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In Kobanê, Syr­i­an Kurds were not only defend­ing a strate­gic Mid­dle East­ern out­post. They were also defend­ing a utopi­an con­cept of gov­ern­ment. One they are putting into prac­tice. It is called demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism. Öcalan is no stranger to it.

The Syr­i­an Kurds describe it as a space in which deci­sions are tak­en at the neigh­bor­hood lev­el, one were gen­der equal­i­ty and eth­nic inclu­sivi­ness are manda­to­ry and pre­scribed by law, and where barter will become more impor­tant than a “nation­al” currency.

As already men­tioned in my pre­ced­ing arti­cle, this polit­i­cal utopia did not fall out of the sky, and may appear sur­pris­ing to many. Lead­ers of the Kur­dish move­ment who devel­oped this guid­ing phi­los­o­phy did so fol­low­ing a joint explo­ration of Mur­ray Bookchin’s ideas, one that welds togeth­er marx­ism and lib­er­tar­i­an ideas, in a world vision in which pop­u­lar assem­blies would sup­plant State bureau­cra­cy, and where ecol­o­gy along with the fight against patri­archy ful­ly occu­py the space they deserve.

Bookchin, who described him­self as a social­ist lib­er­tar­i­an, died on July 30th 2006. His death was com­mem­o­rat­ed through­out the Kur­dish regions. And today (at Abdul­lah Öcalan’s insti­ga­tion from his prison) Syr­i­an Kurds are build­ing a soci­ety which is the antithe­sis of the Islam­ic State and its worst ene­my. This polit­i­cal sub­strate, most appar­ent with­in the YPG and the YPJ, plays a role in the tena­cious­ness of these fight­ers one might con­sid­er “poor­ly orga­nized” from the view­point of a tra­di­tion­al mil­i­tary hierarchy.

Yet it is they who are at the fore­front of the fight against ISIS, with sup­port from the coali­tion of course, but a very vari­able sup­port that oscil­lates accord­ing to the whims of inter­na­tion­al geopol­i­tics. Up until now, no gov­ern­ment backs the enti­ty of Roja­va in the polit­i­cal utopia it defends in dai­ly life, despite the ongo­ing war.

Kobanê and two oth­er small “can­tons” com­prise the ter­ri­to­ry on which 1,5 mil­lion Syr­i­an Kurds have launched this social exper­i­ment – facil­i­tat­ed by the 2011 wan­ing of Bachar el-Assad’s repres­sive forces. The exper­i­ment keeps on grow­ing. The recent vic­to­ry of Man­bij over ISIS, achieved at the cost of a blood­bath among the Kurds and allied fight­ers (in the SDF, Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces) has rein­forced the ongo­ing process.

The close rela­tion­ship between the Syr­i­an Kurds and the tute­lary fig­ure of Öcalan, the PKK’s his­tor­i­cal leader still brand­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly as “ter­ror­ist” enrages Turkey, the Unit­ed States’ one remain­ing impor­tant ally in the region.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism” is also in rad­i­cal oppo­si­tion to Turk­ish nation­al­ism. For this rea­son, it cre­ates dis­sen­sions with­in the cur­rent polit­i­cal major­i­ty of Ira­ki Kurds, who are favored by Wash­ing­ton — even if their leader Barzani claims to agree with the polit­i­cal vision con­tained in demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism (while defend­ing the con­tra­dic­to­ry notion of a Kur­dish nation-state.) Defend­ing the idea of demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism in words, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tak­ing advan­tage of mil­i­tary recon­quests over ISIS in order to reset­tle – includ­ing by expro­pri­a­tion — ter­ri­to­ries that were tra­di­tion­al­ly occu­pied by non-Kur­dish pop­u­la­tions, is a typ­i­cal con­struct toward the build­ing of a Kur­dish nation-state that can only lead to new con­flicts in the fore­see­able future.

Rojava’s grow­ing auton­o­my since the vic­to­ry in Kobanê and the ret­i­cence of the Syr­i­an Kurds to launch an all-out offen­sive against Assad (which would only sad­dle them with a need­less addi­tion­al ene­my) also upsets region­al rela­tion­ships with Syr­i­an Arab nation­al­ist rebels the Unit­ed States has been woo­ing against Bachar for years. Barzani’s polit­i­cal project in Irak is hard­ly designed to low­er exist­ing tensions.

Bachar is now in mil­i­tary con­trol again fol­low­ing the Russ­ian inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia that cul­mi­nat­ed in the Alep­po mas­sacres. With the Turk­ish inter­ven­tion begun in Jer­ablus with the aid of Djhadist groups ( part of which flowed out from the above-named Syr­i­an Arrab rebels) ; and with the per­spec­tive of mas­sive aid from the “anti ISIS coali­tion” in sup­port of an offen­sive against Mosul in Irak, Roja­va has nev­er found itself in so many simul­ta­ne­ous mil­i­tary crossfires.

Despite its iso­la­tion, the Turk­ish block­ade and the short­ages, Rojava’s polit­i­cal and social orga­ni­za­tion allows it to hold on and main­tain a place of wel­come for Kurds as well as for pop­u­la­tions oth­er than Kur­dish. In this, alliances born with­in the FDS spread out into civil­ian soci­ety thanks to a polit­i­cal project and an utopia that allows for for­ward think­ing to a region­al future beyond the war.

And yet, the threat is great, with Roja­va sub­ject­ed to black­mail for aid, for weapons, for mil­i­tary logis­ti­cal sup­port, accord­ing to the whims in the geopo­lit­i­cal winds fol­lowed by region­al and inter­na­tion­al pow­ers. It finds itself con­stant­ly den­i­grat­ed, with neg­a­tive media cam­paigns con­duct­ed not only in Turkey, where Roja­va is feared because of the pos­si­ble con­ta­gion of its ideas to all of Turk­ish Kur­dis­tan, placed under the repres­sive boot of the Turk­ish state for over a year now.

Here is a look at the role played in the Kur­dish move­ment by a polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal meet­ing in the recent decades. A cor­re­spon­dence between a Marx­ist-Lenin­ist draw­ing a bit­ter assess­ment of the past, and an activist lib­er­tar­i­an philoso­pher, draw­ing lessons from the tri­umph of neo-lib­er­al­ism now vast­ly over­shad­ow­ing the lib­er­tar­i­an movement…

The notion of demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism winds its way for­ward on a tor­tu­ous and treach­er­ous path through an intel­lec­tu­al meet­ing between two men, the reflec­tions inspired by the ener­gy of Kur­dish polit­i­cal move­ments, of the gueril­la, and through the major role played by women through all these strands of thought….

Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism throws into light the polit­i­cal back­ward­ness of Euro­pean “pro­gres­sive” move­ments in under­stand­ing and inte­grat­ing these lessons. A Euro­pean Left whose com­mu­nist wing evolved very dif­fer­ent­ly after the end of the Cold War, found its polit­i­cal sal­va­tion in the “reval­u­a­tion of the nation-state and of the Repub­lic”, trad­ing in the ham­mer and sick­le for inte­gra­tion along­side the old social demo­c­ra­t­ic ten­den­cies, or even meld­ing into them, at a time when these same ten­den­cies gave them­selves over to neo-lib­er­al­ism in the “Euro­pean project”. The recon­struc­tion peri­ods that fol­lowed the Sec­ond World War led the Left to “roll up its sleeves” and rein­te­grate the lap of the nation-states, includ­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in their man­age­ment with­in large “pop­u­lar fronts” of vary­ing geome­tries. And yet, the his­to­ry of Turkey pro­vides prac­ti­cal lessons in the dis­man­tling of the sacred tryp­tich com­bin­ing Peo­ple-State-Nation which has been at the root of all the region­al mas­sacres in the Mid­dle East, dur­ing and fol­low­ing the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Ottoman block and the work­ings of colo­nial imperialisms.

Thrown into the Sec­ond World War, then fol­lowed by the Cold War, the Euro­pean Left turned its back on a polit­i­cal reflec­tion that became frozen in marx­ist dog­ma and ide­ol­o­gy cut off from social prac­tice. It failed to inte­grate thinkers and intel­lec­tu­als con­duct­ing a con­struc­tive and pos­i­tive crit­i­cism of it. Bookchin – who was far from being the only one – had tak­en on this task wor­thy of Sisy­phus. This think­ing now emerges as the polit­i­cal and social exper­i­ment of Rojava.

Per­haps it is more than time to shat­ter the ide­o­log­i­cal immo­bil­ism of the Left­ist par­ties, some­times accom­pa­nied by the worse kind of oppor­tunism, and some­times by a total trans­fer into neo-lib­er­al­ism – as is the case in Greece – in light of what is com­ing out of the Mid­dle East. A bit less of the “nation­al­ist” view­point would also help in advanc­ing the eman­ci­pa­tion move­ments, and keep them from flag-wav­ing com­pe­ti­tions with the sor­ri­est of the identitarians…

Sol­i­dar­i­ty expressed for the Kur­dish move­ment in a com­pas­sion­ate mode for the sake of the gallery is use­less if it comes with a sti­fling of its polit­i­cal thought or, even worse, with its cor­rup­tion. In France, with the approach­ing elec­tions, attempt­ing to give one’s self a Left­ist “inter­na­tion­al” label in order to flat­ter the elec­torate and the Kur­dish dias­po­ra would turn into a deser­tion rather than a mean­ing­ful advance forward.

The best way to pro­vide sup­port to the Kur­dish move­ment is to lis­ten, to read, to show inter­est and to offer real aid to the endan­gered imple­men­ta­tion of what they are offer­ing us polit­i­cal­ly : what appears as a post-marx­ist utopia to some, and which is nonethe­less so real in Rojava.

It invites us to act, to seize anew on the word utopia, in order for a clean sweep of the past…

Öcalan

Pho­to by Lud­wig Rauch 1992

A fun­da­men­tal lib­er­tar­i­an precept :

Every human being is com­pe­tent in the man­age­ment of the affairs of soci­ety, and more specif­i­cal­ly of the com­mu­ni­ty of which he is a mem­ber. No pol­i­cy has demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­i­ma­cy if it was not pro­posed, dis­cussed and decid­ed direct­ly by the peo­ple and not by some rep­re­sen­ta­tives or sub­sti­tutes. Only the admin­is­tra­tion of these polit­i­cal direc­tives may be entrust­ed to coun­cils, com­mis­sions or col­lec­tives of qual­i­fied per­sons, elect­ed even­tu­al­ly to exe­cute the pop­u­lar man­date under pub­lic con­trol and with an oblig­a­tion to ren­der accounts to the deci­sion­ary assemblies…

Mur­ray Bookchin

Excerpts from Akbar Shahid Ahmed

Bookchin died in Burling­ton in 2006, and he grew up speak­ing Russ­ian. His par­ents were Russ­ian Jews, activists in the move­ment against the tsar. “I learned Eng­lish in the streets of a mul­ti-eth­nic city, New York”, Bookchin said.

Bookchin was a com­mu­nist in his youth, but real­ized ear­ly on he would not fol­low a par­ty line. He quit the Young Com­mu­nist League in his teens because he feared that his Left­ist col­leagues would “col­lab­o­rate” with the bour­geoisie. Bookchin remained involved with the Com­mu­nist Par­ty in the Unit­ed States until the end of the Span­ish Civ­il War in which he said lat­er he would have par­tic­i­pat­ed, had he been old­er. Grad­u­at­ing from High School, he adopt­ed Leon Trotsky’s views on the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. He worked for a while as a foundry work­er in New Jersey.

After ten years in the unions, Bookchin aban­doned ortho­dox marx­ism fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War. “The war that end­ed with­out a rev­o­lu­tion”, he explained in an inter­view in 2001. Bookchin start­ed “think­ing every­thing over” as he saw auto­mo­bile indus­try work­ers “reclas­si­fy­ing” too pas­sive­ly for his taste and the place of “work” in post-war Amer­i­ca shift­ing rapidly.

Bookchin began to deam of a future in which machines might replace human effort and where free indi­vid­u­als could devel­op as they wished. But he also believed that, along with social prob­lems, a greater prob­lem would arise (“the strug­gle between the pow­er of the indus­tries and the bet­ter inter­ests of human­i­ty”) from the waste thrown back into the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. “The notion of progress, once con­sid­ered as an arti­cle of faith for the evo­lu­tion of a greater human coop­er­a­tion and car­ing is now iden­ti­fied as con­stant­ly rep­re­sent­ing more com­pe­ti­tion and irre­spon­s­able eco­nom­ic growth”, Bookchin then stated.

He then pio­neered “social ecol­o­gy” advo­cat­ing the use of human inno­va­tion at the ser­vice of pop­u­la­tions and the plan­et, rather than at the ser­vice of capital.

Accord­ing to Bookchin, “Utopia isn’t only a dream in slow motion, but some­thing that could real­ly hap­pen”, accord­ing to his biog­ra­ph­er and long­time com­pan­ion, Janet Biehl.

Bookchin pro­pos­es remod­el­ing the cap­i­tal­ist world by putting in place sys­tems at the micro-lev­el of local pop­u­lar assem­blies. Such a polit­i­cal struc­ture would con­sist, in his opin­ion, in a mar­riage between the best aspects of two intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tions. “We must move beyond the economism of Marx and beyond the indi­vid­u­al­ism which is some­times latent and some­times explic­it in anarchism.”

Bookchin’s polit­i­cal struc­ture rest­ed on com­mu­nal­ism or “a com­mune of com­munes” that had lit­tle to do with the notion of a nation-state.
This may be what makes it so attrac­tive to the Syr­i­an Kurds – a peo­ple who have nev­er had their own “coun­try”.

Con­trary to the Ira­ki Kurds (the part­ners of the West since 1991, who are skep­ti­cal of the PKK and are cur­rent­ly sat­is­fied with an autonomous region with­in the Ira­ki nation-state), Syr­i­an and Turk­ish Kurds take their ide­o­log­i­cal bear­ings from Öcalan.

So when he argued that ancient Kur­dish aspi­ra­tions for struc­tures that would guar­an­tee them polit­i­cal auton­o­my could best be obtained if Kurds adopt­ed the phil­o­go­phy of a mus­ta­chioed Rus­so-Amer­i­can Jew born in the Bronx, they listened.

Öcalan was a marx­ist-lenin­ist “true believ­er”. But in 1999, at the time when the Unit­ed States and Syr­ia helped Turkey cap­ture him, he had expressed his doubts con­cern­ing the via­bil­i­ty of ortho­dox com­mu­nist thought. The PKK had aban­doned the objec­tive of estab­lish­ing a Kur­dish nation-state as ear­ly as 1995. When Öcalan was abduct­ed, the Kur­dish move­ment had already start­ed on its attempt to iden­ti­fy the next steps in the polit­i­cal process.

Turkey impris­oned Öcalan in 1999 on an island 35 miles south of Istan­bul, the same T‑shaped ter­ri­to­ry where the mil­i­tary respon­si­ble for the 1960 coup d’état had exe­cut­ed the Prime Min­is­ter they had replaced. They rebuilt a prison Palace of Jus­tice for the express pur­pose of hold­ing Öcalan’s tri­al there. After­wards, they left him in iso­la­tion for years, a sole detainee in a 140 square foot cell. There is a mil­i­tary base in close proximity.

In prison, Öcalan plunged into rad­i­cal, post-com­mu­nist lit­er­a­ture, in search of a new path. He began devour­ing Mur­ray Bookchin’s works. In 2004, Hei­der and oth­ers plead­ing Öcalan’s cause con­sid­ered the time had come to estab­lish con­tacts between him and Ver­mont (Bookchin). Estab­lish­ing some kind of dia­logue was essen­tial for them, because con­ser­v­a­tives in the Kur­dish move­ment were push­ing for a total break with Left­ist thought.

They wrote to Biehl.

On April 11, five days after receiv­ing Öcalan’s let­ter, Bookchin answered with Biehl’s assistance.

Bookchin had long expressed inter­est­ed in know­ing the Kurds and had writ­ten about their strug­gle in his per­son­al diaries. He told Öcalan he wasn’t famil­iar with all aspects of the PKK’s strug­gle, that he was get­ting old, that writ­ing was a strug­gle, but that he was glad to be in contact…

In my own fash­ion, I am a his­to­ry of the XXth cen­tu­ry on the march and I have always tried to look beyond the ideas peo­ple freeze into dog­mas”, Bookchin wrote to Öcalan. “I beg for your patience with an old radical.”

Hei­der passed on Bookchin’s mes­sage to Öcalan’s lawyers. The jailed Kur­dish leader sent a reply in May. In the new let­ter, Öcalan’s inter­me­di­aries men­tioned that “he spoke of him­self as the atten­tive stu­dent of your thought.”

Öcalan said he dis­agreed with Bookchin on a few top­ics and that non-Occi­den­tal phi­los­o­phy helped him shape his vision in this man­ner. But he told his inter­me­di­ary to trans­mit to Bookchin that “the Kur­dish lib­er­a­tion move­ment will be deter­mined in suc­cess­ful­ly apply­ing his ideas.”

Bookchin respond­ed on May 9. “I won’t be able to pur­sue an in-depth the­o­ret­i­cal dia­logue with Mr Öcalan”, “But the Kurds are ‘most lucky’ in hav­ing Öcalan as their leader.”

Biehl lat­er told the inter­me­di­ary that Öcalan “became a bea­con for (Bookchin) in his final years.”

From his prison, Öcalan quick­ly had the new ideas he’d devel­oped in read­ing Bookchin implemented.

In 2005, he for­mu­lat­ed the PKK dec­la­ra­tion stat­ing that Kur­dish lib­er­a­tion would not come about through the insti­tu­tion of a new nation-state on eth­nic grounds. The nation-state leads to oppres­sion. The dec­la­ra­tion main­tained there had to exist less cen­tral­ized approach­es for the Kurds’ ulti­mate access to self-gov­ern­ment. This con­sti­tut­ed an aston­ish­ing indict­ment of the social­ist past, com­ing as it did from one of the XXth century’s most com­mit­ted hard­line marxists.

The announce­ment con­se­crat­ed Öcalan’s main idea for the Kurds and the oth­er com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing in zones with Kur­dish majori­ties, that of “demo­c­ra­t­ic confederalism”.

Tak­ing advan­tage of the rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful peri­od between the PKK and the cen­tral state, Kur­dish regions in south­east­ern Turkey put the Öcalan-Bookchin phi­los­o­phy to the test by set­ting up “demo­c­ra­t­ic assem­blies” at the neigh­bor­hood and vil­lage lev­el. Because women were long­time active fight­ers with­in the PKK and because Öcalan adopt­ed Bookchin’s thoughts on “abol­ish­ing hier­ar­chies and break­ing down patri­archism” these assem­blies opt­ed for the even more rad­i­cal move and non-nego­tiable require­ment of includ­ing women at all lev­els of governance.

When Bookchin died in 2006, a PKK assem­bly salut­ed him in a res­o­lu­tion : “We pledge to main­tain Bookchin alive through our struggle.”

But it took the real col­lapse of one the regions most cen­tral­ized nation-states (Assad’s Syr­ia) for Öcalan’san­ti-state vision to ful­ly manifest.


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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Let­tres mod­ernes à l’Université de Tours. Gros mots poli­tiques… Coups d’oeil politiques…