmark who fights in the YPJ as part of an international coalition.

The article is strongly ideologically framed, with the narrative drawing attention to the fight for women’s rights and democracy: ‘She went to Kurdistan, she says, “to fight for women’s rights, for democracy – for the European values I learned as a Danish girl”’ (Whyte, 2016).

The picture of the female fighter shows a laughing face, glowing with pride. She holds the weapon in a way that gives the impression that she is alert and ready to fight. This pattern is reminiscent of the frames in previous pictures:

44 Figure 11: Danish-Kurdish YPJ member on the battle front, The Guardian, Photograph: Facebook

In terms of representation, the elements of the image – a young woman in uniform holding a weapon – tells us that this woman is participating in a military operation. The writer of the article also makes explicit reference to the ‘real women’ of Gledhill, whom she frames as members of YPJ, and how these women have vanquished ISIS. Gledhill, as I note above, emphasized that women are not a homogenous group. These articles on Kurdish female fighters may be advancing a new stereotype of ‘real women’. Stereotypes are always about power and stereotypes about women tend to be more recognizable, according to Dyer (2006).

Reflecting on the signs in Figure 11, I refer to an interesting point raised by language theorist Roland Barthes (1988) – that is, whatever an individual wears or possesses in turn reflects his/her status. In this caes, the weapon that the young woman is holding and her uniform gives us a clue of how her organization is equipped. However, whether it is a new or old weapon, and how advanced it is, is difficult to tell from the picture.

One recurring topic that journalist Mark Townsend (2019) discusses is the prosecution and hypocrisy that members of the YPG and YPJ are facing in Europe. In his article, ‘Sajid Javid condemned for “criminalizing” fighters against ISIS’ (2019), he writes:

Using a law supposedly created to defend against Isis, you are criminalising as ‘terrorists’ those who’ve given more than any other British citizens in this struggle. Just two months ago, the whole world celebrated Isis’s defeat as a military force. That victory was led by the women of YPJ, along with the other

45 Kurds, Arabs and Christians of north-east Syria – the democratic, women-led, autonomous region more commonly known as Rojava,” states the letter.

The author criticizes the UK Home Secretary for being a hypocrite, and the text dedicates considerable time to hypocrisy in politics. On the other hand, Öcalan’s theory of the ‘ecological paradigm’ is also reflected upon. The author proves information about the background information about foreign members of YPJ and YPG.

Figure 12: Kurdish female fighters in Aleppo in pause, The Guardian, Photograph: Omar Sanadiki/Reuters

The text displays a photo of a group of female fighters. The women appear joyful and suggest that they are victorious by making a victory-sign. In this picture as far as the naked eye can see, there is not a direct link to sexualization of women in question.

Next, I will move on to the US coverage of Kurdish female fighters. In a long article by Lazarus (2019), there is plenty of background information about Kurds and their homeland. Furthermore, numerous photos are provided. She provides background information that explains the culture and history to readers, emphasizing that its purpose goes beyond providing ‘pictures of women with weapons’. She wants to depict the women not as men, but as the ‘real heroines’ of the war against ISIS. The text also emphasizes how Kurdish female fighters fight for equal rights seemingly against any odds, such as their culture’s patriarchy and ISIS violence.

The photographer, Sonja Hamad, herself a Kurdish woman who grew up in , provides some information about Kurdish society and it defines her, which links up with

46 Öcalan’s concept of women’s emancipation and with de Beauvoir’s assessment that ‘one is not born a woman, but rather becomes a woman’. Bringing all this together, Kurdish women’s struggle for freedom well aligns with Steiner’s (2014) definition of feminism as ‘an emancipatory, transformational movement aimed at undoing domination and oppression’ (p 359).

Hamad includes many photos in her work. Only the following photo was included in this thesis:

Figure 13: Kurdish female fighters in Sinjar, South Kurdistan (Iraqi part), www..com, Photograph: Sonja Hamad

This photo reflects Hamad’s desire to depict Kurdish female fighters without weapons. Hamad says she wants to change ‘this representation or image’ and give another reflection of Kurdish female fighters. Particularly, she frames her photos under the ‘jin, jiyan’, and ‘azadi’ ideology. Like the other photos above, the young Kurdish women depicted in Hamad’s photo show another kind of ‘freedom’ than if they were ‘normal’ married women, living at home, taking care of the household duties etc. By fighting and taking part in a political and military life, they are standing against traditional ‘norms’ of how women are depicted in the Middle East. In that sense, the examined photos and news criticalyl reflect on the unjust framing and negative stereotypes of women.

47 In another story, Rahila Gupta urges the world to help Kurds against a military invasion of Turkey into Rojava. CNN strongly underlines in the article that these opinions are solely of the author. The journalist introduces viewers to the new system in Rojava and reflects on how although Kurds are part of the international global coalition against ISIS, the world has remained on Turkey’s invasion of the Kurdish city of Afrin. She places particular emphasis on the new, more equal system (Gupta, 2016).

Figure 14: Kurds hiding in caves due to Turkish military bombings in Kurdish city of Afrin, www.cnn.com, Photograph: Rahila Gupta

This story provides a picture of civilians instead of Kurdish female fighters. However, this photo is an example of how Kurds are distinguished from others in the Middle East. One of the women in the cave does not wear a headscarf but does wear trousers, which are clear departures from how Middle Eastern women are typically depicted.

Another CNN story underlines the victory of the Kurdish female fighters against the ISIS in Raqqa, Syria. The Kurdish perspective and the ideological words of the fighters interviewed are particularly noteworthy. Particularly, it focuses on Öcalan’s ideology women’s emancipation in the Middle East and how these have been incorporated in the struggle against ISIS (Balkiz & Dewan, 2017).

Balkiz and Dewan (2017) provide short interviews and pictures of the female fighters. The photo below depicts some of these fighters:

48 Figure 15: Kurdish female fighter of YPJ after liberating Raqqa, Syria, www.cnn.com, Ghazi Balkiz & Angela Dewan

This photo depicts women wearing military uniforms, with the foremost woman wearing a feminine headscarf. The background is a little blurred, but other female fighters without headscarves are clear. One of them is looking curiously towards the camera. They are standing together, which suggests fellowship among themselves. More broadly, the picture may reflect how coherence and teamwork are necessary for victory on the front lines. The young smiling woman in the foreground looks innocent, despite having been part of fighting ISIS for the last 3 years. Her feminity is enhanced by her green headscarf. This photo exemplifies how Öcalan’s ideology can penetrate even military practice.

Another CNN story, by Tim Lister, examines the war preparations in Raqqa against ISIS. Lister states that, if defeated, ISIS would no longer have a hub in the area (Lister, 2017).

Another story by journalist Rahila Gupta explains the Rojava system of democracy and equality for men and women. The author explains in depth how she sees the situation on ground, the landscapes where she visits and how welcoming Kurds are. Gupta writes that Rojava is a ‘safe haven in the Middle East’s brutal war.’ Of particular interest is how the journalist underlines that what what is happening is a revolution driven by Öcalan’s belief in democratic confederalism and a Swiss-style canton system (Gupta, 2016). Gupta (2016) emphasizes the transformations in society after implementing the ideology of Öcalan:

49 They spoke of ending male domination and giving their daughters the freedom to choose their husbands and pursue careers. They were also now active outside the home in various committees -- health, education, conflict resolution and more -- formed by neighborhood communes

I chose one photo for this thesis:

Figure 16: Kurdish woman showing the flag of the YPJ, www.cnn.com

This photo depicts a working-room wherein men and women are sewing. From the photo, it is not clear if they sew only flags or if they also create other garments. The picture emphasizes the discipline of those depicted. The woman at the foreground is happy and proud to show her flag. Her putting it over to her shoulder indicates how she is representing what the flag means – in other words, the Kurdish flag.

Tim Lister and offer another narrative of how women are keen end ISIS’s existence in Syria. The reporters explain what is happening on the front line, including use of ‘homemade weapons’ with assistance from airstrikes by coalition forces. Furthermore, the reporters provide information about the mood on the ground, saying ‘there is no doubting the raw courage of YPG fighters, nor of the Kurdish Women’s Defense Unit (YPJ) that fights alongside them. Flags and billboards carrying the pictures of Kurdish ‘martyrs’ adorn the streets of every town in the region’ (Lister & Ward, 2015).

A story titled ‘War against ISIS: New recruits include a tailor, medical student’ provide the short narratives of 3 members of the YPG and YPJ. One of them is a medical student from France, Amara Erdal. She says she wants to stay in Rojava and fix things here, stressing that she has her family’s support (Damon & Gul, 2015).

50 Figure 17: Member of YPJ and former medical student Amara Erdal, www.cnn.com, Photograph: Arwa Damon & Gul Tuysuz

The photo of Amara Erdal could look like any other young woman in the region because of the blurred and destroyed landscape behind her. She looks happy and wears no headscarf – a reoccurring observation indicating how Kurdish women differ from mainstream media depictions of Middle Eastern women. Although she is not from the region – as expressed in the text – she has a strong sense of belonging to the region and defending it.

The same story depicts Kurdish female fighters during a training session, describing them as follows: ‘The female fighters have trained for many years but this year have become notable for their courageous role in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)’:

Figure 18: Kurdish female fighters in a training session, www.cnn.com, Photograph: Benjamin Hiller/AFP/Getty Images

The location of these fighters is unknown. However, it is clearly a training camp. The young woman in the front appears highly concentrated on a target outside of the photo.

51 The picture is also conveying the interpretation that women are prepared to meet the evil and they are not afraid.

Another CNN photo depicts a funeral of a YPJ member, killed in a battle in Kobani:

Figure 19: Funeral mourning YPJ member, www.cnn.com Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters/landov

This story is short and provides some information on where the photo takes place. But the photo does not require much textual description: it highlights the intense grief of the woman in the foreground. The red, green and yellow of the flag on the coffin suggest the Kurdish flag.

6. Discussion and Conclusion

Between 2014 and 2019, Kurdish female fighters in Rojava, the de-facto self-governed region in north-eastern Syria, received significant global media attention. This thesis aimed to examine how the Kurdish female fighters struggling against ISIS are being represented in western media through a textual and image analysis of Guardian and CNN International news stories. This thesis is a very selective research paper and should not be considered as representative – only two news outlets are included (The Guardian and CNN International), both of which are centre-left on the political spectrum. This limits the scope of the analysis considerably. These news outlets are not neutral – rather they have their own criteria for their audiences and political stance and

52 worldviews, finally they have also cultural frames. All these factors have a strong impact on how the representation of Kurdish female forces look alike.

The news outlets described Kurdish female fighters in tough but ultimately positive terms, while casting ISIS as uniformly negative. The Kurdish female fighters were represented as a feminist force against the backwardness of patriarchal ISIS – which in turn shows that the portrayal is much about femininity and ‘bad masculinity’. These fighters also gave a new face to Kurdish women’s struggle on two fronts – for their emancipation and for national interests.

More specifically, Kurdish female fighters were depicted as the main forces of universal humanistic values in both news outlets. Both news outlets also made few remarks of the historical reasons behind their struggle, and Kurdish political activism – particularly the PKK – never received much attention (although the YPJ female fighters used the ideology of the PKK in their political and military struggles). The lack of attention to this issue may reflect how the EU and US are helping the Kurdish female fighters while simultaneously criminalizing the PKK. While YPJ members were never referred to as ‘terrorists’, the link between their umbrella group (PYD) and the PKK was firmly touched upon.

In my analysis of the UK articles, most held a fascination with female fighters and the uniqueness of their presence on the battlefield. Their personal, emotional motivations, physical appearance and the struggle for equality and freedom were apparent in almost every article. The Kurdish female fighters were either depicted in war clothes preparing for war, holding their weapons, and laughing at the cameras, or taking a break from the battlefield. Some aspects of their physical appearance – like their hairstyles and clothes – were also used in the articles to feminize the stories and make them more newsworthy. The Guardian, which has a mainly leftist audience, emphasized the role of Kurdish women fighters as a ‘source of hope’ against the ‘darkness and evil of ISIS’. These articles further reproduced a traditional gender approach – framing the female fighters as brave while degrading the ISIS, or with other words: sexualizing the YPJ while degrading ‘the masculinity of ISIS.’ However, they also hint at how these fighters are not merely ‘victims’ – they are defending themselves and fighting for freedom. This is where fascination with the female Kurdish fighters play a crucial role: The main factor

53 in becoming a fighter is to escape suffering, oppression, and sexual violence against women. The cherry-picking strategy or agenda-setting from both outlets underlined that the Kurdish female fighters were against jihadists. This is very much like the international depiction of ISIS, but combined with the Orientalist and post-colonial approach, in the eyes of western audiences, they are portrayed as evil, with the Kurdish women, together with some international fighters, being posed against them.

The UK articles also covered young women from the UK who were fighting against ISIS and called for society to protect them – ‘the world owes the Kurds a huge debt of gratitude for helping to defeat Islamic State’. The YPJ forces are being clearly glorified as ‘democratic, feminist, multicultural and green – hardly qualifying them as terrorists – and have defeated the region’s worst terrorist threat in cooperation with western allies’ (Townsend & Ochagavia, The Guardian, 2017). These articles framed the ideological fight for women’s emancipation, supported by Öcalan’s ideology, as an international struggle, not just a Kurdish one. This news coverage ‘legalized’ the ideology of Öcalan – a very much discussed political actor from Middle East.

Some articles describing the siege of the Kurdish city, Kobani, framed Kurdish female fighters as the deciding factor in victory, particularly after the breakdown of the Iraq army. In these articles, Kurdish female fighters were framed as heroic. In particular, the photos seem to frame them as having a more ‘western’ style – without traditional headscarves – presumably as an attempt to make them seem more ‘western’ than Middle Eastern women.

Overall, the UK articles helped in answering my research questions – that is, they showed that media represent these women as victims of jihadists, with the main factors driving their recruitment being a desire to escape suffering, oppression and sexual violence and a desire to attain women’s emancipation.

As for the US articles, they did not depart significantly from how the rest of the world appeared to view these fighters and the conflict overall. Articles reported on the horrible acts of ISIS and the situation of women and displaced people in the region. Like the UK articles, the CNN stories showed admiration for the Kurdish female fighters, emphasizing that they should be protected. There is a parallel link between this news coverage and those utilized during the Spanish Civil War – the International Brigades

54 received similar attention as Kurdish female fighters. The Kurdish female fighters were considered newsworthy for their unique fight against gender and ethnic stereotypes in the Middle East. Specifically, these Kurdish women are depicted as ‘innocent’, ‘pure’ and ‘justified’ in their fight against ISIS. One article even called Kurdish female fighters are as ‘the women of the year’ (CNN international, 2014). Linking this to the research question, it seems clear that Kurdish female fighters were being represented as ‘mythical and exotic’ – as ‘others’, to take a post-colonial approach. Despite this framing, there was a small nuance of ‘this is our war too’ – it is here why the cherry- picking of the news took place. Maybe this related to the choice of the reporter but it could also have been part of a YPJ-strategy in order to promote for their cause: ‘this is not only our war; our war is in backward patriarchal norms.’

Just like the British coverage, the US coverage had little to do with the ideology of the Kurdish female fighters. Only story commented on this – ‘The world’s most progressive democracy is born, don’t let it get strangled’ (Gupta, 2018). Despite running these stories, CNN International took pains to distance itself from the ‘personal opinions of the journalist’. The journalist clearly believed in the ‘Rojava revolution’; again, however, no historical background was given on it. Indeed, the articles mentioned little of ‘the Kurdish question’ in general, their struggle for recognition, and the emancipation of Kurdish women – even though the freedom of women and equality society was a primary goal. Since the PKK, which is the main political power behind the emancipation of Kurdish women, has been criminalized in the US and EU, journalists may be afraid to touch on these issues. Therefore, the participation of Kurdish women in battle is depicted merely as a fight against ISIS, reducing the message for western audiences to a fight between good and evil.

The news articles that focused on individual stories not only represented their motivations as personal (e.g., loss of family members, revenge) but also ideological – a struggle for women’s rights and the liberation of the Kurdish people.

Because the news outlets had primarily western audiences, they cherry-picked stories in order to bridge the values and peoples of the West and Middle East. The way the articles were presented to their audiences supports a post-colonial view on the position of women and their representation in western media coverage. This shows that

55 discourses of ‘glorification’ continue to shape western imaginations. This research paper shows where people who have lived under colonialism are and how far they have come since its end – and yet, they continue to live in its shadow.

Conclusion

This study is an attempt to analyse the ‘real situation’ of Kurdish women, with an emphasis on how Kurdish women have had to fight on two stages, one against colonizing forces and the other against internal patriarchal traditions.

Although there have been changes in Kurdish society, its traditions remain rooted in an Islamic perspective, with girls and women being sent to school only when the family is able to do so, and boys and men possessing a gendered privilege. There is a mentality among Kurdish families of ‘boys are mine, I will not lose them when they marry’, whereas ‘girls are not mine, after marriage they are gone’. Kurdish female fighters are trying to undermine and annihilate these kinds of patriarchal mentalities. On the other side, colonizing forces since at least World War One have had a strong presence in the area, blocking women and girls from taking part in the system. In fighting for their rights, Kurdish women have changed traditional Islamic society to regard women as human and thus as deserving of rights.

Kurdish female fighters are no longer asking for permission, which is a norm in Middle Eastern society. They have changed Kurdish society as well as societies across the Middle East by showing that they too can be leaders. The role of Kurdish women in politics and war transcends current boundaries – they are adhering to no one’s rulebook but their own.

It should be reiterated that this study is not representative. Nevertheless, I believe it provides a good base for further academic work. While I focused on the western perspective, interwoven with an orientalist approach, it may be necessary to consider different perspectives in the future...

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Appendix 1

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List of illustrations

Kurdish female fighter, The Guardian, Photograph: Mark Townsend/The Observer / 30.04.2017

Kimberly Taylor from UK, under the flag of the YPJ, The Guardian Photograph: Mark Townsend/The Observer 30.04.2017

Kurdish female fighter, The Guardian, Photograph: Mark Townsend/The Observer 30.04.2017

Young British Woman, member of YPJ, The Guardian, Photograph: Collect 23.03.2018

Anna Campbells Father, Dirk, visiting his daughter’s friends in Rojava, The Guardian, Photograph: Seb Rabas/BBC 03.07.2019

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Kimberly Taylor, 27, UK citizen and member of YPJ, The Guardian, Photograph: Nazim Dastan/Dicle Haber Ajansi 09.02.2017

Shireen Tahir, fights the ISIS until her death, The Guardian 30.01.2015

Hameera Muhammed, a mother of 5 children, takes up arms after the loss of her husband, The Guardian 30.01.2015

SDF Fighters on the road to battle, The Guardian, Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images 22.02.2019

YPJ members in training, The Guardian, Photograph: Benjamin/AFP/Getty Images 30.10.2014

Danish-Kurdish YPJ member on the battle front, The Guardian, Photograph: Facebook 19.12.2016

Kurdish female fighters in Aleppo in pause, The Guardian, Photograph: Omar Sanadiki/Reuters 26.05.2019

Kurdish female fighters in Sinjar, South Kurdistan (Iraqi part), www.cnn.com, Photograph: Sonja Hamad 27.01.2019

Kurds hiding in caves due to Turkish military bombings in Kurdish city of Afrin, www.cnn.com, Photograph: Rahila Gupta 12.02.2018

Kurdish female fighter of YPJ after liberating Raqqa, Syria, www.cnn.com, Ghazi Balkiz & Angela Dewan 20.10.2017

Kurdish woman showing the flag of the YPJ, www.cnn.com 30.03.2016

Member of YPJ and former medical student Amara Erdal, www.cnn.com, Photograph: Arwa Damon & Gul Tuysuz 23.06.2015

Kurdish female fighters in a training session, www.cnn.com, Photograph: Benjamin Hiller/AFP/Getty Images 19.12.2014

Funeral mourning YPJ member, www.cnn.com Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters/landov 14.11.2014

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