NEWS CENTER – The Rojava revolution has left behind ten years of struggle. The construction of this revolution and its defense are mainly due to the resistance of countless fallen and wounded combatants. Practically every corner has its martyrs of the revolution. One of the war veterans of the Rojava revolution is Sorxwîn Koçer. She comes from the city of Siirt, in northern Kurdistan, and joined the fight in 2014 under the impression of the Kobanê attacks.
Recounting her path to revolution, Sorxwîn Koçer said: “The war in Rojava, the resistance of our people in Kobanê and the Shengal genocide left a deep impression on me, and that is why I made the decision to join the fight.” After the attack of the terrorist organization “Islamic State” (ISIS) in Shengal and the genocide that followed, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis, who were saved thanks to the intervention of a group of guerrillas, began to spread as refugees throughout the entire region. Sorxwîn Koçer lived through this situation and witnessed the great trauma of the diaspora and the genocide at the hands of ISIS. The situation of the Yazidi population affected her deeply.
“My only thought was to fight”
At that time, the resistance of the Women’s Defense Units (YPJ) against ISIS, supported by Turkey, made headlines around the world. Sorxwîn Koçer described this fight and her new life as a fighter saying, “Being there and fighting the enemy was my only thought. After joining the fight, I realized the difference between life at home and life in the war. In the supposedly protected space called home, a woman cannot really know herself. An attitude is cultivated there that deprives women of their willpower and conviction. It is the result of five thousand years of power mentality. I realized that the home is really a prison for us women, based on this form of domination.”
“My courage became a source of morale”
After entering, he said, he became aware of his will and his strength. “I saw the history of the massacres of women and understood it better. I saw what 5,000 years of patriarchy had done. The party meant a rebirth for me. When I joined the party, I saw feudalism and the effects of backwardness on people.” declared Sorxwîn Koçer.
“I understood much better the massacres of our people in Geliyê Zîlan and Dersim, in the battles of Şêx Saîd, Elîşêr and Zerîfe. In other words, I understood better our own history as a whole, our annihilation. If I had stayed at home, maybe I never would have known these things. When you participate in the struggle, you learn and see all this. Through this struggle, I became aware of the historical drama of Kurdish women in particular: every woman who participates in the struggle, war and resistance he realizes his strength and his will. My courage has always been a source of morale for me. As I fought, my faith in myself gradually grew. Perhaps with it the faith in the woman who had been buried blossomed in me. on earth for five thousand years.
A death in battle that he could never forget
In 2015, Sorxwîn Koçer started fighting in the war. The first friend whose death she experienced was that of Commander Şehîd Çîyager, who, according to her, she will never forget about her. “After he fell, they carried him to our car. We carried his lifeless body and put him in the car. His death in battle moved me deeply.”
Sorxwîn is wounded and returns to the front
In June 2015, the YPJ/YPG surrounded the ISIS-occupied city of Sîluk. The jihadists mined the area before withdrawing. “One morning, the bodies of six friends were brought to our unit. They were Bêrîtan, Berçem, Newroz, Amed, Sîpan and Dilşêr. Dilşêr was the commander of our battalion. An ISIS jihadist had blew himself up, starting a large-scale attack “My friends died there. It is not easy to deal with this. I think of Şehîd Berçem. She was from Mardin. When she fell, they brought her body to us. Many friends were also injured because they stepped on mines. For example, Comrade Simko fell on the way to the hospital. They went back to the front as soon as they recovered,” added Sorxwîn Koçer.
