Bêrîtan… legacy of resistance against treason

NEWS DESK /SHINDA AKRAM

The Kurdish people who resisted and struggled against the regimes that denied their freedom included many commanders who had led the revolutions. Among them was Sultanah Khan who led the battle against the Iranian army in Soran area and fought it with her soldiers until their attacks were broken. In order to prevent the women from falling into the hands of the enemies, she sometimes threw herself from the walls of the castles or from the rocks. In the resistance of Dem Dem Castle, the Kurdish women chose to throw themselves from the walls of the castle to fall on the rocks and not fall into the hands of the Persian and Turkish occupiers. History also mentioned the struggler Bessa who directed a speech to the Turkish enemy in which she said, "You will not be able to arrest me while I am alive”, and that was during Dêrsim Revolution. During Sassoon Revolution, Rendy Khan who was known for her beauty and courage in fighting threw herself from Malabad Bridge so as not to fall captive at the hands of the Turkish occupation.

Some of them fought for free Kurdistan such as the martyr Zerifa who condemned and rejected the brutal mass massacres of the Turkish army in addition to Gulnaz, Leila Qassem and dozens of others who had shown heroic resistance.

Many fighters recorded heroic epics that shook the enemy and terrorized them among them was Bêrîtan who refused to surrender to the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries and threw herself from the mountains tops so as not to fall into their hands after resisting a whole army alone.

A summary about the martyr Bêrîtan’s life

The fighter Bêrîtan Hêvî whose real name is Gulnaz Karataş was born in 1971 in Solhan village of Çewlik, and she was originally from Dêrsim.

Dêrsim city’s daughter whose history was full of resistance and heroism was a student at the Faculty of Arts in the Department of English Language, and she was known for her passion to reading as she was characterized by her sharp intelligence, strong personality and impressive presence.

The struggler Bêrîtan joined the ranks of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement along with a group of young men and women who came from Istanbul to Cûdî Mountain camp in the late autumn of 1991.

From the beginning, she was characterized of her strong personality and will. She also was characterized by her high ability to lead and manage. She was the first struggler to develop the thought of women's freedom against slavery and authoritarian mentality. She had a prominent role in raising women’s awareness on the basis of pure free thought of impurities and servitude. She was never afraid of death, and she removed fear from the hearts of her companions, planted in them the spirit of resistance and struggle and planted of love and willpower.

Their first experience was in Guerilla. She launched from Cûdî Mount to Xakurk Mount in the hot and dry summer of 1991. It was as difficult as a harsh winter. Their tracks were so hard that they could not sometimes drink water for two days. At that time, the struggler Bêrîtan was disseminating morale within her comrades.

During a short period, she has become a faction’s commander

In a short period of time, she became a faction’s commander, adapted to all her comrades, supervised a group of fighters through training and uncovered many traitors and Turkish intelligence.

In her martyrdom, she was also avant-garde

In 1992, as a result of the agreement between the Turkish state, Iran and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) with the aim of eliminating the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Bêrîtan was one of the fighters who stood in the front to defend themselves and break the attacks of the traitors collaborated against them.

The heavy and sophisticated weapons were used against the Kurdistan Liberation Movement. Thus, the battalion of the martyr Bêrîtan was in the forefront and fought until the last breath. However, the end of ammunition and weapons led to their being trapped by Peshmerga. In order not to fall into captivity, she broke her gun, raised her golden hands to the sky, cried out loud with a voice filled the mountains of Kurdistan, calling for freedom and a free and dignified life and threw herself from a high rock from the Kurdistan Mountain rocks. Thus, she became a symbol of resistance and free women and entered into the heart of every free woman.

With this resistance, she did not accept surrender, reached the rank of martyrdom on October 25, 1992 at the top of Lêlîkan Mount as an explosion of a volcano.

One of the Peshmerga described the championship of Bêrîtan

One of the Peshmerga who left their weapons after they saw Bêrîtan's resistance said that after they besieged Bêrîtan, they called her to surrender, but she refused to do so and preferred to hover over the sky of freedom instead of being captured by the traitors collaborated with the enemy against the Kurdish people.

The resistance of the martyr Bêrîtan was a historic stage of the struggle’s stages in the Kurdistan Liberation Movement. This struggler embodied in her personality the art of leadership and the fact of the history of Kurdish women through the stages of history and in particular the fact of women’s history in Dêrsim. This martyrdom was the cause of the unity of the Kurdish women and the unity of the people of Kurdistan.

On the basis of Bêrîtan's resistance and launching from the thought and philosophy of Ocalan, the women's army was founded. In this way, the resistance of women would continue in the homeland in its four parts and outside it. For the continuation of the resistance, the Women Protection Units (YPJ) were founded in Rojava.

(T/S)

ANHA