Post-capitalist marketization in Northern Kurdistan

Abstract

Dominated by conflict, Turkey’s Kurdish question has transformed over time, opening up new areas of inquiry. Under the Democratic Autonomy project, ongoing since the mid-2000s, Turkey’s Kurdish Movement has promoted cooperatives and communes – a post-capitalist marketization project – in Northern Kurdistan. Drawing upon economization studies and diverse and community economies studies’ engagement with assemblage thinking, this paper scrutinizes the retailers’ cooperative model the Movement experimented with and explains the practices linked to post-capitalist marketization: creating inclusive platforms for debate, incorporating ordinary actors as experts, and upscaling post-capitalist marketization through building relations with other cooperatives.