TLF SPECIAL: Fiery Braids of Defiance. How a Fallen Fighter Sparked a Protest – and a Probe in Turkey
A disturbing video filmed in Syria's Raqqa in early January 2026 has ignited a wave of solidarity protests across the world and triggered an official investigation against a nurse in Turkey. The footage, showing a jihadist proudly displaying the severed braid of a dead Kurdish woman fighter, has become a symbol of both war's brutality and women's resistance.A Macabre Trophy
The man in the video has been identified as Rami Yusuf Deheş, born in 1987 and registered in Tel Abyad (Girê Spî). Reports describe him as a long-time militant who previously fought with the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), the Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham, and who is now aligned with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). He is also said to be a father of five daughters and active on social media under the name "Rami Hashimi." In the viral clip from Raqqa, Deheş is seen holding a thick, braided lock of hair said to have been cut from a fallen fighter of the Women's Defense Units (YPJ), part of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. When the person filming asks, "Why did you cut it?", he replies, "She's already gone – what will she do with it?" The braid is held up as a macabre trophy, the scene framed with boastful pride.
The video unleashed outrage, especially among Kurdish and women's rights circles, who saw it as desecration of a body and a gendered act of humiliation aimed at the Kurdish women's struggle. Under intensifying criticism, Deheş later appeared in another video, claiming that the braid was not real hair but a wig and that he had been encouraged by a restaurant owner to stage the scene. He alleged that he believed the video would never be posted and that he later asked for it to be deleted – though by then it was already circulating widely. His explanation did nothing to stem the backlash.
From Insult To Rallying Cry
In response, Kurdish, Êzidî, and feminist activists turned the image of the braid from an insult into a rallying cry. Within days, a social media campaign built around the act of braiding hair took off under hashtags such as "kezî" (Kurdish for "braid") and slogans evoking the Kurdish women's movement. Women and supporters began filming themselves braiding their hair, dedicating their acts to the unknown YPJ fighter and to all women resisting in Rojava and beyond. For many, hair – especially the long braid – is a cultural symbol of honour, identity, and dignity. The message was clear: if one braid is cut in contempt, thousands more will be woven in defiance.
The campaign quickly moved from online spaces into political and cultural life in Turkey. High-profile politicians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party publicly joined in. Veteran politician Pervin Buldan shared a video of herself braiding her hair, while party colleagues including Erzurum MP Meral Danış Beştaş did the same. DEM Party spokesperson Ayşegül Doğan drew attention by braiding her hair in the Turkish parliament and sharing the moment, turning the legislative chamber itself into a stage for symbolic protest. Other DEM deputies also took part, emphasising that the assault on the fighter's hair was an assault on women's dignity and Kurdish identity.
The movement spread into the arts and human rights community. Prominent actress Belçim Bilgin posted a hair-braiding video on Instagram, explicitly linking her action to solidarity with Kurdish women. Opera singer Pervin Chakar recorded a message declaring her support for the "brave women and mothers" of the Kurdish people, aligning her artistic voice with the political symbolism of the braid. Human rights lawyer Eren Keskin, a long-standing advocate against gender-based violence and state abuses, also joined the campaign, as did musicians such as Mem Ararat and other public figures. Women's rights groups, including well-known anti-femicide activists, embraced the braid as a visual statement of resistance to both war crimes and patriarchal violence.
Support was not limited to Turkey. The governor of Halabja, Nuxşe Nasih, was reported to have braided her hair in solidarity, underscoring the resonance of the incident across Kurdish regions. In European cities, Kurdish organisations and their supporters organised rallies under slogans such as "Rojava is not alone," where women appeared with braided hair as a common motif. Demonstrations in London, for example, featured Kurdish women and allies braiding hair in public as part of their protest against the desecration in Raqqa and broader attacks on the Kurdish women's movement.
Êzidî women, whose community suffered genocide and mass enslavement under ISIS before many were rescued with the support of Kurdish forces, reacted with particular intensity. For them, the cutting and display of a woman's hair evoked deep trauma tied to sexual slavery, captivity, and attempts to erase their identity. Some Êzidî activists framed their response under the theme "This corpse will frighten you," turning the image of the fallen fighter into a symbol meant to haunt and shame perpetrators of gendered violence in wartime.
Religious leaders also weighed in. Kurdish Islamic scholar Sheikh Mürşid Haznevi condemned the act and, at the same time, insisted on the resilience of Kurdish society. He described the braid as a symbol of Kurdish honour and argued that those who believed they could break Kurdish dignity by cutting a woman's hair were deluding themselves. For Haznevi and others, the act in Raqqa was not just an individual cruelty but an expression of a wider hostility towards Kurds and towards women who take up arms in their own defence.
Women's organisations and rights advocates framed the incident through the language of international humanitarian law and gender-based violence. Many characterised it as a potential war crime, pointing to the desecration of a corpse, the targeting of a woman fighter's body, and the use of gendered humiliation. They called on international institutions and rights bodies to investigate and to treat such acts as serious violations rather than merely symbolic gestures. In their view, the hair-braiding campaign was not a cosmetic protest but an assertion that women's bodies and identities must not be turned into spoils or tools of terror.
A Nurse Under Scrutiny
The chain of events took a different turn inside Turkey when one participant in the campaign, a nurse from the north-western province of Kocaeli, came under formal scrutiny. The nurse, identified in local reports as İkra Hepgez, works at a public hospital and has a substantial following on social media, with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok. She recorded and shared a video of herself braiding her hair, captioning it with a message along the lines of: "Maybe it's not the same hair, but it's the same pain, the same feeling." The post clearly referenced the Raqqa incident and aligned her with the solidarity campaign.
On 24 January, the Kocaeli Provincial Health Directorate announced that judicial and administrative proceedings had been initiated against her. In a written statement, the directorate said that an employee of the ministry had made social media posts that violated the Civil Servants Law and the Ethical Principles for Public Officials, and that "the necessary judicial and administrative investigation has been launched and the matter is being closely followed." The implication was that the nurse's participation in the campaign was being treated as incompatible with the neutrality and conduct expected of public sector workers.
Polarized Reactions
The case immediately fed into Turkey's already polarised debate over freedom of expression, especially for civil servants and health workers. Government-aligned media outlets framed the nurse's video as support for "terrorists," arguing that braiding her hair in reference to a YPJ fighter amounted to propaganda for an armed group linked, in Ankara's view, to the PKK. They questioned whether someone engaging in such symbolic acts should be entrusted with public healthcare responsibilities. Opponents of the investigation, however, countered that the nurse had simply expressed solidarity with women facing war crimes and gender-based violence, and that disciplining her for this constituted an attack on basic freedoms.
The controversy also tapped into deeper arguments over whose suffering counts in the public sphere. Critics of the hair-braiding campaign pointed to victims of PKK attacks inside Turkey, such as murdered teachers and security officers, arguing that celebrating or symbolically supporting YPJ fighters ignored bloodshed attributed to Kurdish armed groups. The name of Aybüke Yalçın, a young teacher killed in an attack, surfaced frequently in online polemics. Commentators hostile to the campaign accused its participants of "hypocrisy" and claimed the movement "smelled of blood," invoking the memory of Turkish victims to challenge what they saw as selective empathy.
At the same time, supporters of the campaign emphasised that the act of braiding hair was directed against a specific violation – the humiliation of a dead woman's body – and not an endorsement of every action taken by any Kurdish force. They argued that the outrage at Raqqa was about women's bodily integrity and human dignity under war, principles they claimed should transcend political lines. For them, the nurse's investigation was a stark example of how quickly solidarity with Kurdish women could be criminalised when it collided with the Turkish state's security narrative.
Legally, the case of İkra Hepgez highlights the tension between civil servants' duty of political neutrality and their individual right to express conscience and solidarity. Under Turkey's Civil Servants Law and related ethical codes, public employees are expected to refrain from conduct considered to constitute political propaganda or to be damaging to state institutions. In practice, however, the boundaries of this prohibition are often contested, especially when it comes to social media. The nurse's situation raises uncomfortable questions: when a public employee protests what may be a war crime against a woman in another country, does that constitute prohibited political expression or legitimate moral speech?
Photo: Kocaeli Barış