Çekdar Paytext (Barış Akan)

Çekdar Paytext was the nom de guerre of Barış Akan, a Kurdish guerrilla fighter who belonged to the Rojhilat Kurdistan Defense Units (YRK), an armed group operating in the Kurdish freedom movement associated with the jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. He was born in the province of Amed, known in Turkish as Diyarbakır, in southeastern Turkey. Public reporting has not disclosed his date of birth, so his exact age at death is not known.

Akan came from what the YRK described as a patriotic family with longstanding ties to the Kurdish freedom movement. His older brother, Nizam Akan, had fought under the code name Çekdar and was killed in 1994. When Barış Akan joined the guerrilla ranks in 2023, he took his late brother's nom de guerre for himself, becoming known as Çekdar Paytext in tribute to him.

He served as a fighter with the YRK, a group that operates mainly in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and along the Iran Iraq border area and describes itself as part of the broader movement inspired by Abdullah Öcalan's political philosophy. The YRK and allied groups in this movement, including the better known Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), are classified as terrorist organizations by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, while their supporters regard them as a liberation movement for Kurdish self determination. Within this context, Akan's three years as a fighter were, according to the YRK's own tribute, marked by close bonds with fellow fighters and a stated readiness for self sacrifice on behalf of comrades.

Akan died on September 2, 2026, in an accident in the Pêncewîn area of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, referred to by the movement as Southern Kurdistan. The YRK's Press and Communications Center announced his death publicly, extending condolences to the Akan family and to Kurds more broadly, and praised him as a committed and loyal comrade. No further detail about the nature of the accident has been made public.

The announcement drew tributes from within the Kurdish freedom movement, with the YRK statement quoting Akan's own words about organizational loyalty and comradeship and describing him as someone who would be remembered as a symbol of that comradeship. As of the time of writing, there has been no independent, official confirmation from Iraqi or Turkish authorities of the circumstances of his death, and the account of events rests on the YRK's own statement.