Guerrilla Azê Erdal fell as a martyr in resistance against the Turkish invasion of Metîna in August 2022, said the Press Center of the People’s Defense Forces (HPG) in a statement on Saturday.
After its defeats in the Zap region, the Turkish army launched an occupation attack on the Girê Hekarî resistance area in May 2022 and used banned weapons. The guerrillas resisted for months with small mobile groups in the area and in the tunnels that had been built. Azê Erdal fought until her last breath and remained true to her ideal of a free life as an exemplary militant of the YJA Star, wrote the HPG in her obituary.
The HPG expressed its condolences to her family, the population of Maxmur Camp and the people of Kurdistan.
The HPG said in its statement that Azê Erdal was born in Geliyê Qiyametê near Etrûş in South Kurdistan. Her family came from the Northern Kurdish Botan region and had to leave Turkey due to state oppression. Azê grew up in the self-governing refugee camp of Maxmur, where she was taught in her native Kurdish language at school and participated in the camp’s activities since she was a teenager. In 2012, she went to the mountains and joined the guerrillas.
After her basic training in Gare, Azê immediately wanted to take part in the guerrilla operations in Zagros at the time. Because she still had too little experience, she was advised to take a course at the “Şehîd Rojîn Gewda” operations school instead. There she deepened her knowledge of combat tactics and learned about her own strengths. Until 2015 she was mainly active in Gare and Zap.
When the Turkish state unilaterally broke off negotiations for a solution to the Kurdish question and began to implement its plan of annihilation, Azê set herself the goal of fighting in her original homeland of Botan. To prepare for that, she went to the Haki Karer Academy, where she received further military and ideological training and dealt with women’s liberation ideology and her own personality. Due to existing needs, she then went to Heftanin, where she fought for five years. She went to another course at the Haki Karer Academy in 2021. She then went to the front in Metîna and stayed mainly at Girê Hekarî, where she resisted as a free woman in the tunnel war until the end.
Codename: Azê Erdal
First and last name: Kurdistan Sîdar
Place of birth: Etrûş
Names of mother and father: Qumrî – Mehmet Salih
Date and place of death: August 2022 / Metîna