Rojava

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), commonly known as Rojava, has illuminated the plight of the stateless—even though statelessness in the AANES’s case defies the narrow definition of international law. Despite comprising almost a third of Syrian territory, the AANES has not been recognized as a legitimate body politic neither by the Syrian state, nor by the international community. The limitations that come with this lack of recognition may have disastrous consequences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Report on fieldwork carried out September 2014 in Rojava North East Syria post arrival of Ezidi refugees from Sinjar derived from a rapid assessment carried out at Newroz Camp and an associated assessment of organisations in the locality that might be best placed to provide support for women and those experiencing gender-based violence in a patriarchal society affected by militarised conflict

Resumo: Em meio à guerra existe uma revolução política, social e econômica que tem como centro a luta antipatriarcal. O Curdistão é o palco deste processo que traz à luz um novo modelo político chamado Confederalismo Democrático que está embasado em uma epistemologia feminista: a jineologî ("ciência das mulheres 2 "). Divididos entre os territórios da Turquia, Síria, Irã e Iraque, aproximadamente 35 milhões de curdos vivem sob um forte regime repressivo de assimilação cultural, sendo a maior nação sem Estado do mundo. Após passarem grande parte do século sendo perseguidos pelos governos destes países foi em território Turco que um grupo de estudantes curdos fundou, em 1978, o PKK (Partido dos trabalhadores do Curdistão) e, mais adiante, a guerrilha, principal foco de resistência contra os governos da região. Tendo em vista esta situação, o objetivo do trabalho é o de expor a participação das mulheres no processo revolucionário curdo, sobretudo após a década de 1980 culminando com a criação de três cantões autônomos ao norte da Síria, Rojava 3 , e que configuram um laboratório a céu aberto da primeira revolução estruturalmente feminista da história. Para tanto este trabalho parte do questionamento: este modelo social será uma alternativa adequada para estabelecer uma sociedade capaz de quebrar com as estruturas estadocêntricas e patriarcais da região? A hipótese, por sua vez, é a de que este processo constitui um marco na história do Oriente Médio, especialmente no que diz respeito à organização política e social da região, principalmente no que tange à jineologî. Portanto, de modo a realizar esta análise, o trabalho faz uso dos pressupostos teóricos do pensamento do Öcalan e utiliza o método de pesquisa bibliográfica trazendo também dados primários oriundos de entrevistas realizadas pela autora em visita às representantes do movimento de mulheres curdas em centros de estudos em jineologî e no Congresso Nacional do Curdistão (KNK). 1 Estudante de mestrado no Programa de pós-graduação em Ciência Política da UFRGS/IFCH, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Pesquisadora vinculada ao NIEM (Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Estudos da Mulher e Gênero). Contato: [email protected] 2 Em idioma curdo: Jin significa mulher e, ao mesmo tempo, vinculado à palavra jiyan que significa vida. 3 O território que abrange o Curdistão é dividido em quatro partes: Rojava, em idioma curdo significa oeste, faz referência à região que fica em território ao norte da Síria. Consequentemente as demais partes são: Bakur (norte) na Turquia; Başûr (sur), Iraque e Rojhilat (leste) no Irã. Rojava é dividido em três cantões autodeclarados autônomos (desde 2012) chamados: Efrin, Kobanê, Cizre.

“Let´s communalize Energy, water and land – Let´s build up a free society”

The American Libertarian Socialist and Ecologist, Murray Bookchin, defined the ideal economy as a municipally led, moral economy that is under democratic control. He argued that the Communes’ control over the economy represents the highest developed form of Confederalism. These same principles are being applied in the economy in Rojava, the mainly Kurdish, autonomous regions of Northern Syria. The political philosopher and imprisoned chairperson of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Abdullah Öcalan, has linked Bookchin's theories of social ecology to the historical development of communal life in the long history of the Middle East. The idea is to empower emancipatory forces within society that exist in rural structures and have not been commodified by capitalism and state society.

Syria is still devastated by a bloody civil war. However, in the Northern territory the multicultural population formed by Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Chaldean, Chechen and Turkmen, characterized by different Muslim, Christian and Yezidis religions, is consciously experimenting with forms of bottom-up democracy, antagonistic to both pseudo-democratic and theocratic regimes. The revolutionary process underway in the Federation of Northern Syria stands as a concrete alternative to the current mode of development. This project is strongly influenced by the American philosopher Murray Bookchin, founder of social ecology and Communalism, by Maria Mies, anti-colonial feminist, and from other socialist thinkers. Their ideas were expanded by Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan who developed a political proposal known as Democratic Confederalism which marked a paradigm shift within the PKK and are implemented in Rojava. This article aims to illustrate how the ongoing revolution can be understood through Jinwar, literally translated as “the place of women”. This is a case study that explores key themes of the process for changing society: ecology and feminism, understood not as a slogan but as a practice for learning a different relationship between women and reconstructing the relationship with nature. The research was conducted with participatory methods, learning a new approach with women and through their experience a based on sensitivity, emotions and practices directly related to the female world. This is why Jinwar is the result of a relationship re-founded with the Earth and with its roots. This is a continuous process of creative research into solutions of practical problems, ranging from the construction of houses to the organization of daily life, to the relationship with the wider territorial context of the confederated areas.

Para muchxs kurdxs, la lucha significa navegar todos los días entre una utopía y la realidad. El lado utópico es soñar con una sociedad democrática, comunal, ecológica y sin jerarquías ni privilegios; y el lado real es despertar con la guerra, la muerte, la pobreza y la humillación. La navegación entre estos dos puntos se refiere a una resistencia cotidiana colectiva y muchas micro-resistencias. Lxs kurdxs definimos estas resistencias con la palabra de "roj bi roj", que se refiere a la resistencia "día a día".

The contemporary debate about “abolition” and its relation to wider anti-capitalist and anti-racist struggles can be read as reproducing the tired opposition between reform and revolution, between gradual incrementalism and immediate disruptive action. This false dichotomy can be resolved by returning the holistic and historical analysis of “abolition democracy” offered by W.E.B. Du Bois’ in his classic work Black Reconstruction. Du Bois offers an alternative mandate for abolitionist praxis: one which highlights the interplay of disruptive direct action and incremental change within a historically informed understanding of a particular social struggle. Understood in these terms, abolition becomes a critically important and neglected component of the revolutionary tradition: abolition is the foil of bourgeois security.

This article problematizes the republican reliance on contemporary 'states as they are' as protectors and guarantors of the republican notion of freedom as non-domination. While the principle of freedom as non-domination constitutes an advance over the liberal principle of freedom as non-interference, its reliance on the national, territorial, legal-technical and extra-economic contemporary state prevents the theoretical uncovering of its full potential. The article argues that to make the most of the principle of freedom as non-domination, a strong Athenian element is required. The democratic confederalist project that is being experimented with by Syrian Kurds in the cantons of Rojava, it is maintained, can contribute theoretically and practically to this republican ideal through its democratic and participatory mechanisms, despite fundamental challenges it has to face.

Women have been central to the revolution in Rojava, leading to widespread interest in the Kurdish women's movement across Western contexts. Yet Western mass media representations of women combatants tend to be objectifying and superficial, glossing over the unique variety of feminism, known as "jineology," that is core to the political system of Rojava, which operates according to the ideology of "democratic confederalism." This paper is intended as a corrective to the inadequate representation of the theory and praxis of the women's movement in Rojava. It approaches this task by: (a) critiquing the popular representation of women in Rojava, and (b) providing an overview of the features of the distinctive feminism that are in operation, with a focus on intersectionality, autonomous spaces, and combatting masculinity.

The presence of the United States in northeastern Syria after the defeat of the Islamic State is justified in the context of the confrontation with Iran and Russia in the Middle East. However, by relying primarily on the YPG (People's Protection Units), an outshoot of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), Washington creates an existential threat to Ankara and pushes Turkey into the arms of enemies of the United States. The inversion of local power to the benefit of the Kurds and the disastrous economic situation strikes the Arab populations, who are turning to Damascus. That calls into question all the calculations made by strategists who are not interested in the deep reality of the territory that must support their actions.

The following paper aims to analyze the historical background of the current happenings such as the Kurdish endeavors towards independence and the strengthening of feminist thought, as well as cultural and political circumstances which put into motion a series of events that ultimately lead to a radical change in the political and social climate of the present day Syria. In the midst of a civil war, the Kurdish people seized the opportunity to fight for their own sovereignty in northern Syria, or as it is known by the Kurds – Rojava. Rooted in the strongly progressive idea of Democratic Confederalism designed by a Kurdish nationalist leader and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) founder Abdullah Öcalan, the Rojava Revolution is often deemed one of the greatest social experiments of our time. Even though the implementation of Democratic Confederalism may be in itself enough to highlight the importance of this revolution in the context of today's Middle East, what is of even greater significance is the blossoming of women's rights in Rojava. Another one of Öcalan's pivotal ideas, known as Jineology (the science of women) puts none other than women at the very center of the revolution. By observing the work of the all-female Women's Protection Units (YPJ) it is clearly evident that the aforementioned ideology manifests itself in practice, not only in the battlefield, but in everyday life as well. In this paper I will try to provide an overview of the historical circumstances that allowed for a spark that started the fire of the Women's Revolution within one of the most patriarchal societies and among one of the most repressed minorities in the world today and further examine the significance of the current situation in Rojava.

This edited volume examines contemporary political relations between Turkey and the Middle East. In the light of the Arab Uprisings of 2011, the Syria Crisis, the escalation of regional terrorism and the military coup attempt in Turkey, it illustrates the dramatic fluctuations in Turkish foreign policy towards key Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Iraq.
The contributors analyze Turkey’s deepening involvement in Middle Eastern regional affairs, also addressing issues such as terrorism, social and political movements and minority rights struggles. While these problems have traditionally been regarded as domestic matters, this book highlights their increasingly regional dimension and the implications for the foreign affairs of Turkey and countries in the Middle East.

"There were serious disjunctions between democratizing and 'Bookchinizing' life inside Rojava and the Marxist-realist approach of the SDF–PKK to what might be called Rojava’s foreign policy. The US and other actors in Syria milked the 'bad dialectic' between Rojava’s domestic and foreign and political relations. Turkey, Russia, al-Assad, and Iran all partook of the atrocious approach of forcing Rojava into difficult situations, where its hierarchy was forced to prioritize and centralize power to defend Rojava. Enforcing this bad dialectic is the latest instance of a classic counterrevolutionary trick devised by the American architects of the Cold War era."

This study seeks to shed light on the preliminary results and potential fruits that the era of so-called Arab Spring bears concerning the Kurds as an increasingly visible actor and an emerging nation in the region. Since the turn of the last decade, several countries in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region have witnessed to large-scale social and political upheavals that have since then been popularly referred to as “the Arab Spring,” “Arab Awakening,” “uprisings” or “revolutions”, “grassroots movements,” and “regime changes.” Usually one considers these changes either as optimistically progressive as springs based on revolutions or pessimistically dangerous for the future of the people in the MENA. It cannot be underestimated that these protest movements have had devastating effects for the shaping of the region and its geopolitical neighborhood (i.e., Europe). Hence, the Arab Spring cannot be seen as an exclusively Arab-related phenomenon due to several reasons. In this context, this study evaluates the case of the so-called Kurdish Spring as part of a chain of seemingly local grassroot struggles which have been presenting themselves across the globe through a nationalist yet modern, pluralist, left-wing discourse for the first time since the homeland of Kurds was divided among four hegemonic regional nation-states (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria) without the will of the Kurdish people themselves.

The world watched in horror last autumn as the ruthless Islamic State (commonly referred to as ISIS) marched on the small city of Kobane in northern Syria. No one expected the city to survive the attack. But it did. Mixed-gender militias with small arms held one of the most feared armies in the world at bay. The smoke cleared, and Kobane still stood.

And western media attention moved on.

The YPG and the YPJ, the militias who held the city, were fighting for their lives and their land. But even more than that, they were fighting to defend their their revolution: the Rojava Revolution. When the Assad regime began to fall, Kurds and other ethnic minorities in northern Syria carved out pockets of liberty and started one of the greatest social experiments the world has ever seen. Based on their own history of struggle and on the writings of social ecologist Murray Bookchin, the people of Rojava have developed an anti-state and anti-capitalist way of life. It’s a way of life that values feminism, direct democracy, ecological stewardship, and ethnic, linguistic, and religious pluralism. And right now, 2.5 million people are trying their hardest to defend their revolution against ISIS attacks from the south and an international trade embargo ruthlessly enforced by Turkey to the north.

Between language barriers, cultural barriers, and an international trade embargo, it can be hard to understand what is happening there. It can be hard to understand how to support the people of Rojava in their revolution. But in this short book, scholars and militia fighters alike explore and explain the situation in plain language. They discuss the Rojava principles that bind the region together and they discuss what it means to be in solidarity with those fighting in Rojava. Even beyond that, they discuss what we can learn from the brave women and men of Rojava.

The American thinker Murray Bookchin was an influential exponent of post-classical anarchism in the 20th-century and father of “social ecology”: his academic research is based on identifying the place in which building the alternative community. His utopia of an ecological society was able to combine Marxist criticism against capitalism along with the anarchist ideas of mutualism and community federations or communes: in the essay The Next Revolution he finally renamed his political theory of libertarian municipalism with the term “communalism”.
According to the critical analysis he developed, the infinite growth of neoliberal capitalism in a finite world like ours is untenable. The solution to the current ecological crisis depends above all on the dissolution of hierarchies, or rather on the end of the domination of human by human, so as to be able to recompose the rift between man and the natural environment. Subsequently, it’s investigated the elective affinity established over the years between the libertarian thought of Bookchin and the one of Abdullah Öcalan, both of them at the ground of the recent revolution in Rojava.
In this autonomous region, located in northern Syria, an innovative model of decentralized self-management has emerged, called “democratic confederalism”. It’s based on freedom, ecology and social equality, in opposition to the capitalist, nationalist and unitary nation-state so far present in the Middle East. In this way, it was created a new political sphere from the vacuum of Syrian state.
At the centre of cantonal municipalities with a Kurdish majority there is indeed a certain group of ethical values, an attention for the educational system and a utopian sensibility, which do not provide for any discrimination of gender, religion and ethnicity according to the “unity in diversity” philosophical principle.

The Kurdish resistance movement is marked by the contradiction that, as Gramsci put it in The Prison Notebooks — The Modern Prince, “whatever one does one is always playing somebody’s game.” In view of this inevitability, Gramsci advises: “The important thing is to seek in every way to play one’s own game with success.” The YPG and SDF’s forebears in the PKK turned Gramsci’s motto into political artistry, in order to lay the foundations of their political hegemony in the four corners of Kurdistan.

In this essay, I examine the groundbreaking capacities of Öcalan’s dual-power framework of democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy, by way of theorizing and redeveloping these capacities for sustained, effective, and democratic self-defense against capitalist and imperialist counterrevolution. I argue that in the history of Öcalan and the PKK’s games of organization, war, and morality, and in the lessons of Rojava’s bittersweet legacy, we find the counter-counterrevolutionary blueprints for a Kurdish and leftist realpolitik.

Failure to move past security and stability-based arguments will greatly diminish the long-term prospects for the survival of the Rojava project. -

See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/governing-rojava-layers-legitimacy-syria#sthash.fSq6XhrM.dpuf

This paper surveys the nascent experiments in political ecology underway in predominantly Kurdish areas of south-eastern Turkey, known as Bakûr, and Rojava (northern Syria). The Kurdish freedom movement is attempting to consolidate a social revolution with ecology at its heart in a most unpromising context, given its ongoing struggle against Islamic State and regional embargoes. This greening of its ideology can be significantly attributed to the influence of American social ecologist Murray Bookchin, an inspiration for Kurdish attempts to implement democratic confederalism, which comprises principles of direct democracy, gender equality and ecological well-being in a needs-based economy. The Mesopotamian Ecology Movement has emerged from activist campaigns opposing dam construction, climate change and deforestation in the region, to inform ecology councils tasked with formulating policies that reflect this philosophical paradigm shift. The essay considers the prospects for the ecological initiatives in Turkish and Syrian Kurdistan. It argues that, confronted by formidable challenges, expansion of the democratic confederal model beyond the heartlands of Bakûr and Rojava, and international solidarity, are preconditions for their endurance.

In 2011, there was general agreement that Bashar al-Assad would fall like a ripe fruit after a few months of fighting and that the Syrian revolution was pacifist, non-religious, and democratic. There was no risk of radicalization, for Syrian civil society would supposedly oppose any moves in such a direction. The communitarian structure of Syrian society was completely ignored by researchers in the social sciences, as was the Salafist re-Islamization of Syrian society that had begun in the 1990s. In addition, from 2011 it was clear that Bashar al-Assad would benefit from the unfailing support of Russia and Iran, enabling him to resist an insurrection that was quickly backed by Iran’s enemies.

The Kurdish-led project of democratic confederalism in Rojava (north and north-east Syria) has emerged as an unprecedented experience in eco-feminist and anti-capitalist direct democracy with global significance and regional ramifications. There is however virtually no critical engagement with the project’s intellectual foundations in the works of Abdullah Öcalan. This paper seeks to address this gap through a sympathetic critique of Öcalan’s historical sociology of the formation and dissolution of the state. It argues that there is a theoretical tension in Öcalan’s argument. His account of the originary rise of the Sumerian state is ‘internalist’ while his analysis of subsequent state-formation processes is ‘interactive’, which highlights the crucial role of external factors and hence implicitly the decisive significance of the condition of ‘societal multiplicity’. The paper then draws on Kojin Karatani’s ‘modes of exchange’ based world history to argue that Sumerian state-formation was also fundamentally interactive occurring within and through societal multiplicity. It therefore demonstrates the need for the incorporation of societal multiplicity in the conceptualisation of democratic confederalism and the analyses of its prospects as a non-statist political community. In so doing, the paper also contributes to critical geopolitics and anarchist international theory through underlining the social history of the rise of the state and the international nature of its dissolution.

Highlighting the modernity of state institutions, Hobsbawm defines the nation as a modern territorial state (the nation-state) and argues that nation and nationality cannot be discussed unless they refer to the nation-state. Hobsbawm's conception of nations and nationality in the context of the nation-state warrants readdress by comparing Westphalian models of states with subjects that do not attempt a territorial model but arguably still invest in the nation and a sense of nationality. This article compares the discourses of building nations and national identities fostered in the content of school textbooks in the Republic of Turkey-a modern, territorial nation-state-and the Autonomous Administration of North and East of Syria (hereafter Rojava)-an alternative state system model established in the power vacuum proceeding Bashar al-Assad regime withdrawal from expansive territory in northern Syria. In doing so, the article revisits the existing literature on the correlation between the content and political associations of school textbooks through a comparative analysis of primary school course materials in Turkey and Rojava, neighbouring and conflicting political entities that occupy contrasting domains of statehood and military capacity.

In this paper I focus on one of the non-state actors in Syrian conflict, the Kurdish party PYD, because of its significance as the only actor offering a real (political) alternative to the current situation, between the oppressive regime and the bigoted and violent Islamic State, by implementing democratic confederalism in the region of Northern Syria – Rojava - adopting gender equality and ecological principles and respecting the rights of all ethnicities and religious groups (Paasche 2015). In addition, Kurds in Syria are considered as a serious (if not the only one) secularizing agent in the Middle East, a region with deeply ingrained patriarchal structures (Knapp, Flach and Ayboga, 2017: 97).
In particular, I seek to examine if and how during the Syrian conflict there have been arose or (and) created conditions fostering the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish state or a self-determined and self-governed region; the latter has been actually implemented by the Kurdish political party Democratic Union Party  (YPD) under the name “Democratic Federation of Northern Syria”  (DFNS) – however most commonly as “Rojava”- in November 2013 and comprises the three Kurdish enclaves (cantons), currently established as Regions of the DFNS: Afrin, Euphrates Region (Kobani) and Jazira.

Destroying the Islamic State (IS) and limiting the influence of Iran is a difficult project. The United States has more capabilities in Syria than in Iraq to destroy IS and limit Iran. The Sunni Arab tribes of the Euphrates Valley no longer support the Islamic State and are ready to join those who will liberate them, which explains the effectiveness of the Syrian Democratic Forces (Kurdish-Arab) against IS. Thus the liberation of Raqqa could thus take place in fall 2017, provided Turkey does not launch an offensive against the Syrian Kurds.

A serious governance problem will also emerge following the defeat of IS. In Iraq the return of Baghdad's army risks creating the conditions for a new Sunni insurgency. In Syria violence between the tribes and the Kurdish militias must be avoided. Bashar al-Assad and his allies are anticipating chaos in the Euphrates Valley so they can impose their vision of a Pax Syriana.

During the onslaught of the Islamic caliphate on Kobanî, Syria, media outlets across the globe broadcast pictures of brave and often unveiled Kurdish women fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a quintessentially male force of destruction. The images of women fighting Islamist male aggressors aroused outrage, admiration, and pity among observers. But had all Kurdish fighters been male or had women fought for ISIS, viewers might have reacted differently. To examine some of the most widely disseminated gendered pictures and videos of the Syrian uprising in the media, this article draws on Mohja Kahf’s three categories, which typify how Muslim women, Arab women, or both are perceived by the Anglophone reading and viewing public: the first is victims; the second, escapees; and the third, pawns of patriarchy and male power. While this typology helps in examining gendered images of the Syrian uprising, it also obscures the socioeconomic realities on the ground.

In the middle of one of the most politically destabilised area of the planet, almost two years ago, during the Syrian crisis, began an extraordinary experiment of direct democracy and self-government of three autonomous cantons in Syrian Kurdistan. The name of this region is Rojava,  nowadays  quite well known after the resistence and the liberation of the capital of one of these cantons, Kobane. The self-government is inspired by Ocalan’s theory of democratic confederalism, an idea of decostruction of the National-State in order to facilitate the molitiplication of decisions spaces and peoples’s engagement in management of public affaires. The experimentation of these innovative istitutional models, each of which governed by a co-presidecy of a man and a woman,  goes hand in hand with the radical modification of the patriarchal organization of the society and, more generally, with the ridefinition of the riproductive and relational range. From this point of view, in Rojava, the breakage with the socialist experiences of 20th century means above all the recognition of the power’s articolation between society influenced by capitalism. Feminism, ecology, democracy and self-defence are the thoretical axes on which is based the political practice in Rojava and the working of cometees, assemblies.

Το παρόν άρθρο επιδιώκει να ρίξει εν συντομία φως στα επιτεύγματα του γυναικείου κουρδικού κινήματος στη Βορειοανατολική Συρία/Ροζάβα και της Αυτόνομης Διοίκησης της Βόρειας και Ανατολικής Συρίας, με αφορμή την Παγκόσμια Ημέρα της Γυναίκας – η οποία από το 2022 αποτελεί επίσημη αργία στη Ροζάβα – σε μια χρονική περίοδο όπου η ανάγκη για φωτεινά παραδείγματα μοιάζει πιο αναγκαία από ποτέ.

Komîna Fîlm a Rojava, la première Commune du Film du Rojava, voit le jour en 2015. Depuis, ses membres réalisent et projettent des films sur le territoire kurde de Syrie. Ils organisent également des ateliers techniques. A partir de l'étude des réseaux dans lesquels s'inscrit l'institution, et de l'analyse de films produits entre 2016 et 2018, cet article esquisse une présentation des multiples usages du cinéma qui se croisent au sein de cet espace artistique et politique

La cultura de la esclavitud y de la mendicidad que el ONGismo crea, la ocupación y el desplazamiento que Turquía aplica poco a poco, la perpetuación de la guerra en Siria y también este embargo, son engranajes que están al servicio de este plan, y que son sustituidos cada vez por otros nuevos y más grandes. Porque la revolución de Rojava ha resistido contra todos los ataques durante nueve años, y como una de las mayores grietas en el corazón del sistema nos recuerda que la dominación no es absoluta, nunca lo ha sido y nunca lo será en la historia.
Porque, como han gritado los habitantes de Afrin que fueron expulsados de sus casas, tierras y olivos tras la invasión del Estado turco y los yihadistas, y ahora viven en el campo de migrantes desde hace cuatro años, berxwedanê serdemê (la resistencia de siglos) continúa… en Rojava.