Democratic Confederalism Research Articles

The Middle East governance Failure and the Prospect of Democratic Confederalism

Examining the notion of the state and governance in the Middle East leads to the argument that a prolonged dilemma has become embedded in the region’s political culture. Commentators suggest that these states could be considered failed states. Nevertheless, over the past century, there have been several attempts to resolve the crises and propose alternatives to the projects of states and governance in the Middle East. This paper aims to examine three key points. Firstly, it critically analyses the crises in the Middle East, the root causes, and the repercussions of the chaos in the present and future. To achieve this, the paper delves into the past and explores the causes of events to understand the complete picture of the chaos. Secondly, it suggests and contemplates alternatives for the crises by reviewing proposed alternatives implemented in the last century and the resulting changes observed. Thirdly, the paper examines a suggested project a not yet implemented alternative to the dilemma in the Middle East. The paper attempts to scrutinise a newly suggested approach that has been theoretically understudied and less discussed. The discussion about this model has hardly seen the light of mainstream academia, media, and think tank centres. Democratic Confederalism is a project suggested as a solution to the dilemma in the Middle East. It is a societal grassroots approach proposed as a realistic alternative to the model of the Nation State that has been the primary governance model in the region for the entire last century.

The Ecofeminism Practice: The Women's Movement in the Documentary Film “Sangihe Melawan”

Ecofeminism is an interrelated and holistic theory and practice. Ecology, in conjunction with discourses on women's freedom and radical democracy, constitutes one of the primary pillars of democratic confederalism, which is the development of the political paradigm in Indonesia. Ecofeminism also manifests in several areas, including the women's resistance movement against gold mining by PT Tambang Mas Sangihe (TMS) in Sangihe. This study aims to describe the representation of the women's movement in the documentary film "Sangihe Melawan," which was uploaded to the YouTube channel of Watchdoc Documentary on July 1, 2022. This research employs semiotics techniques. The data analysis unit in this study includes images or visuals, audio (dialogue and narration), acting, setting, type of shot, and angle, which collectively demonstrate the role of women in the concept of Social Ecofeminism. The results indicate that women are represented as the most disadvantaged parties in the exploitation of natural resources. The women's movement to protect the environment is also depicted as an effortful endeavor. The women's resistance to the expansion of gold mining in Sangihe was manifested in various actions, including awareness-raising activities, a women's rally, legal action against PT TMS through the Manado and Jakarta Administrative Courts, and other legal avenues.

Governance ribelle: califfato e confederalismo democratico nella guerra civile siriana

The civil war in Syria, whichbroke out in 2011, saw the emergence of two alternative political projects facing the nation-state with revolutionary ideologies and aspirations for territorial control over large areas. On the one hand, the Caliphate project of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS); on the other, the Democratic Confederalism project of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). This paper aims to analyse these alternative social orders, often defined as natural enemies, inside the framework of rebel governance, moving beyond the description of civil wars as a state of chaos and the exclusive state-centric discourse on governance. Initially, the concept of rebel governance is defined underlining its implications; secondly, the ideological foundations, the administrative, economic, and legal structures of the projects are discussed. The last section focuses on their similarities, differences and their power-ideology trade off in the context of their regional and international relations.

Democratic Confederalism: An Alternative for Facing Tensions Between Global Citizenship and Localist Citizenship

This article explores the tensions between different conceptions of “citizenship.” On the one hand, we point out the virtues and limitations of cosmopolitan citizenship in the terms in which Seyla Benhabib understands it in The Right of Others…; on the other hand, we delve into another notion of citizenship, namely, the localist, in a version that could be at odds with some cosmopolitan values, that is, localism as understood by some Mexican autonomous communities, particularly the Zapatistas. Although Benhabib’s cosmopolitan federalism is inclusive in spirit, it is conceived within a preponderantly global perspective and ends up being asymmetrical. While her proposal has some positive aspects, it faces some difficulties in the case of Mexican autonomous communities. In this article, we shall introduce the notion of democratic confederalism as a form of sociopolitical organization that seeks to strengthen the self-organization of social actors and to recognize the practice of citizenship in the terms in which autonomous communities exercise it. We propose that democratic confederalism could be an alternative for decreasing tensions between global citizenship and the idea of citizenship within autonomous communities.

Challenges of Building the World Women’s Democratic Confederalism

Challenges of Building the World Women’s Democratic Confederalism

Road to Democratic Confederalism – from idea of Socialist Kurdish State to Autonomous Administration

The article analyzes the theory of Democratic Confederalism that had been established in Northern Syria in the beginning of 2014. Three cantons had been declared in Northern Syria, a region also called as Rojava by Kurds and the system for governance of the cantons was Democratic Confederalism. Democratic Confederalism is a governance system which had been theorized by Abdullah Ocalan. Democratic Confederalism is a governance system that rejects the nation-state and its ideology and proposes a new system that does not rely on any kind of state. The article started with the evolvement of A. Ocalan`s ideology from socialism, in the early 1970s, to Democratic Confederalism in the beginning of 2000s. The article also explained Democratic Confederalism and introduced the main principles of the system. After explaining the system of Democratic Confederalism, the article focuses on governance of Cantons that had been declared in Northern Syria. The last part of the paper finds out whether Democratic Confederalism is functional or not based on experience in Northern Syria.

Jineology: Kurdish “feminism” in the doctrine of democratic confederalism and the political system of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (Rojava)

There can be no doubt that among many problems of the Middle East inadequate status of women is of paramount importance. It might come as a surprise, then, that the most radical doctrine of feminine emancipation was formulated by the Kurdish socialist freedom movement from Turkey and is being implemented in war-torn Syria in the de facto autonomy called the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, better known as “Rojava”. The doctrine is named jineology (in Kurdish jineolojî) and constitutes one of three pillars of democratic confederalism (together with libertarian democratic socialism and ecologism), the ideology of Abdullah Öcalan. Apo, as he is called, proposed a socialist revolution that would include women’s liberation and would take place in human hearts and minds rather than on the battlefields. First, the system of education needs to accept progressive methods and contents. Second, women ought to become active participants in the political, social, and economic life, especially in order to marginalize the state through creation of a multi-level self-government. Third, they need to be able to defend themselves (also physically) against men, nations-states waging wars, industrialists, and capitalists. The theoretical foundation of these changes is referred to as jineology, understood as a discipline belonging to social sciences, similar to gender studies. These are the ideals that are being implemented in Rojava and manifested in the Social Contract, the constitution of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

Radical Democracy and Educational Experiments: Lessons for South Africa from Brazil and Rojava

ABSTRACT South Africa faces several massive, interconnected challenges that reverberate through its political economy, society and education system. This paper offers lessons for the current conjuncture by exploring radical democracy and educational experiments in two other contexts: Brazil, as a point of close comparison, and Rojava (northern Syria), as a point for dissimilar comparison but which offers a “real utopia”. The Brazilian student movement (2015–16) involved several waves of mass school occupations in the “student spring” (primavera secundarista), with students demanding free, quality public education and, within the occupations, experimenting with democratic, dialogical, caring educational spaces. The Revolution in Rojava, emerging in 2012 and continuing to date, offers an alternative model of social organisation guided by women’s liberation, ecological harmony, and “Democratic Confederalism”, a form of anti-capitalist radical democracy. It has provided fertile ground for a profoundly different education system from the statist, authoritarian models previously imposed in the region. This paper draws out several prominent themes from each context, drawing these into conversation with the contemporary South African context. First, the movements demonstrate the pedagogical importance of language and culture, history and social dynamics, the decommodification of education, feminism and ecology. Second, they highlight the political importance of education for self-organisation in relation to broader processes of social transformation.

Jin-jiyan-azadi. Matristic culture and Democratic Confederalism in Rojava

Jin-jiyan-azadi. Matristic culture and Democratic Confederalism in Rojava

Lessons From Rojava for the Paradigm of Social Ecology

This essay addresses two related questions raised by the editors of the research topic for “Beyond the Frontiers of Political Science: Is Good Governance Possible in Cataclysmic Times?” In particular, it explores: 1) how we can identify new tools and perspectives from which to address the multiple and mutually reinforcing problems accumulating around climate change; and 2) what institutional alternatives to the nation-state need to be created and empowered to tackle such complex problems. It does so through an in-depth treatment of the paradigm of “social ecology” and the associated political project of “democratic confederalism.” It begins with an overview of the argument, first advanced by Murray Bookchin and subsequently adopted and adapted by the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, that building an ecological society requires an assault on hierarchy in all its forms, and the construction of alternative, direct-democratic institutions capable of transcending the system of the capitalist nation-state. It sketches the institutional architecture of popular assemblies central to this project, both emphasizing their potential to contest capitalist social-property relations and hierarchies intrinsic to the nation-state and pointing out some sources of resilience of the existing system. It hones in on the experience of the revolutionary forces in control of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES), who have been directly inspired by Öcalan’s ideas. It highlights both the AANES’s achievements as well as the significant obstacles it has encountered in the attempt to bring into being a radically-egalitarian, ecological society. It concludes by drawing lessons from these difficulties.

Revolutionary Self-Defense as a Rival Ethics of Nonviolence: Rojava and Kurdish Liberation

Rojava has recently received significant global attention thanks to the victories achieved there by the revolutionary Kurdish militia controlling the region and its Women’s Protection Units against ISIS. An international community that has long been silent about Kurdish oppression was suddenly fascinated by the Rojava revolution and its potential for women’s liberation. But this current interest elides vital political and conceptual contributions of activists in Rojava and elsewhere in Kurdistan, and reinscribes the orientalist and imperial scripts invoked in the representation of the emancipatory politics of the region’s peoples. Pushing against these frameworks, this paper examines the new method of Kurdish decolonization, “democratic confederalism,” as a distinct and perhaps novel contribution to the global repertoire of anticolonial thought and practice, especially with its re-envisioning of the revolutionary role violence and nonviolence can play in liberation. Tracing the intellectual and political process that turned decolonizing Kurds from the pursuit of a territorial nation-state towards the revolutionary and feminist transformation of colonized sites and lives, it distinguishes this decolonial politics and its central means of community self-defense from both its reactionary opposites and revolutionary siblings. Foregrounding its foundationally anti-nationalist character, the paper proposes to approach this revolutionary, egalitarian, and community based self-defense as a rival ethics of nonviolence.

Kurdish liberty

Most politically minded Kurds agree that their people need liberty. Moreover, they agree they need liberation from the domination they suffer from the four states that divide them: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. What is less certain is the precise nature of this liberty. A key debate that characterizes Kurdish political discourse is over whether the liberty they seek requires the existence of an independent Kurdish nation-state. Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed intellectual leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has argued that Kurdish liberty can only be achieved through liberation from the nation-state model itself. Instead of founding an independent Kurdistan, Öcalan proposes regional autonomy for the Kurds through a strictly egalitarian and directly democratic confederalism reminiscent of Murray Bookchin’s anarchist-inspired libertarian municipalism. We argue, in response to Öcalan’s approach, that employing an anarchist rejection of the state is largely mistaken. We diagnose certain historical and conceptual problems with the anarchist understanding of the state and develop the admission made in passing by certain anarchists, including Öcalan, that anarchist liberty could only be achieved after a long period of statist existence. Mostly counter to the anarchist model of non-domination, we propose a republican model of liberty and liberation, also as non-domination, that necessitates the formation of an independent state, at least in this historical period, for Kurds and hence any dominated people to count as truly free. We conclude by attempting to combine certain elements of the anarchist and republican conceptions and offer a synthetic communitarian view that could serve as a better foundation for Kurdish aspirations for liberty.

Mesopotamian Indigeneity: The Kurds and Democratic Confederalism Governance Model

Mesopotamian Indigeneity: The Kurds and Democratic Confederalism Governance Model

Rebel governance and gender in northeast Syria: transformative ideology as a challenge to negotiating power

ABSTRACT The Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant Kurdish political party in Northern Syria, has led a vanguard movement for autonomy based on Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s ideology of democratic confederalism. A central component of this ideology is the focus on gender equality (jineologi). Ideology has served as a potent mobilising force in particular by empowering women, a group that is often at the margins of power in traditional Kurdish society, and is a cornerstone of the Rojava revolution. However, it also presents challenges for the PYD in their relations with local tribes on whom the PYD depends for sustaining the Kurdish position in the northeast. Turkey’s interventions have given the tribes a new position in the conflict and for the PYD, this means that negotiating power with the tribes will be increasingly critical to their own position. In an effort to retain a dominant position how will the PYD, no longer a vanguard movement, relate to key elements of their gender ideology? This article examines the challenges of transformative rebel governance ideology in negotiating with traditional social structures examined through the lens of gender.

Will the Rojava Revolution Survive? Theory, Practice, and the Future of Democratic Confederalism

After the outbreak of the Syrian war, the armed resistance of the Kurds against the radical Islamists drew considerable attention from across the world. Although the Kurdish movement has a history of forty years of armed fight in the region, especially against Turkey, they gained global fame during the war in Syria. Apart from media attention to the resistance of women, in particular, the establishment of a political system, democratic confederalism, which the world was not familiar with, came to exist in the area liberated from the religious fundamentalists in Syria. The Kurds during the Syrian civil war, on one hand, gained international fame for their fight against the radical Islamists; on the other hand, they put a new theory of governance, democratic confederalism, in practice in northern Syria. This paper seeks to provide a brief review of the theory of democratic confederalism and its practices in Rojava to build an argument regarding its future. This case study aims to explore how and why the theory and practices of democratic confederalism co-exist and which factors may influence the Rojava revolution’s future. This review’s central argument is that while democratic confederalism is a revolution in the field, it is also an experiment whose future depends on how the people will adopt it and how the global and regional powers will approach it.

The Challenges of a Kurdish Ecofeminist Perspective: Maria Mies, Abdullah Öcalan, and the Praxis of Jineolojî

ABSTRACT Ecology, along with women’s liberation and radical democracy, is one of the major pillars of Democratic Confederalism, a new political paradigm developed by the Kurdish Freedom Movement through the voice of the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan. Scholars attribute the greening of the Kurdish agenda to the impact that the founder of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin, had on Öcalan’s ideology. Without denying the veracity of this argument, the following article analyzes the influence that Maria Mies, a pioneer of socialist ecofeminism, had on the philosophical elaboration of Öcalan. Examining the theses exposed in his prison writings with the most relevant aspects of Mies’ thought, this article shows the limits, challenges, and strategic use of the Kurdish ecofeminist perspective. This approach provides an original understanding of the emancipatory horizon opened up by Democratic Confederalism and particularly by Jineolojî, the “science of women and life,” spearheaded by the Kurdish Women’s Movement since 2011.

Alternative Political Projects of Territoriality and Governance during the Syrian War: The Caliphate Vs Democratic Confederalism

ABSTRACT Following the Arab Spring and the Syrian war, two non-state actors, the Islamic State (IS; also known as ISIS or ISIL) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), deployed their political projects of the caliphate and democratic confederalism, respectively, amid rising geopolitical interest in the Middle East. Beyond mobilising people on the battleground in Syria, these political projects led to comprehensive debates about the future of the Westphalian order of sovereignty, territoriality, and the state in the region, as well as the viability of the ideals of political and cultural pluralism. This article compares the potential of these projects. First, it explores whether these actors challenge the older forms of the state, territoriality, and sovereignty, or whether they reproduce them. Then, it discusses whether the political organisation and governance models of these two non-state actors have the capacity to solve the problems of democratic representation and cultural pluralism in the region. Finally, the potential impact of these projects is discussed by examining whether they could serve as a model or inspiration for new political ideas and arrangements in the region.

Dall’ecologia politica attraverso il Capitalocene per una società ecologica

In the context of Political Ecology, this paper traces the main interpretations that have emphasized the need to rethink the relationship between nature and society in order to find new solutions to the ecological crisis. We will first consider the concept of Capitalocene as an alternative to that of Anthropocene; we will then analyze the reorganization of social relations proposed by Bookchin as well as the concretization of these principles in the democratic confederation of Rojava. The aim of this reflection is to study the social reorganization of democratic confederalism, in its anti-hierarchical, feminist, ecological and selfgoverning dimension, as a perspective in harmony with the theory of the oikeios and, therefore, as a real solution to the ecological crisis.

The PKK’s Ideological Odyssey

ABSTRACT The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been the dominant actor in Kurdish politics in Turkey since the early 1980s. During the 1980s and 1990s, the PKK organized a guerrilla insurgency against the Turkish state and managed to mobilize many Kurds. However, in 1999, after its leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured by Turkey, the PKK began to undergo a radical ideological transformation that has significantly altered the movement’s long-term objectives and the demands for the Kurds. This article will focus on the ideological evolution of the PKK and discuss the reasons behind the transformation in its political objectives from national liberation through armed struggle to radical democracy and the resolution of the Kurdish question through ‘democratic confederalism’ and ‘democratic autonomy’.

Beyond Europe: Alternative visions of Europe amongst young activists in self-managed spaces in Italy

ABSTRACT This article explores the attitude towards Europe of young activists in self-managed spaces in Italy, and the extent to which the crises the EU endured in the last decade shape their visions. Unlike pre-financial crisis social movements, in the second decade of the 2000s progressive social movements adopted radical Eurocritical attitudes and shifted towards Eurosceptic positions. The article indicates that young activists in Italian self-managed spaces mainly criticise the economic element of the European integration process and the functioning of the EU institutions. They still refer to the European sphere as the principal field of political intervention, but propose an alternative organisational model oriented by the principles of democratic confederalism and libertarian municipalism in which local, autonomous communities are horizontally connected. This article contributes to the study of Europeanisation and social movements literature by shedding light on a political alternative to the EU grounded on prefigurative practices and a self-managed society.