The Kurdish Women's Movement: A Third-Wave Feminism Within the Turkish Context

Based on discourse analysis of journals published by Kurdish feminists, this article analyzes Kurdish feminist movements, which developed throughout the 1990s in Turkey. It goes on to indicate how Kurdish feminism represents an example of a third-wave women's movement within the Turkish context, emphasizing the dual oppression against women, namely for gender and ethnicity. Focusing on the contextual background of women's oppression, this study draws attention to the exclusion of some women from a general and essentialist understanding of women and to the possibility of an ethnic feminism as a way of alternative self-existence for those who are oppressed on grounds other than gender.