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An arti­cle in the July 2016 edi­tion of the Monde Diplo­ma­tique, returns to the epis­to­lary rela­tion­ship between Öcalan, the impris­oned leader of the PKK and the Amer­i­can anar­chist thinker, Mur­ray Bookchin.

This fol­lows in their foot­steps since this website’s archives lack a descrip­tion of the dia­logue between the polit­i­cal leader who came from marx­ism lenin­ism and the lib­er­tar­i­an activist , this dia­logue form­ing noth­ing less than the orig­i­nal back­bone of the PKK’s cur­rent polit­i­cal program.

In 2004, Abdul­lah Öcalan, via his lawyers who were still autho­rized to meet with him, asked to be put in con­tact with Bookchin. Öcalan sent him a man­u­script, told him he con­sid­ered him­self Bookch­in’s “dis­ci­ple” and was think­ing of apply­ing the notions of social ecol­o­gy in the Mid­dle East. This pos­si­bil­i­ty of a dia­logue was abbre­vi­at­ed due to Bookchin’s health. At eighty-three, he no longer had the ener­gy required to main­tain con­tacts of some dura­tion. It was fruit­ful nonethess and gave rise to the foun­da­tions of “demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism”, the process now under prac­ti­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion in Roja­va. Bookchin also sent the fol­low­ing mes­sage to the Kur­dish peo­ple: “My hope is that the Kur­dish peo­ple will be able to imple­ment some day a free and ratio­nal soci­ety that will allow it to shine again. You are lucky to have a leader as tal­ent­ed as Mis­ter Öcalan to guide you.”

Com­ing from a lib­er­tar­i­an such as Mur­ray Bookchin, these words will sur­prise those who have stayed fix­at­ed on the image of the PKK cir­cu­lat­ed in Europe. Indeed, the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of this fight­ing Par­ty on the offi­cial list of inter­na­tion­al­ly des­ig­nat­ed “ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions” linked to its “ortho­dox” marx­ist lenin­ist past, often asso­ci­at­ed here to the ex-Stal­in­ist wing, plus the close rela­tion­ships main­tained by the Kur­dish dias­po­ra with tra­di­tion­al bureau­crat­ic Left­ist par­ties doesn’t sim­pli­fy mat­ters. Add to that what is often per­ceived as a per­son­al­i­ty cult around Öcalan, giv­en the por­traits and ban­ners much in evi­dence, and you have the per­fect cock­tail lead­ing dis­re­gard for some­thing that mer­its fun­da­men­tal attention.

More­over, one can­not say the “ultra left” and most of the so-called anar­chist ten­den­cies have helped to spread infor­ma­tion on the PKK’s polit­i­cal evo­lu­tion or on its origins.

In 2006, when Mur­ray Bookchin died, the PKK assem­bly referred to him as “one of the XXth century’s great­est social sci­ences spe­cial­ists. He intro­duced us to social ecol­o­gy and con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of social­ist the­o­ry so that it could move for­ward on more sol­id ground. He demon­strat­ed how to turn a new demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem into a real­i­ty. He pro­posed the con­cept of Con­fed­er­al­ism, a mod­el we con­sid­er cre­ative and fea­si­ble. Bookchin’s the­ses on the state, pow­er and hier­ar­chy will be applied and put in prac­tice in our strug­gle… We put this promise to the test by becom­ing the first soci­ety to estab­lish a tan­gi­ble form of demo­c­ra­t­ic confederalism.”

For one inter­est­ed in the ongo­ing polit­i­cal process­es in Roja­va and sup­port­ive of the Kur­dish strug­gle both in Syr­ia and in Turkey, going beyond the polit­i­cal approx­i­ma­tions heaped on the main his­tor­i­cal Kur­dish com­bat­ant, and con­sid­er­ing he opened up to ideas and prac­tices as well as con­struc­tive utopias he did not share at the onset, allows us to mea­sure the evo­lu­tions and the road trav­elled through­out the strug­gles and fail­ures to which he was confronted.

It also allows to mea­sure the exist­ing split between the Kur­dish polit­i­cal project in Syr­ia, the one car­ried by the HDP in Turkey and that of Barzani in Irak, thus com­plet­ing a glob­al approach.

Most of all, it allows an escape from the slo­gan con­stant­ly slapped onto the Kur­dish people’s strug­gle by the Euro­pean Left, a slo­gan drawn from the People/State/Nation tril­o­gy call­ing for the recon­sti­tu­tion of a “Kur­dis­tan, uni­fied, inde­pen­dent and nation­al (in the eth­nic sense) “… in oth­er words, the qua­si-antithe­sis of “demo­c­ra­t­ic confederalism”.

We have nev­er claimed that this the­sis no longer exist­ed in the Kur­dish move­ment, and notably in its Euro­pean dias­po­ra, influ­enced by par­lia­men­tary and nation­al­is­tic par­ties. We know it is per­sis­tent, and trans­mit­ted through igno­rance, be it vol­un­tary or not, out­side the major evo­lu­tions in polit­i­cal think­ing with­in the activist Kur­dish move­ments of the last decade.

This arti­cle is meant as a first approach to Mur­ray Bookchin. For excerpts of this thought and read­ing sug­ges­tions from or about this polit­i­cal figure:

(In French):

To famil­iar­ize you with the man, this video of an inter­ven­tion in 1985. You will dis­cov­er the mil­i­tant ener­gy and con­vic­tion of a thinker many of us would have loved to have and whom we shall miss from now on:

And of course, I could not end this first arti­cle with­out an appeal and a relay of the Kur­dish movement’s appeal for news about Öcalan who has been main­tained in secre­cy for months and for whom legit­i­mate wor­ries are war­rant­ed in the chaos fol­low­ing the coup d’etat in Turkey.


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
Translation & writing by Kedistan. You may use and share Kedistan’s articles and translations, specifying the source and adding a link in order to respect the writer(s) and translator(s) work. Thank you.
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Let­tres mod­ernes à l’Université de Tours. Gros mots poli­tiques… Coups d’oeil politiques…