Who is Kesire Yildirim?
Kesire Yildirim was born in 1951 in the city of Dep in Mezra. His family emigrated from Dersim to Dep in 1940. She was Zazaki-speaking Kurdish and the first child of a family with six children. She is said to have changed her date of birth to 1953. She attended primary school in Kharpet and was a teacher in a village of Dep for some time. In 1974, she graduated from the Gazi Ankara Institute of Media and Press with a degree in Radio and Television.
Marriage to Ocalan
Some time later, she formally married Abdullah Ocalan. The marriage lasted until 1987. Abdullah Ocalan writes about this marriage in the book “Prison Notes” (page 132), “the Kurdish family as an institution is like a monster that kneels and paralyzes the man between the ages of 15 and 20” and continues on page 136 “the oppression of women along with marriage, which we know as prostitution, are two complementary forms of the patriarchal relationship in Kurdish society,” he writes. Ocalan spoke less about her during his separation from Kesire until his arrest, and was highly critical of Kurdish women, especially his mother. He claimed that Kurdish problems would be solved when the problem of Kurdish women was solved. But after his arrest, he praised the women and his mother.
Abdullah Ocalan used the adjective “yellow snake” for Kesire, but in the book “Democratic Civilization” he once again refers to her and says “maybe she was not a traitor” while for thirty years he only destroyed her, this one-sided narrative and no one asked Kesire on Ocalan. During this time in Sweden, she did not say a word about Ocalan. All members of the PKK say she knows many secrets about Ocalan, especially about Ocalan’s relationship with women and girls in the PKK. And this is the issue that caused the couple to have conflicts in Syria and the Bekka Valley. Given that Ocalan sees the women of the PKK as the basis of their work, so we must examine the practical approach of Ocalan on his mother and his wife to determine the extent of his practical beliefs.
PKK does demagogy propaganda. In the case of women, it has reached the highest level to the point where Kurdish women are used as propaganda tools. The PKK sees itself as the “Women’s Liberation Party”, directly or indirectly. Now, everyone, including the Kurdish and international media, has published photos of the PKK’s beautiful girls. They introduce a picture of a “secular woman” but did not treat them as women but as members of the PKK.
But we know that the PKK claims to be the representative of the women but this is not true. Kurdish female character in PKK has always been destroyed. If the media is to refer to real Kurdish women in the PKK, they must refer to the stories of female PKK members like Jamileh Merkit with the code name “Sahar”, Lamia Baksi with the code name of “Dr. Jiyan” and the sister of the famous writer Mahmud Baksi, Banafsheh Mohammad and hundreds of other PKK cadres. Also, the statements of thousands of girls and women separated from the PKK should be taken into account.
Jamileh Merkit is the first Kurdish woman to be brutally killed, or according to the PKK “settled”. Like Sakine Cansiz and Kesire Yildirim, she is one of the founding members of the PKK. She is the sister of Yildirim Merkit, one of the main cadres of the PKK. He was also killed in 1994 by the PKK in Rome, Italy. Jamileh, the wife of Ali Haiydar Kaytan, the current member of the PKK leadership council with the code name “Sahar”. While marriage in the PKK was forbidden, she was forced to have an abortion of her 6-month child after the Second Congress in 1982 and then was killed. All PKK officials know why “Dr. Jiyan” was brutally murdered. Both accused Ocalan of raping PKK girls in his harem.
These black pages are the record of the PKK. There is a violation of women’s rights, personality and views, but no one, whether the so-called Kurdish human rights activists or the Kurdish media, can raise the issue of women in the PKK because they fear. Many former women members an not say what Ocalan was doing to women and girls in Damascus and Lebanon. Because they know they will be killed. While the PKK claims that all the Kurds who support the AK Party, the CHP, the HAK-PAR, the KDP, the ENKS … as “traitors”, it’s time for Yildirim to speak, too. All PKK separated members should reveal the secrets. Silence is no longer a right way.
