Back in 1998, the fighters say, their now-jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan declared the group "a women's party." It was initially difficult to accept, says Karim, a 42-year-old male member of the PKK.

Today, the PKK's ideology revolves around a belief that global crises and injustice are a result of millennia of male-dominated rule. Here, the women run their own assaults and have their own command structure. All tasks are shared, both on and off the battlefield. Discipline is paramount to survival, they say, and weapons are always clean and never out of reach.

Plato's 5th book of the Republic and the Women of Sparta come to mind.

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