[pt] Esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar as ideias de gênero (mais especificamente, de feminilidade), de liberdade e de libertação feminina mobilizadas em diferentes discursos sobre as YPJ (Unidades de Defesa das Mulheres). As YPJ são uma milícia armada curda, composta de mulheres, que atua em Rojava (norte da Síria), autoproclamada território independente curdo desde 2012. Rojava é reconhecidamente organizada sob inspiração dos preceitos do Confederalismo Democrático (sistema político idealizado por Abdullah Öcalan), que preza por governos horizontais descentralizados e pela emancipação feminina como forma de libertação popular. As YPJ têm despertado cada vez mais interesse ao redor do mundo (especialmente em países do Ocidente), tanto porque são mulheres que lutam, quanto pelo projeto de emancipação anunciado por Rojava e pela luta armada contra o Estado Islâmico conduzida por elas. Nesse sentido, essas mulheres militares são abordadas em diferentes narrativas, de diferentes maneiras, por atores tão diversos quanto jornais de grande circulação internacional, mídias cristãs, de bem-estar feminino, publicações anarquistas, alguns ativistas curdos, acadêmicos de esquerda, dentre outros. Tentaremos navegar pelas representações dessas mesmas mulheres, em diferentes contextos políticos, em busca de continuidades e rupturas nos significados de feminilidade, libertação e na relação desta com as mulheres. Com isso, nossa tentativa é de compreender os processos que permitem formas diversas de apropriação dos mesmos elementos (feminilidade e liberdade das mulheres) em relação a diferentes ideais políticos. / [en] Our goal in this dissertation is to analyze the ideas of gender (more specifically, of femininity), freedom, and feminine liberation mobilized in different discourses about the YPJ (Women Defense Units). The YPJ are a Kurdish militia, composed by women only, which acts in Rojava (northern Syria), a self-proclaimed Kurdish independent territory since 2012. Rojava s organization is inspired by the precepts of Democratic Confederalism, a political system idealized by Abdullah Ocalan, which advances decentralized governments and women s emancipation as the only way to popular liberation. In the last few years, the YPJ have been gaining more and more attention internationally (especially in western countries), in academic mediums, political collectives, and media vehicles. In that sense, these military women are inserted into different narratives, in different ways, by vehicles as diverse as mainstream international newspapers, Christian media, magazines about female well-being, anarchist media, Kurdish activists, leftist academics, among others. Our aim is to navigate through different representations of these women, in different political contexts, searching for continuities and ruptures relating to the meanings of femininity, the ideals of freedom mobilized, and the relationship of women to these ideals. With that, we seek to understand the processes that allow for different forms of appropriation of the same elements (femininity and freedom) on behalf of different political goals.

With a population of around 40 million people, Kurds are considered the largest nation without an independent state. Indeed, since the geographical division of Kurdistan in 1923, Kurds have been the victims of various forms of discrimination and oppression by the nation states of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. They deprived Kurds of their legitimate political, social and cultural rights and they oppressed their demands for political and cultural freedom through violent means. With the eruption of civil war in Syria, the regime decided to withdraw its army from the Kurdish region of Rojava. The Kurds seized the opportunity and used the power vacuum to establish their interests and agenda through establishing a democratic structure in northern parts of the country. However, instead of building a Kurdish nation-state, the people of Rojava developed a hybrid political structure known as Democratic Confederalism. Today, this system functions through hundreds of councils and assemblies in northern Syria. In the course of my study, I conducted a content analysis to see whether the structure of Rojava’s political structure corresponds to a democratic model that can facilitate the development of human rights in general and the empowerment of women in particular.

Since 2012, there has been an increase of media attention on the Kurds, particularly women who are active in the YPJ and Peshmerga. Various publications have equated women's militarization with women's liberation. In an effort to more accurately measure this, the following question must be asked; what is the effect of women's military involvement on women's rights? Women that are active in both nationalist movements and traditional state armies are presented with changing gender roles. Post conflict, there is a struggle for women to transfer their newfound autonomy into political activism. The theory outlines a chain in which women participate in the armed forces, feel empowered, are able to obtain positions of influence, and create policy and social change. A break in any point of this chain will block female excombatants from influencing women's rights. The theory is tested on Kurdish women active in the Iraqi Peshmerga and the Women's Protection Units (YPJ) in Syria. Data on women's military participation and their impact on women's rights was gathered from NGO reports, news articles, scholarly journals, and laws that were passed in Iraqi Kurdistan and Northern Syria. The evidence gathered indicates that women's military participation is not the only mechanism for improving women's rights. While the development of gender equality in Northern Syria can be linked to women's militarization, gender equality efforts in Iraqi Kurdistan do not have a direct link to women's involvement in the Peshmerga. This work adds to the ongoing discussion on Kurdish political rights, particularly women's autonomy.

The Syrian civil war has been one of the most complex armed confrontations in modern era. In thiscontext, the military participation of Kurdish female fighters of the YPJ Units has received globalmedia coverage. This thesis explores the gendered dimension of media representations of YPJfighters and the representation of the construction of their military identity. Firstly, it asks howBritish media represent their appearance and background, their ability to fight and their motivation.Moreover, it explores how pro-Kurdish media and on-line platforms represent the construction oftheir military identity and the way the YPJ is formed into a group. The data comes from 23 Britishand 8 pro-Kurdish media articles and is analysed with discourse analysis. The thesis finds thatBritish media representations echo the hegemonic discourse about women’s role as victims duringwar, while only the more liberal media represent motivations connected with a struggle againstpatriarchy, capitalism and the nation-state. Moreover, it finds that pro-Kurdish media represent YPJfighters as breaking stereotypical notions of femininity through a repetition of performativemilitary acts and about precarity being the condition of the group’s coherence. It also finds that thearticles function as interpellation to new fighters.

This thesis analyses media portrayal of the People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in US media by making use of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis. The thesis investigates if these portrayals have been used as a justification by the United States White House to intervene militarily in the conflict in Rojava. Three ways of portraying the YPG and YPJ have been identified: an Orientalist portrayal contrasting the YPG and YPJ to the Orient and including them in a Western ‘us’, a liberal feminist portrayal where the YPJ are contrasted and distanced to the ‘Third World woman’, and the portrayal of the fighters as nationalist and violent suicide bombers, placing them as ‘the Other’. The Orientalist ‘us’ portrayal was found to be used by the US government to justify military intervention. The contextual analysis of US media and politics showed that these portrayals depend on political agendas and therefore say much more about the political climate in the US than being representative of the YPG and YPJ which in its turn causes troubling misrepresentations of the YPG and YPJ.

The aim and purpose of this study is to explore how the Western media, more precisely six British newspapers, portrays the Kurdish female fighters of the Women’s Protection Units and the Peshmerga, who today are fighting against Deash in Northern Iraq and Syria. There have been a growing media interest in the Kurdish female fighters since the rise of Daesh, and they were an often recurring subject in newspapers and other media platforms during 2014 and 2015. I have collected 32 articles from six different newspapers, and applied a framework consisting of six different frames developed by Brigitte L. Nacos together with theories of media framing and social constructivism. The methodology is conducted as a critical discourse analysis, inspired by Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model.     In the articles, the Kurdish female fighters are portrayed as a different phenomenon, however, the articles still describes them as brave and dignified fighters who are rational in their understanding of what they are fighting for and what they are sacrificing. They are portrayed as being motivated by issues such as equality and female liberation in contrast to Deash anti-female values. The previous research conducted by feminist scholars often focuses on that the media portray women, who conduct acts of political violence, in a negative ways, such as deviants who are lacking traditionally stereotypical feminine characteristics or that their looks are in focus instead of their motivations. However, I have drawn the conclusion that there is more to how the Kurdish female fighters are portrayed then what one would think.

The present thesis compares media representations of Yekîneyên Parastina Jin (YPJ or the Women’s Protection Units), an all-female Kurdish military organisation, in British media versus the organisation’s own media outlets, with the aim to see how they differ, more specifically in terms of representations of their ideological agency. By utilizing critical discourse analysis (CDA) in combination with postcolonial theory, the media construction of four soldiers’ deaths have been scrutinized in 30 media texts in order to provide a deeper understanding of the hegemonic discourses and sociocultural practices which underpin these constructions. The result shows a discrepancy in terms of representations of YPJ’s ideological agency. On the one hand, YPJ adopts an explicit effort to assert their ideology through a propagandistic discourse that emphasises their values of resistance, freedom, egalitarianism, gender emancipation and democratic confederalism, portraying their fighters as fearless martyrs and heroines that are determined to die for their cause. On the other hand, the UK media represent YPJ’s ideology in generic ways in which hidden ideological ‘us vs. them’ representations are deeply rooted in a broader naturalised Western hegemonic discourse, with portrayals of YPJ’s fallen soldiers mostly characterised by sensationalism and victimisation. One part of such hidden ideological agenda is the way in which YPJ constantly gets included in, and excluded from, ‘us’ (the West), depending on who the enemy is, in addition to mainly receiving media coverage in direct relation to ISIS, a common Western enemy. The result is a representation that endorses YPJ’s fight within a hegemonic Western discourse, neglecting their ideological agency. This has sociocultural implications since such hegemonic discourse misrepresents YPJ’s struggle, constructing their fight mostly as part of a Western counterterrorist strategy, which further legitimises the Western power to construct history based on its own premises and claims of truth.