BEHDINAN – HPG Press Center statement is as follows:
“The valiant son of Cizîra Botan, the self-sacrificing militant of our people’s struggle for freedom and the brave YJA Star fighter, our comrade Destan Botan fell martyr in the clash with the enemy on July 25, 2023. While she was on a mission in Nisêbîn, she fought alone against hundreds of enemies besieging the place she was in. With a great courage and self-sacrificing spirit, she considered it a great dishonor to be alive and fought to the end and marched to martyrdom in order not to be captured. Our epic comrade reached martyrdom by duly representing the dignity of free women, the Apoist militancy stance and the irresistible spirit of the Bêrîtans who created YJA Star.
The epic struggle, stance, unaccountable participation, bravery and self-sacrificing march of our epic comrade, which is like its name, will always guide us and will be our source of strength and morale. As long as our people have such valiant, fearless, warlike, noble and free-spirited pioneer women, the hope for a free life will always be alive and their noble struggle will definitely triumph.
We extend our condolences to the valuable family of our comrade Destan, our patriotic Cizîra Botan people and all the people of Kurdistan.
The identity information of our comrade Destan Botan is as follows:
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Code Name: Destan Botan Name Surname: Kader Acar Place of Birth: Şirnex Mother – Father Name: Leyla–Mehmet Date and Place of Martyrdom: 25 July 2023 / Nisêbîn |
The geography of Botan, the homeland of the Kurdish people for thousands of years, is known for its noble, resilient and valiant people. The people of Botan, who strongly defended the Kurdish language, identity, cultural values, traditions and customs, showed great resistance to protect Kurdishness and Kurdistan. She paid great prices in these resistances, showed epic heroism, never gave way to the invaders and never bowed to oppression. This ancient resilient past of the Botan region has become a character and lifestyle for the people of Botan. In this sense, it has become one of our regions that can preserve its Kurdish identity in the strongest and unspoiled state.
With the emergence of the Apoist movement and its transition to the Botan region, the people of Botan embraced the Apoists as soon as they recognized them. The high human virtues they saw in the person of the first Apoists attracted the people of Botan, and when they saw that the Apoists were devoted to their people, they opened the doors of their hearts and homes to them. Witnessing the epic march of Fermandar Egîd’s Bedran Gundikremo, Rahime Kahraman, Zelal Botan, Azime, Çiçek Kiçi, Adil Biliki, Kurtay Feraşîn, Nûda Karker, Delal Amed, Egîd Civyan, Leyla Sorxwin and thousands of heroes, the people of Botan are also deeply committed to the freedom struggle.
The young men and women of Botan, who grew up like saplings on the roots of this ancient culture and strong patriotism, grew up knowing, recognizing, feeling and living the Kurdistan Freedom Struggle. When many patriotic Kurdish children first learned to speak, they grew up learning and saying the words “Apo”, “Bijî Serok Apo” above all else. Our party PKK, which succeeded in realizing a great social and cultural revolution in Kurdistan, created the opportunity and environment for the new generations to grow up in Kurdistan with a strong patriotic awareness, culture and identity. Therefore, the noble youth of Botan, who did not lose their essence, ran towards the guerrilla ranks with great love as they grew up and joined the struggle.
A noble and distinguished son raised by the people of Botan is our comrade Destan Botan. Our epic comrade opened her eyes in the ancient Cizîra Botan, the center of Botan. Like every Botanian, she grew up recognizing her people’s struggle for existence and freedom. The martyrdom of her uncle, Abdullah Acar, who was a loyal, honest and patriotic militia of the freedom struggle, by the enemy enabled our comrade Destan to recognize the fact of martyrdom early on. On the one hand, she grew up with a commitment to the values of freedom, and on the other hand, with the spirituality created by the reality of martyrs. She learned how difficult, laborious and costly it is to lead our people’s struggle for freedom to victory, but at the same time, there is no other way of salvation other than this. Our comrade Destan, who studied at Turkish public schools for 10 years as a successful student, she realized early on that the enemy schools had no function other than being centers of assimilation and genocide. Leaving Turkish public school, she turned her face to the mountains of Kurdistan in 2014 and joined the ranks of the guerrilla with great love.
Her biggest dream was to meet the guerrilla, to reach the mountains, to live in an environment of communal comradeship with no self-interest and calculation. As a young woman, she enthusiastically joined the guerrilla’s endless development and liberation environment, leaving all social chains behind. She saw that the guerrilla and guerrilla are not just a fighting army, the guerrilla is also the prototype of the free man, representing a community of comrades who aim to get rid of all individualistic habits and live as a dervish. Therefore, she focused on getting to know the guerrilla, the PKK life and the Apoist ideology that created all these values, with greater enthusiasm and curiosity. She received her first guerrilla training in Heftanîn and started practicing. On the one hand, she got used to mountain life, learned guerrillaism, and on the other hand, she focused on educating and improving herself.
Our comrade Destan, who is a self-sacrificing, laboring and enterprising person in life, tried to re-create herself by reuniting with the social roots of Kurdish women, regaining what was lost to the women’s nation for thousands of years and embodying them in his person. She developed her consciousness, strengthened her understanding with a correct understanding of history, read the history of free women, and deeply recognized the reality of women, people and country. Our comrade Destan, an open-minded, hardworking and intelligent woman, read Apoist philosophy and women’s liberation ideology with great curiosity, absorbed what she read, and brought to life what she had assimilated with great consistency. In this sense, she has reached the level of militancy, whose essence, word, and practice are one.
When the ISIS gangs attacked Shengal and tried to massacre our Êzidî people, our comrade Destan, like the other Apoist Fedayeen, took up her gun and turned her face to Shengal. She took part in many activities in Shengal, fought relentlessly and made a great effort for the liberation of our Êzidî people. While creating great values for the free future of our Êzidî people, he also learned a lot from our people there. Our comrade Destan, who gained great experience, moved to Medya Defense Zones on the basis of HPG’s decision to withdraw completely from Shengal in 2018.
She aimed to reach the professional guerrilla level in order to develop an effective struggle against the genocidal and colonialist Turkish state in the Medya Defense Zones and specifically in Bakurê Kurdistan. On this basis, she became involved in the training process at the military academy and specialized in assassination tactics. Our comrade was a YJA Star militant who was quick to grasp ideologically and could put into practice what he had learned with great consistency, and was able to put into practice what she learned militarily with great dexterity. After graduating from the military academy with a good degree, this time she began to train, develop and train hervcomrades. For two years, she worked hard for her comrades to be educated and specialized, and she helped and guided in every moment of life. In this process, she learned the virtues of command.
Acting with the awareness of her historical duties as a free woman who is a PKK and PAJK militant, our comrade Destan wanted to take part in practical fields after the training process. Her face was always turned towards Bakure Kurdistan and Botan. She spent every moment with the love and excitement of the day she would walk to Botan. Our comrade believed wholeheartedly in the pioneering mission of women, saw this power in herself, revealed the power of women in her personality with the awareness of the truth of “xwebun” and made herself very competent with the Apoist ideology. She fulfilled her pioneering role in every moment of her life with the level she created in herself. Not content with the existing, she was always in great quest to create the new, to find the more beautiful, correct and good one. Our comrade Destan, who has an irrepressible dynamic personality and strong pursuits, She focused on the responsibilities of women and youth in the Revolutionary People’s War strategy. For this purpose, it took part in YPS studies and focused on creating new ways and methods of struggle.
Our Destan comrade believed that freedom would never be free wihtout cost and devoted herself selflessly to create the possibility of a free life, which the enemy did not leave us a shred of. She became a soldier who aimed to respond with a strong march in order to respond to the expectation of victory of our Leader, our martyrs and our people. She fought to eliminate the phenomenon of betrayal that polluted the freedom struggle of our people, pulled it back and prevented it from achieving victory. She was always angry at betrayal, contras, agents and collaborators. She said that unless these parasites stuck to the body of the Kurdish people are cleaned up, our free future will always be under threat and danger. That’s why he acted like Kemal Pir and Zîlans in every moment of her life with a great sense of revenge and consciousness.
While our comrade was on duty in Nisêbîn, the city of quintessential patriotism, she was surrounded by hundreds of forces and armored vehicles of the invading Turkish state. She acted with the awareness that there was no room for surrender in the book of Apoist sacrifice and fought against hundreds of invaders with great courage. Our comrade Destan, who fought for a long time with great courage and sacrifice, chose to march to martyrdom in order not to be taken prisoner by the enemy, without thinking of surrendering as befits her glory. The struggle of our comrade Destan, which started in an epic way just like her name, and which she waged for years with a great love of labor and freedom, her stance against the enemy and her bravery have passed into our history of struggle. Our comrade Destan, like the thousands of folk heroes she was her successor, was one of the symbolic soldiers of our freedom struggle and duly continued the noble resistance tradition of Botan.”
