Emine Kara

Emine Kara, also known by the nom de guerre Evîn Goyî, (1974 – 23 December 2022) was a Turkish Kurdish militant and political activist who served as president of the .

Originally from Turkey, she fled to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq in 1994 after her village was massacred. She joined the Kurdish cause in 1988 and participated in the war of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) against the Islamic State in 2014. After sustaining an injury in Raqqa, she moved to Europe for medical treatment in 2020. She was killed in the 2022 Paris shooting.

Biography Born in 1974 in Hilal in the Şırnak Province, Turkey, she was the fourth child out of five. Her family moved to Iraq in 1994, where they settled in a refugee camp in Zakho before permanently moving to Makhmur.

Military career Kara joined the Kurdish militant movement in 1988. She fought and campaigned for Kurdistan in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In 2014, she joined the militias organized to defend an self-declared autonomous area (the later AANES) formed by the Democratic Union Party, which had close links with the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party, during the Syrian civil war. She took part in the struggle against the Islamic State in Kobanî and the Battle of Raqqa. She was credited with popularizing the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom, utilized by the women's wing of the Peace and Democracy Party. She also initiated several demonstrations in Paris in support of Mahsa Amini.