Revolutionary

Education

Notes from the first term of

the Andrea Wolf Institute of
Jineolojî in Rojava
“Heqiqat eşq e. Eşq jî jiyana azad e.”
“Truth is love and love is life in freedom.”

Abdullah Öcalan

In memory of Şehid Malda Kosa

Content
1. The Andrea Wolf Institute 8

2. Introduction and perspective 12

3. East-West reflections 16

4. Communal life 19

5. Seminars 22
1 Regime of Truth 23
2 History of the Middle East and Orientalism 28
3 Impact of the nation, the state, religion and family
in Europe 31
4 Liberalism 35
5 Jineolojî 38
6 Hevjiyana azad 41
7 Democratic nation and democratic confederalism 44

6. Platforms 47

7. On hope 50
Glossary
Some of the terms used in this brochure are kept in Kurmanji because a literal
translation was not found. This is due to cultural and political associations, and
to their etymological and historical roots.

Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria – Political and

administrative revolutionary entity divided into seven regions of North
and East Syria: Jazeera, Euphrates, Afrin, Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa and
Deir-ez-Zor. It is based on a confederal system, from the local commune
to the inter-regional level. It aims to organize life in a way that fulfils the
needs of society, defends the land and the lives and interests of the people,
as well as representing them politically.

Heval/friend/comrade – Heval means ‘friend’. In the Kurdistan

Liberation Movement people call each other “Heval”. It is a respectful and
loving way to address others in the same struggle. It could be accurately
described as “comrade”, and hevaltî as “comradeship”. Though, the history
and perception of the word “comrade” in English does not have all the
same associations as “heval” due to differences in its historical and political
use. For this reason we have used a mix of the two translations in this text.

Hevjiyana azad – Kurmanji for hev – together, jiyan – life and azad –
free. It is a concept from the philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan. It means
“living together in freedom”. According to Abdullah Öcalan this can be
only achieved by collective liberation and a communal form of living
together, not only among humans, but with the planet, the nature, and
all living beings.

5
Jineolojî – From the Kurmanji word jin – woman (which has a common
root with the word jiyan – life) and the Greek logos – knowledge or science.
It means the science of woman and life. Abdullah Öcalan has suggested
Jineolojî as an alternative science and methodology of women which can
provide knowledge and analyses for the liberation of women and society.

Kurdistan – It is the original homeland of the Kurds. Also other ethnic

groups and people like Syriac-Assyrians and Armenians have long
historical roots in the same geographical territory. Currently the land is
occupied by the states of Turkey (Bakur - North, meaning the Northern
part of Kurdistan), Syria (Rojava - West), Iraq (Bashur - South) and
Iran (Rojhilat - East). The division and colonialisation of Kurdistan was
implemented by the British and French colonial empires after World War
One. Dozens of rebellions for independency and autonomy of Kurdistan
and the self-determination of the Kurdish people have been carried out
throughout its history.

Rêber – Kurmanji for rê – the way and ber – towards/in front of. Rêber
means guide, or more literally “the one who finds and shows the way.” To
take over responsibility, leading by example and by illuminating the path,
is an important approach in the Kurdistan Liberation Movement. Rêber
Apo is a commonly used name for Abdullah Öcalan, who opened up the
way for the Kurdistan Liberation Movement. He was imprisoned by the
Turkish state in 1999 and is kept in isolation. His defence writings serve
us as a basis for the liberation of Kurdistan and the whole world, with his
proposal of worldwide democratic confederalism based on ecology and
the liberation of women.

Rojava – Kurmanji for west, is used to describe the Western part of

Kurdistan within territory of the Syrian nation state. It is a term that
is often used to refer to the revolution and the system of democratic
autonomy which has been established since 2012.

Şehîd – Kurmanji for martyr. The Kurdistan Liberation Movement

honoures those who gave their life in struggle for freedom, constantly
renewing the promise of continuing their fight.

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Special warfare – a form of war which includes psychological, emotional
and ideological attacks. States and secret services have been developing
various methods of manipulation. For example through mass media the
state can create public opinion. It can, for instance, blame migrants for
an economic crisis, dissolving social and political structures and dividing
society. Another example is advertising, creating artificial needs in the
people to increase consumerism.

Welatparezî – Kurmanji for welat – land/country and parezî – defence.

It means “protection of the land”. To be welatparez means to love
and to struggle for the protection of the land and the people against
colonialisation and exploitation. It means to be connected to your history
and the communal culture of the place and community that you are from.
It is defined interrelated to internationalism- not in detriment of any
other place, or excluding any other peoples.

Xwebûn – Kurmanji for xwe - self and bûn - to be and to become. The
word means “becoming yourself ”. It is the process of reaching our true
selves as individuals who are part of a collective whole. It is a way of
struggling against the oppressive systems within us and worldwide to find
truth and beauty.

7
1. The Andrea Wolf
Institute

8
The Andrea Wolf Institute is a part of the Jineolojî Academy of Rojava.
In it women and female-socialised people are working on topics related
to Jineolojî. We have a physical centre here in the region of North and
East Syria, and work as a network wherever we are in the world. With its
first education term the Andrea Wolf Institute was officially opened on
the 18th May 2019.

The Jineolojî Academy has established its works in Rojava Kurdistan, in

North and East Syria, inside the people’s revolution. Jineolojî is a science
and method for understanding the world and finding truth. It draws on
the first women’s revolution, which was the Neolithic revolution that
came to pass in the cradle of civilisation, Mesopotamia. Its basis is the
resistance of the Kurdish women’s liberation struggle, and the heritage of
women’s and feminist struggles all over the world.

A goal of Jineolojî is to be a source of knowledge and learning to solve

the problems of women and society, and for the women’s revolution to
achieve victory. In order to work towards this goal, research centres have
been built up in Afrin, Derik, Manbij, Kobane and Heseke since 2017.
The Jineolojî Faculty at the University of Rojava has also been established.

Şehîd Malda was one of the young women who advanced and inspired
the works and education of Jineolojî among all the different communities
in North and East Syria. On the 5th of May 2019 she was the target of
an attack from the Islamic State. In contrast to the IS hate filled ideology,
Heval Malda lived with love and principles, opening new doors for people
to build a free and communal life. Because of this, the first education at
the Andrea Wolf Institute was held in memory of Şehîd Malda Kosa.

For nearly 30 years, thousands of women from all over the world have
headed to the Kurdistan revolution in search for freedom, seeing the
necessity of self defence and collective life. They have gained strength
from the perspectives of Rêber Apo, who analyses women’s liberation as
the foundation of democratic confederalism. Women who advanced the
development of the women’s freedom army in the mountains of Kurdistan,
such as Şehîd Sara, Şehîd Bêrîtan, Şehîd Zîlan, Şehîd Nûda, Şehîd Çîçek,

9
Şehîd Nalîn and Şehîd Delal, have opened the way to freedom. Women
revolutionaries from many different nations have become their comrades.
Women like Şehîd Mizgin Türkmen, Şehîd Ronahî Arnavut, Şehîd Hêlîn
Çerkez, Şehîd Canda Türkmen, Şehîd Ronahî from Germany, Şehîd
Rojbîn - an Arab woman, Şehîd Gülnaz and Şehîd Amara from the area
of Ege, Şehîd Uta from Germany and Şehîd Elefterya from Greece found
their perspectives for the freedom of their societies in this struggle.

Şehîd Ronahî - Andrea Wolf, from Germany, was one of these

revolutionary women who became part of the Kurdistan revolution.
Until she fell şehîd in the area of Botan in October 1998, she made a
huge effort to explore a new way of building a revolutionary organisation
in Germany. With this aim, she entered into very deep conversation and
research with her comrades. Her dialogues with Rêber Apo became a
source of strength and confidence for her. She became convinced that
to be meaningful and successful, autonomous women’s organising was
essential; forming a crucial part of and giving direction to the general
movement.

Heval Ronahî went to the mountains of Kurdistan to understand the

struggle for freedom and the reality there. Twenty years later hundreds
of internationalist women from all corners of the world have come to
Kurdistan in her footsteps and joined the revolution. Many of them have
also fallen in struggle:

Ivana Hoffmann with a father from Togo and a German mother;

Anna Campbell from Britain;

Alina Sanchez from Argentina;

Sibel Bulut, Ayşe Deniz Karacagil, Toprak Çerkez, Özge Aydın,

and Aynur Ada from Turkey;

Arabic, Kurdish, Syriac-Assyrian and Armenian women from all

over Syria have joined.

10
African American feminist Audre Lorde said:

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even if her

shackles are very different from my own!”

The Andrea Wolf Institute has been built with this understanding of
freedom. In our work, education and research we explore and implement
women’s knowledge, alternative methods of science and education, natural
health, self defence, revolutionary art, and different ways to reproduce life
and create community.

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2. Introduction and
perspective

12
Why education?

The history of ideological education has deep roots. For thousands of

years, various religious, spiritual or social movements have included similar
practices. People physically remove themselves from society for periods,
in order to reflect, learn and develop whichever ideology or philosophy
their members have been living and spreading. To change society, a
change of mentality is needed. The starting point is with members of a
revolutionary movement who carry the task of educating themselves in
order to be an example and open the way for others, regardless of previous
experience or inclination.

Education is a central pillar of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement and

the Kurdistan Women’s Liberation Movement. Education does not stop
during war, occupation or attacks of the enemy. Sometimes this includes
people who have not long had the opportunity to learn to read and write,
or people with severe injuries. This commitment is because the revolution
of the mind is considered the first and most important revolution, and
without it the movement itself would not exist in the form it does.
Abdullah Öcalan has analysed education as the basis of developing
militant personality, and the militant as the basis of social change.

Education is always part of a program and a paradigm that is part of and

based in society. An essential part of education is also the development
of personality that takes place during it. We are changed and made in the
process, we do not merely consume. Militant organisations should act
as microcosms of the society we are struggling for. As such educations
are always an opportunity to develop communal, free, and equal life, and
the revolution in human relationships known in the Kurdistan Freedom
Movement as hevaltî.

For the first education term, women working across Rojava came together
at the academy. Most came from Northern Europe. Some also came from
oppressed nations within ruling nation states in Europe. There were some
from Southern Europe and others had direct roots in Eastern Europe and
the South Asian continent. Other comrades came from the Middle East.

13
Women and other revolutionaries are brought to Rojava by the huge
search, passion and beautiful energy that our histories have created, by
those communities that we love. But also by not finding answers in that
search, by a sense that something is missing. Often it seems that what’s
missing, what we are trying to understand, learn from and connect with
in the movement here, is a sense of hope and future. Also a sense of duty
and commitment, a well of strength and crucially more solid, concrete
forms of organisation. A need for broader analyses to better fight what we
are against and build the alternatives we need.

We believe that now is a global moment of energy for change. We came

here in the hope that we can find ways to use this moment to its fullest.
Here we are developing revolutionary love and radical struggle.

Many of us came to Kurdistan and the Kurdish struggle as internationalists

The Kurdish movement has always been an internationalist one.
Internationalism means understanding that there can be no true
revolution if it is not global, and if we don’t see freedom struggles all over
the world as our own.

In our discussions we identified problems we have in Europe which are

different to those in Rojava: for example strong nation states and the sense
of loyalty to and reliance on the state. Also the lack of strong communities,
and heavy repression of those that exist. Political movements themselves
are being spread out and lacking connection, continuity and organisation
- often just fire-fighting on different fronts. Epidemics of poor
mental health and loneliness are spreading and becoming increasingly
individualised. The history of the 20th century, including colonialism,
two world wars, fascism and imperialism were developed in Europe; but
also “real” socialism and other attempts at revolution and diverse social
struggles. We face the dominance of capitalism and capitalist ideology.
In the face of all of these things, the only alternative for us and our
movements is to organise, create confederalist structures and build our
collective self defence.

14
The most important part of the education was comrades with years
of experience in the Kurdistan Liberation Movement coming to give
educations, and also participate in our daily life. Our shared time together
was an education in itself. Women of the movement are an example of
what we want to build, an example of revolution.

We were close to finishing this brochure when on the 9th October 2019
the Turkish State invaded parts of North and East Syria, seeking to
extend the occupation it started in Afrin in 2018.

Through these attacks it becomes clear that the war is a war of ideology,
a war against freedom, a war which began thousands of years ago. These
attacks are being met with the most effective self defence: the construction
of a strong society and an organised movement. Also the love for life and
freedom in the Kurdistan Liberation Movement and the society in this
part of the world, is so strong that people are willing to give their life for
it.

We are always in a war. Wherever people are trying to create change, or

fight patriarchy, or make revolutions, or figure out what it means to be
free, there is always oppression. The system we live under is an attack, it is
a war on our existence and freedom. It wants to destroy our self defence,
which is part of life, part of our organising. Every existence, from a rock
to a plant to a human being, is in constant struggle for life, as part of
nature. We aim to win the war for life, which is a communal energy which
needs to be organised to sustain itself.

15
3. East-West
reflections

16
One of the Middle Eastern comrades, with years of experience in the Kurdish
Women’s Movement, shared her feelings and reflections about the education in
this way.

Reinforcing our womanhood with Jineolojî and communal life:

The composition of our education term really corresponded to the spirit

and meaning of the history of May 18th. This date has a special meaning
for revolutionary struggle in Turkey and Kurdistan: On May 18th 1973,
Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, one of the leaders of the revolutionary struggle in
Turkey, was tortured to death in a Turkish prison. On May 18th 1977
the internationalist revolutionary Haki Karer, who played a leading role
in the PKK foundation process, was assassinated by counter-guerrilla
forces of the Turkish state. One year later, on May 18th 1979, one of
the first PKK cadres, Halil Çavgun, lost his life in armed combat. And
again on May 18th 1982, the four comrades Ferhat Kurtay, Eşref Anyık,
Mahmut Zengin and Necmi Öner took each other by the hands and set
themselves on fire. Saying ‘Berxwedan jiyan e!’ [Resistance is Life] they
became martyrs and leaders of the prison resistances against torture and
surrender. Against this historical background, the date May 18th expresses
international solidarity and living together. It is also a reference point for
the comradeship and unity in the peoples’ revolutionary struggle in the
Middle East and Kurdistan, which means to give your life to struggle, and
risk it for one another when necessary.

This education was very instructive in terms of both Middle Eastern

women understanding Western women and Western women
understanding Middle Eastern women. In the face of violence in various
forms, the searches of women have developed and this quest has revealed a
tendency towards non-system movements. However, the need for a more
radical way of life, relationship, and struggle requires stepping out of the
system. Unless a more radical stance and continuity can be developed
in our ways of life, relationship and struggle, the vicious cycle cannot be
overcome. A striking reality that became obvious in the experiences of
many comrades participating in the education was the lack of continuity
of non-system movements and activism in the West.

17
For example, if there is an action, everyone participates in that action or for
a certain time in a campaign, but after that everyone returns to their own
‘private’ lives. There is no continuity of revolutionary life that is reflected
in every moment of life. With respect to this, an important awareness
arose during our discussions about the problem of militant struggles in
Western countries, that they are not reflected in every moment and every
aspect of life. For this reason, the urgency and importance of the quest
for a revolutionary personality, relationships and ways of life, and the
understanding of struggle, was seen more clearly. These characteristics
and ways of struggle can transcend all forms of mentality and relations of
power and hierarchies that have been produced by the patriarchal liberal
system.

The main dimension of our education was life itself. Education was not
limited to the lessons we saw. Beyond the times of lectures, seminars
and discussions every field of life and communication became important
areas of collective reflections. We questioned and evaluated our own
relationships, our way of doing practical work, our behaviour and that of
our comrades. In every aspect of life we asked: ‘Who are we? How are we?
What do we do? How much do we do?’ and so on, which revealed vital
life dynamics and energy, both for ourselves and our comrades. This was
also part of the process of education for us.

By the end of the educational term, all the friends had shown their
determination to strengthen their resolution and determination to fight,
and everyone promised to struggle on this basis.

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4. Communal life

19
We were organized in communes with a ‘spokes system’ in which a
delegate from each commune organised meetings and passed information
between the communes and the team coordinating the education. The
communes made ‘tekmil’, a short reflection and feedback meeting both
for technical aspects of daily life and for criticism and self criticism. This
concerned interactions and participation in the education and life and
was made with the focus of developing our personalities.

The garden was a main focus for time outside of classes. When we plant
trees, we need to appreciate what a commitment that is and the work we
have to put in to take care of a tree we plant in subsequent years… and
that this can be a metaphor for how we treat projects, or life in general.
One friend gave an evening seminar on permaculture. Permaculture
means permanent agriculture, as it is a system which is designed to last,
grow and sustain itself. It is based on diversity and care and its self
defence is its sole ability to work as a whole. We started to talk about our
revolutionary practices in the same terms as growing a garden in harmony
with the earth. Instead of seeing tree planting, or political organising, as a
one-off action, a holistic revolution should be what we aspire to.

Communal life is the basis of building society. Organisation of life at

every level should be understood as building a small society. Roles are
assigned to cover all needs, and the group balances time for lessons, sports,
discussions, culture and reflection. This is organised in a clear way to help
during the learning process. For example having clear times for breaks,
activities and who is responsible for what.

This frame allows us to concentrate and find communal solutions. It also

widens the understanding of who you are, by concieving yourself as more
than just you, as a communal being. There are no private spaces, but also
no private feelings and situations because all of them are part of everyone
else. Love is shown by not hiding yourself, but sharing and growing
together, by making sure communal spaces are clean and harmonius
because they are everybody’s.

20
Our time at the education was framed by openings and closings, rituals
to lay a boundary around the experience, and promises with which to
step forward into the future. It was important to mark these moments
together with intention, to give meaning to the work we were doing –
the ideological work, the personality development, and the building of a
community.

Rituals like the opening and closing ceremonies strengthen our ability to
place our work in a historical and political context by bringing to mind
our history and the meaning of our actions in a wider frame. For many
of us that strengthens our ability to make, or renew, our commitment
to the political struggles we are engaged in. Rituals challenge us to take
ourselves and what we are doing seriously. As part of the education,
we were invited to give a promise of our intentions for the future. The
promises were made using different words, but they all had big
emotional impact. Somehow, bearing witness to each other’s promises
strengthened the bonds between us, so although it was a promise we each
gave individually, it felt like a group responsibility to keep it strong.

21
5. Seminars

22
5.1 Regime of Truth
This is why the education started with the subject of the ‘revolution of
the mindset.’ We cannot just make revolution happen by changing the
system and then expecting that the system will change the people within
it. We see from history that this is not enough; that people shape their
reality based on their understanding of truth. This also has to do with
hope, and how deeply we believe in the possibility of change.

Truth is something found and also shaped by society, not something

fixed and unchangeable. We create truth as a society, not as individuals.
It is important that we see truth as a real path that we try to achieve,
and not just something relativistic that ‘belongs’ to each individual. A
liberal approach to truth – that each individual is entitled to their own
interpretation of truth, and that they are all equally valid – destroys all
meaning. We must push the collective search for truth that is based on
our values, and the kind of reality we want to build.

We examined four regimes of truth that have shaped human history as

laid out by Rêber Apo: mythology, religion, philosophy and science:

Mythology
Mythology, which characterised early human society including the
Neolithic period, understood nature as something alive, and something
that society was part of. Totems and animism (the belief that everything
has a soul) created a reality in which society itself was part of the divine,
and the history of society was expressed through mythological narratives.
Today in some cultures, the animistic understanding of the world and its
myths are still alive.
The earliest mythology we have a record of is Sumerian mythology, in
which we can still find traces of the values of matriarchal society through
a focus on mother-goddess figures. In matriarchal societies - which we call

23
natural society - the center of life was the mother and around and within
her was her clan or a tribe, going beyond the blood bonds. However,
as the social system began to shift towards more patriarchal structures,
mythology generated narratives to reflect this shift. The
story of the Goddess Innana and the God Enki – in which Innana
represents matriarchal cultures and Enki the rising paradigm of
patriarchy – details this transition through Enki’s theft of
agriculture, music, tools, songs and other ‘inventions’ from Innana which
represent the values of natural society. This mythological narrative
presents a great struggle to protect the mother-goddess culture, and
the gradual dominance of men over women. This pattern is present
in the mythologies of many ancient societies, with an early focus on
mother-goddesses transitioning to narratives of domination of male gods
over goddesses.

Religion
In the shift to a regime of truth based on religion, the divine became separate
from society. God was above all beings. With the rise of monotheism
came absolutism, based on a universal law of right and wrong, good and
evil, that is determined by a single divine power. Through the method
of religion, we see the re-framing of women as forces of evil. Although
there is continuity and overlap between the mythological and religious
method, the religious method, combined with patriarchal mentality,
took the critical step of making dogmatic, fixed narratives of spirituality.
It further cemented patriarchal values through religious stories.
Even though the rise of the religious method had many negative
impacts, there are also positive elements. Many religions emerged
through social movements that sought to give answers to the questions
of the time. For example, the story of Jesus (the prophet of Christianity)
describes a movement of poor people, led by teachings based on love and
mutual respect, rising up against the oppression of the Roman empire.
Similarly, the teachings of Mohamed (the prophet of Islam) also
contain a lot of socially progressive and liberatory elements. He
was for the abolition of slavery and against interest on capital,
what complicates the development of capitalism. However, the

24
method of religion also represented a shift away from a more holistic
understanding of the world to a way of seeing reality in which humans
are judged and punished by a divine force separate from them. It also
shows the continuation of attacks against the figure of the Goddess,
represented in many cultures by the tripple Goddess (youth, motherhood
and wisdom) which becomes replaced by a single male God.

Philosophy
Philosophy breaks from mythology and religion by basing belief not on
faith or intuition, but on logic and proof. This is the basic of rationalism.
Philosophy has a long tradition in the Middle East and many other
places of the world, being an expression of the search for truth and
the meaning of life. During the so-called Enlightenment in Europe,
after the Middle Ages, beginning in the 16th century, the method of
philosophy was introduced as rebellion against religious dogmatism,
empowering the individual to think and to question reality with the
power of their own minds. Many philosophers argue that reality can be
defined and understood only through rational thinking. They supported
that the division between subject and object is required to find truth.
This created a strong binarism where there was an active subject and its
opposite, a passive object. For example a man was seen as active subject
which creates knowledge in society and the woman was the passive object
which had no role in the public sphere. With this becoming a dogma
in itself, some branches of philosophy created an ideological foundation
for the development of liberalism and capitalism, as manifestations of
hierarchies, domination and exploitation. When not connected to a
liberatory aim and a framework of values, philosophy has been used to
reinforce patriarchy and other forms of domination.

Science
Through introducing subject/object division, philosophy laid the
foundation for the method of science. Science further deepens the
divide between subject and object, as well as embracing rationalism
and positivism. Through positivism, only things which are empirically

25
provable and measurable exist. Reality is defined through experiments,
and realities that cannot be confirmed through the scientific method are
rejected. Science is the dominant method in ‘Western’ societies today, and
is perceived not only as a fundamental truth, but as only having a positive
impact.
As with philosophy, although it has many positive aspects, when
disconnected from social values and liberatory aims, science can be used
to justify systems of oppression and extreme violence. From the witch
hunts – which occurred during the time of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’,
to the genocide of Jews of Europe, scientific method has been used to
justify and carry out inhumane actions, feminicides and genocides. The
exploitation of nature and extraction of natural resources also became
systematic through the method and mentality of science.

These regimes of truth have continuity and overlap between them:

mythology lays the foundation for religion, which then leads to philosophy
as a reaction against it. Science then builds on philosophy as a method
for testing and investigation. It’s important not to see these methods as
either good or evil. Rather, we need to acknowledge that each of these
carry the good and bad aspects of culture and nothing is wholly one or
the other.

We can use some aspects of quantum physics to deepen our understanding

of reality and the complexity of truth. Quantum physics studies particles at
an atomic and subatomic level, where we can see that we cannot measure
everything as the universe behaves in different ways depending on how
we interact with it. Therefore, there are many possibilities inside a same
reality. Different factors, like our mere observation, can change reality,
and therefore the course of history. We see that the reality of something
is based on its relationships to other things: nothing exists in isolation.
Traditional science defines reality as something that doesn’t change and
can’t be influenced, but even the tiniest particles can have a big affect on
reality. Our understanding of reality sometimes goes beyond that which
we can prove or test: you can be two things at once or in two places at
the same time. It also questions the whole premise of the subject/object

26
divide. At the quantum level there is no passive or neutral subject who
observes objects without influencing them. Things exist in a positive
dialectic, in other words, in conversation, rather than a fight, between
worlds, opinions, truths and experiences which are different. This is a
pattern that can be seen at many levels of life.

Through Jineolojî we seek to develop more ways of understanding regimes

of truth in order to understand why capitalism, patriarchy, and the state
are so deeply embedded in our reality and in our minds. Therefore, we
need to retain the values and aims of a free, ecological, gender liberated
society in whatever methods we use or develop. Our search must be
rooted in the understanding that individual, society and nature compose a
whole, and are shaped through their interactions with each other. Through
Jineolojî, we recognise that being yourself and knowing yourself as part
of your environment, society and history is the source of all knowledge,
and so we seek ‘xwebûn’, the process of becoming yourself, on our path
to understanding truth. As Rêber Apo says: “Truth is love, and love is life
in freedom”1.

1 Abdullah Öcalan (2015): Manifesto for a Democratic Civilisation. Section 1:

On Method and the Regime of Truth.
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5.2 History of the Middle East and
Orientalism
We can’t understand the present without looking at history. We all,
wherever we live, come from the same roots. Africa - the cradle of
humanity - is our grandmother, and the Middle East - the cradle of
civilisation - our mother.

Before humans came to the Middle East, they were living in our
grandmother Africa. Human life began there, and for about seven million
years it was the home of human life. In the last million years, humans
started moving around. One migration line went to the Middle East, and
the plains and foothills of the Tauros-Zagros mountains in Kurdistan
were a resting point on the way. There were good living conditions in terms
of climate, shelter and food. So people stayed longer and settled down.
One of the first areas that was settled during Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and
Neolithic times (ending around 4,000 years ago) was Kurdistan. These
periods of human life make up around 98% of human history and we
describe them today as the times of the ‘natural society’.

Natural society is central for every analysis in the Kurdistan Liberation

Movement and in Jineolojî. The natural society was a matriarchal society,
in which the basis for human life and society was founded. Because history
was written down by the men in power, the reality of the natural society
and matriarchy was unwritten. Inventions vital for human society were
made in matriarchal societies. Many of these inventions are revolutions in
human life, such as the full development of language, of village settlement,
agriculture and tools for cooking and building, arts like songs and music,
the gift economy, mother-goddess culture, justice, diplomacy, healthcare,
morals and politics.

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Only 5,000 years ago civilisation began to evolve. Civilisation began with
the Sumerian state that developed between the Euphrates and Tigris
rivers. A key point of this new system, which continues to shape the states
we are living in, was a patriarchal system based on dynasty and male-
heritage, on power and oppression. To be able to establish this system,
women - who were the centre of natural society - were enslaved. Natural
society was based on a gift economy and only technological development,
slavery, and the possibility to produce a surplus made it possible to create
the Sumerian state system. This was the beginning of the suppression of
society and civilisation under the state.

It was not pre-determined that the state and power develop out of the
Neolithic natural society. We can also imagine cities without oppression
and domination. But what is clear is that without the Neolithic period and
the inventions and achievements of matriarchal culture, the state would
not have been possible. It is a simple but important idea: the state needs
society, but society doesn’t need the state. To understand this history and
its impact until today, it is important to see that violence is not sufficient
to establish a system like the state system and impose it on a matriarchal
society. Convincing people to submit to a system that acts against life
never happens without a strong resistance from women and society. This
resistance can not only go again a system of state institutions, it needs to
break with the state mentality.

There is a truth of the Middle East. But when we look at the situation
that women, men and nature are in today, we can see how this truth has
been altered. The powers of Europe claim that they built up everything,
that everything started in Europe. This idea, implemented outside, but
also within the societies of the Middle East, is the root of Europe’s
colonisation of the Middle East. Orientalism is the understanding of
the Middle East – our mother - as backwards, wild and underdeveloped.
Orientalism is an ideological war of occupation through nation state,
industrialism and capitalism. This is being done also in other parts of
the world, but orientalism refers to the focus of this war on the Middle
East. The aim is to divide and conquer. But in the never ending war in the
Middle East it’s obvious that it is impossible to fully establish this order:

29
the roots of society and resistance are too strong. The big clashes stem
from the continuous resistance and protection mechanisms of society.
Capitalism has never been completely accepted.

The Kurdistan Liberation Movement proposes an alternative. Rêber Apo

is searching for positive values in the Middle East as well as in Western
culture to form a synthesis. He uses the regimes of truth – mythology,
religion, philosophy and science – and the theory of liberatory social
science “Sociology of Freedom”. With these tools, he searches for the
social truth in the Middle East. States feel threatened by this. The war
in Kurdistan and the conspiracy against Rêber Apo which let to his
imprisonment, are directed against the fact that he challenges orientalism
and the idea that democracy came from Europe.

It is important to separate society from the state, to develop a love for

society and to centre life not around the individual, but around shared
life with others. To overcome generalization and racism, like orientalism,
it is essential to treat every person with respect and concern, while
acknowledging the different historical, national, cultural and social
conditions of our socialisations. The first step to overcome orientalism
within our movements is to honestly discuss and then honestly give and
receive critique.

30
5.3 Impact of the nation, the state,
religion and family in Europe
The state mentality affects peoples emotions, behaviours, mentality
and relations, even if living in a community which is resisting the state.
Everyone is part of society which is under the influence of the state,
religion, patriarchy and capitalism. These influences are carried inside as
part of the society that we grew up in. Likewise, religion has created a
culture and values which are part of every individual despite not having
had a religious upbringing. We need to go deep into history to understand
how we got to where we are, what positive and negative heritage we carry,
and the possibilities for moving forward.

The nuclear family based around the father (including in his absence), is a
recent invention relative to society.Tribes, clans, and different communities
throughout history have had many different ways of organising family
structures, and therefore also how people live and who they live with. The
nuclear family as it is today, has developed over time and been influenced
by a lot of factors. As patriarchy grew stronger and stronger, families and
wealth became patrilineal: it was the male line that continued the family
heritage imposing male control over families as they became a man’s
property. At different times in history, the church and the state have taken
a more active role in prescribing how families should be. It’s a crucial site
in which the occupation of women’s bodies takes place, and of dominant
systems dictating when and how women reproduce. The modern family
has been described by Rêber Apo and others as a micro model of the
state: the dominant male with total control reproducing the state with its
sovereignty, which embodies patriarchal control in wider society. In order
to challenge and deconstruct the state, and build an alternative society,
we must analyse the family. For as long as it remains in its current form,
patriarchal power structures will continue to reproduce.

31
Families also act as the main place where culture, ethics and value systems
are passed on and reproduced. Our mothers and grandmothers carry
a lot of the same values which militants aim to develop. Society itself
is passed on and maintained in kitchens and on doorsteps, within and
between families. But also the family carries the state model within itself,
reproduces nationalism, and transmits religious moralism.

Christian morality, for example, has shaped European culture; from the
family, life and work, to nationalism, colonialism and capitalism itself.
Religion emerged from the human need of understanding and interacting
with nature and the world as part of its own existence. This was then
manipulated and transformed inside institutions of power and control. It
was an attempt to kill the Mother Goddess and replace her by God, as
the highest representation of patriarchy. This Christian morality changed
human understanding, belief, culture and ethics to serve the interest of
capitalism and the state. Religion is not an optional or irrelevant practice,
but how the vast majority of humanity names and lives its values today.

Christian and specifically Catholic moralism developed based on guilt

and punishment, in ways that first and foremost affect women. Women’s
personalities have been hugely shaped by these narratives of guilt, fear,
sin, punishment and redemption. Their bodies, minds and behaviours
have been controlled and after hundreds of years the effects are deeply
embedded. At the macro level as society judges and punishes women’s
bodies, and also in the smallest day to day actions women wrestle with
guilt. The legacy of the witch hunts on communities and also on women’s
personalities is insecurity and lack of trust in other women, and seeking
the approval of male authorities.

While Catholicism says that we can repent our guilt and be forgiven,
Protestantism does not offer the same salvation: putting one foot out
of line has permanent consequences. Life may be miserable and involve
a lot of suffering, but that’s just how it is: you have to prove yourself
to God, via suffering. The understanding of life as something joyless
and full of work was one of the major building blocks of the mindset
that allowed capitalism to develop. It’s no coincidence that it was in the

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Protestant homelands of England, Scotland, the Netherlands and Prussia
that capitalism first flourished. Protestantism broke from the dominating
structure of Catholicism, claiming each person’s individual relationship
with God. It was a much needed step away from conservative values and
dogmatism, but with no ethics to hold society together instead of these
values, capitalism was able to turn this into individualism and liberalism.
Protestantism also saw further constriction of the immediate nuclear
family, to better reproduce workers. All this created the basis for industrial
exploitation of people and nature, and the state as we know it today.

Abdullah Öcalan understands nation as a shared mindset, a group or

groups that come together due to a common understanding and perception.
Nations are plural and a person can belong to more than one. They relate
closely to identity. It is always harder to find positive associations with
either nation or with national identities, coming from nation states
with histories of shared mindsets of imperialism and domination. But
in indigenous communities all over, or parts of Europe like the Basque
Country, nations, shared culture and language as an important part of
understanding and organising resistance.

The history of nation states is based on nationalism, which takes the place
of religion by worshipping the state itself. The nation state is capitalism’s
most powerful expression. To recover a true understanding of nation, and
national identities outside of and in opposition to the nation state, we
have to reclaim our histories from the dominating and oppressive aspects
of religion and reimagine the family.

It is crucial how this lives inside of our personalities. In the dialogues

between Rêber Apo and German comrades in 1995 he speeks about the
method of personality development and the process of learning about
yourself through the mirror of a different reality:

“Day by day, the need to question the European personality is clearly

revealed. The European personality is very self-confident and has a
mentality that means to evaluate, judge and guide all peoples at the
highest level. It can be dangerous to see us like this. In that sense I say, it

33
is very difficult to be a comrade. In order to be a comrade, it is necessary
to compromise on Europeanism. Can they make concessions? They have
characteristics of a dominant nation. Will they also make concessions on
these?
My suggestion for them is that they should be a bit patient. They must be
stubborn and understanding. They should try to understand us and to be
comrades if they have the strength for that… The Kurdistan Revolution
gives the possibility to once again find humanity inside of it… In this
respect, I think that taking steps together is getting more and more
meaningful. And in this sense, they are not strangers. They are becoming
real revolutionaries… Comradeship is still the strongest emotion, the
most necessary feeling, the most beautiful feeling.”

34
5.4 Liberalism
Liberalism started as a philosophy of “freedom”. But what is freedom?
Philosophers such as John Locke and John S Mill sought freedom through
rights granted by law and in this they tied freedom to the institution of
the state. They developed the concept of ‘citizenship’, which in turn tied
human identity to the state. They wrestled with a competitive view of
freedom where every individual wants and needs as much as possible but
will always risk oppressing others with that freedom.

The concept of the individual is central to liberalism. The individual is seen

as the centre of the world, and the main subject of action. The individual
alone creates his (and it almost always is his) own future. Liberal thinkers
reacted against the idea of the all powerful god by constructing the idea
of the all-powerful subject, relating to the rest of the world as objects. So
liberalism moves this concept onto the individual, usually represented by
the Western dominant male.

As humans are social beings and rely on communities to develop and

survive, a whole myth has had to be created to support the idea of the
individual as separate from the collective, and in fact in danger from it.
Ethics as something that holds a collective together and makes our values
a lived reality is not possible when each individual’s total autonomy in the
moment is so sacred.

This means the “freedom” liberalism promotes is flawed. This “freedom”

robs us of real freedom. Because individuals can’t survive without a
collective, when people break with collective and community, they will
always have to rely on the state, which is a mechanism of power and
oppression. For meeting their needs alone, individuals are exposed to
capitalism. This “freedom” means personal advantage in the moment,
devoid of history and communal values. It destroys society, memory,
and our responsibility to others. It destroys our responsibility to speak

35
up when we see something is wrong, for fear of standing on individual
freedoms. In this competitive, patriarchal model of freedom it is also seen
as inevitable that too much freedom would oppress others. So the question
of liberal philosophers is – how far should “free individuals” be allowed
to go? There’s no thought to developing a model of collective freedom,
where values, ethics and the collective are also valued and freedom relies
on the freedom of others.

The emergence of liberalism is located in a specific context of place and

time. It’s important to remember this, as liberalism likes to position
itself as objective and without context. It flourished in the same places
and times as capitalism and industrialism, and consolidated the cultural,
economic, military and political hegemony of Western Europe and the
USA over other regions of the world.

As cities and towns, rather than villages, became the centre of human
life, liberalism spread more and more. As a bourgeoise class was created,
liberalism was the philosophy of that class. As time passed, it usually
promoted a strong state, and so no matter what liberalism says about
freedom and human rights, it must always be understood as intrinsically
connected to the history of the state.

One of liberalism’s great successes has been to claim objectivity. This

is the same tactic as its scientific cousin, rationalism. Liberalism has a
positivist and rationalist understanding of the world - it builds morality
on this measurable, mathematical basis. For example, people are valued
as good workers according to how much money they earn. Along with
this, morals within a liberal model are seen as objective principles we can
quantify. They don’t come from people, emotions, social connections or
collective practice. The fewer innate values we believe in and rely on, the
more laws we need.

Liberalism is a mindset that spreads into all spheres of life. For this,
women have to analyse their own struggles. A whole branch of feminism
for example pursues individual freedoms, asks for rights to be granted,
and looks to the state for liberation.

36
It is on this basis that Rêber Apo has described liberalism as “capitalism’s
greatest weapon”. Without the success of liberalism, capitalism would
have to take a very different shape to maintain its power. Liberalism is
central to the special warfare tactics of the patriarchal, capitalist nation
state. It has successfully painted itself as neutral, whilst promoting such
violences as rape culture, consumerism, mental health crises (and the
individualised response to these, blaming the person suffering instead of
the system), drugs and the commodification of everything from nature
to peoples bodies to revolutionary movements. Liberalism has taught us
there is no alternative to the systems of dominance we have, that if we
are unhappy, amorality or nihilism are the only responses, that our private
lives are sacred and untouchable.

But because liberalism is an attack, when we properly understand it and

its role in special warfare, we can organise against it. Our self-defence is
based around the protection of our free communal life with our heart,
mind, body and soul.

37
5.5 Jineolojî
Jineolojî, as the science of women, is the science of revolution. Because it is
through achieving woman’s freedom that all society can be freed. Jineolojî
develops this by giving all life meaning, by understanding freedom in the
balance and co-existance of all beings, from the highest mountains to the
smallest cells. It redefines the role and identity of women and combats
the denial of women and femicide. It also reconnects society with nature,
by understanding the human as part of her. Jineolojî evaluates women’s
wisdom and experiences of the struggle for freedom, understanding that
history is something alive which needs to be redifined and radicalised,
understanding women as the biggest movement of resistance.

Jineolojî started with the idea of gathering women’s knowledge and the
need for a women’s science. The name Jineolojî was first expressed by
Abdullah Öcalan in 2008 in the book “Sociology of Freedom”, the third
volume of the “Manifesto for a Democratic Civilisation”. The basis of
revolution is understood at achieving the freedom of women in order to
free society. Discussions started to build on this basis, as well as through
conferences. From the beginning onwards, the work of Jineolojî became a
collective process. Many comrades have put a lot of love and struggle into
the work and development of Jineolojî, including comrades who were
organising in the prisons. Through that process it grew more and more
into its form as a science of women, society and women’s revolution, a
knowledge of life and communal living.

It is clear that a revolution in science is necessary. We have to analyse

women as a pillar of society and freedom, not as an oppressed identity.
Society and its history cannot be understood without the history of
women. Woman as a broad identity, as a revolution in itself, is hidden
inside this history.

38
Jineolojî is also the the search for this identity through hebûn - zanebûn
- xwebûn, which mean existence - knowledge - becoming yourself. Rêber
Apo says theidentity of a free woman doesn’t have a final definition. We
have to be the archaeologists of our own identities because they have been
kept hidden for thousands of years. To do this it is necessary to deeply
understand history but also the most recent one, from birth to childhood
and into adulthood.

Jineolojî works in 8 different areas: history, economy, demography,

ethics and aesthetics, health, politics, education and ecology.

Jineolojî understands history as fluid, as a source of seeking the truth

of women, which was lost inside patriarchal reinterpretation. It sees it
as non-linear, but rather as round, like a spiral, where we can see that
processes evolve and influence each other without ending or begining
according to changes in power, but rather looking into the evolution of
culture, values, resistance, ethics or cults and how they influence and live
today.

The aim of economy is to establish a collective economic culture based on

self-sufficiency. The focus is in the philosophy of economy used in natural
society where women were at the centre, promoting mutual cooperation
and involving the whole society.

As for demography, it has been used by capitalism to control women’s

reproduction and decision taking, to reshape the family according to
its needs. The state also uses it as a way of ethnic control to destroy
indigenous populations and national liberation struggles. Women, as
creators and defenders of the land, should retake the role of demographic
management, aware of the needs of their own communities as they were
in matriarchal societies.

In terms of health, mothers are understood as the first carers and doctors.
Women in natural society were also in charge of collecting herbs and had
a role of healers, which is still present in villages all over the world. The
understanding of health is linked to spirituality, emotion, and thought,

39
and combined with the developments of medicine to cure any disease.
The aim of health is to preserve a life with meaning and use knowledge in
a way that is ethical, sustainable and accesible for all.

Politics need to organise society promoting freedom, which starts with

the analysis of the reality of women. This is a task that begins in the mind
and that is carried out through practice and diverse methods. Democratic
modernity is a framework where society can develop and organise, making
every change possible in a communal way.

In the field of ecology, the aim is to overcome the existing conflict

between nature and society. The environment, seen as the first nature,
and the society, seen as the second nature, need to unite for a liberated
society, a third nature, or way to connect everything together holisitically.
Economy, culture, socialisation and every field of human existance needs
to fit inside the balance of nature.

Regarding ethics, women are the expression of social values that ensure
common life and justice in society, a compass of values which helps us
to find a way and the heart and the mind of society. Ethics are the self
defence of society and the defence of life. In order to protect itself, society
needs common values and basic shared principles. So the question of
ethics is a question of society.

Aesthetics are the expression of ethics. As the knowledge of beauty, it

was also used as a method of control in order to create new values. Over
history, aesthetics was cut from ethics and used as a tool to implement
oppression in our own thoughts and to take power over women’s minds
and bodies. Aesthetics are the unity of feelings, thoughts and actions.

In the women’s liberation movement in Kurdistan the principles of ethics

and aesthetics, described as free will, free thought and conscience, are a
fundamental concept. In this sense conscience is how we approach reality
in an ethical way. It means to put yourself in the place of the other, to
have empathy.

40
5.6 Hevjiyana azad
How do we imagine life in freedom? How do patriarchy, state and
capitalism influence the way we relate to each other? As friends, as
comrades, among women, as women, men and people with other gender
identities - as society? How do people all over the world build relations to
struggle for alternatives? And how do we want to live and fight together?

Hev means together, jiyan life, and azad free. Living together in freedom.
Hevjiyana azad is an answer to the current crisis of capitalist modernity,
which is as well a crisis of relationships in a deeper sense. Individualism,
making each other property, consumerism, egoism, competitiveness, envy
and violence are shaping relations in capitalist modernity. Free relations
and free life cannot be lived in an oppressive system. The relations between
two, three, twenty or more people, are always a part and outcome of their
environment, representing and reflecting the system they live in.

Hevjiyana azad does not refer to a narrow understanding of relationships,

in the sense of the relationship or marriage between one woman and
one man, but to the wide range of relationships we are living in. Free life
means unity of society and nature, women, men, children; free relations
between all living beings and their environment, based on mutuality. This
includes all of us, our relationships to our surrounding, plants, animals,
other women, society, family, belief systems, religions, the organization
of work and economy, political organization, the architecture of cities,
villages, houses, rooms and public spaces, the whole way of living together.

Both in the present and history, there are examples of different societies
around the world with traces of hevjiyana azad, rooted in matriarchal
traditions and reaching back until Neolithic times. The Achés [an
indigenous community in Paraguay] connect the birth of a child with
a certain plant or animal, which would then be part of the child for the
rest of her life. There have been heretic movements and what has been

41
condemned as ‘paganism’ in Europe, such as Gnostics, Catars and Free
Spirits. They were defending alternative models of society and different
religious beliefs at a time when empires and monotheistic religions were
imposing themselves on the world. Another example are the witch hunts
and how women’s power and knowledge has been weakened over the
course of the developments of the 14th to 17th centuries in Europe,
the increasing development of private property, ownership of land, state
control, liberalism and patriarchy. Meanwhile, in the Middle East there
have been many movements opposing the monopolization of Islam. One
important example is Zoroastrianism, the religion of Zarathustra. Other
examples are the Tibetan community marriage practices, the Maori
community in New Zealand and their views on family, and Yoruba
society and how a patriarchal understanding of gender was imposed by
colonialism.

With the first state-like structures, the split between society and nature,
the split between the genders and the subjugation of women developed.
Humans have a first nature [biological nature] and second nature [social
nature]. When these natures were in harmony, it allowed a free society
where relationships were based on freedom, justice and equality.

One important example is the development of the women’s movement

in Kurdistan. The establishment of the women’s army and the women’s
party aimed to develop the autonomy of women in all fields of society,
challenging patriarchy, as a liberatory force for radical change. The five
principles of the women’s liberation ideology – welatparezî, free thought
and free will, organizing, struggle, ethics and aesthetics – are tools to
move towards hevjiyana azad.

Regarding sexuality, in many matricentric societies it has a spiritual

meaning, and plays an important role in connecting people and uniting
communities. Throughout the history of patriarchy, sexuality became a
major tool of control and oppression. Everything has been sexualised,
and sexuality itself tabooed or commodified. Thus, on the way towards
hevjiyana azad it is important to develop a different understanding of
love, sexuality and intimacy and a new sensuality as part of a holistic

42
way of living and fighting. We have to see eachother as comrades rather
than sexual objects or potential partners, to deepen our comradeship and
widen our love for each other as women and our love for who we are.

It is our task to continue to research the history and reality of common

life and relations in our regions, to research society, movements and
revolutions and how they experiment with different forms of relations,
like the ones between women and society, life and nature or collectivity
and common space. What are the gains of different liberation movements
such as feminism, socialism, anarchism and the ecologist movement?
How much did they succeed in developing something closer to hevjiyana
azad? How much change happened in society?

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5.7 Democratic nation and
democratic confederalism
‘Democratic modernity’ is the alternative to capitalist modernity.
Democratic modernity carries the positive values of freedom, community,
justice and equality which were present before the onset of capitalism and
remain alive today, a ‘river of clean water’ running through history. But at
the same time, patriarchy and other systems of oppression have developed
to suppress society for the profit of a few, and this ‘dirty river’ is also
running through history, mixing with and contaminating the clean water.
This clean water, the history of social values, the resistance to oppression,
is the political and social basis of democratic modernity. Democratic
confederalism carries the task of organising and defending these values.

When patriarchy first got a grip on society there was a period of chaos,
of accelerated change, where the potential for changing history was high.
At the end of this period, patriarchy emerged as the dominant system.
The same happened in the 13th and 14th centuries in Europe, with a
period of chaos and instability that saw capitalism emerge. Neither of
these results was inevitable, and these moments of instability are also
opportunities for the positive forces of history. Rêber Apo considers us
to be in a similar period of instability, or ‘deep structural crisis’ right now,
which means that we are in a period of opportunity. For our survival and
our freedom we need to use this opportunity. This change is based on
working towards democratic confederalism.

Democratic confederalism is the structure and social model for

democratic modernity. It is founded on the concept of democratic nation.
Just as democratic modernity stands in opposition to capitalist modernity,
democratic nation stands in opposition to the nation state. Nation is a
mentality. Democratic nation is the mentality of freedom. Freedom
means fighting. Just as mindsets need a body to exist, national and social

44
mindsets need a structure to materialise. The body that materialises the
spirit of democratic nation is democratic confederalism.

Democratic confederalism should not be understood as ready made

structures that can be copied. What’s more important is that when
building structures certain principles are followed: that power flows from
the bottom up and not from the top down, to keep decision making and
conflict resolution at the most local level possible, to develop social values
and equality, with gender equality always being the base. Even region
to region, the best ways to organise can vary and certainly in different
global contexts significant details may need to change to follow the
same principles. But there are some basic structural points that are very
important.

The commune system, and attempting to build up the mentality needed

to maintain it, must in some form be part of a confederalist system.
Communes – which are the smallest unit of democratic confederalism
- can vary in size depending on needs, demography or geography. But to
develop the practice of democratic confederalism, engaging in discussions
and becoming politicised at the commune level is essential. In North and
East Syria, communes send representatives to councils, which manage
things that cannot be managed at the smaller level. This continues up to
the level of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
An examples of something that cannot be managed at the grassroots is
coordination and distribution of logistics like crops, fuel, and water across
wider areas. But an effort is always made to keep the decision making
power at the grassroots levels and driven from below.

In this early stage, democratic confederalism can, as long as certain levels

of political and economic autonomy exist, co-exist with nation states. The
system is not to attack the state, but instead to build alternatives and
counter-power, to regain control over our lives and eventually make the
state obsolete. The system of confederating with other communes and
councils will become a global confederal system.

45
An example of developing democratic confederalism outside of North
and East Syria are the Zapatista ‘caracoles’. They are governing centres
which manage an autonomous commune-based organisation as part of the
Zapatista revolutionary movement in Chiapas, Mexico. Another example
can be found in the city of El Alto in Bolivia, where neighbourhood
councils developed to a high level and made a federal structure between
them, successfully building a counter power to the central government.
They focused on mutual aid through neighbourhood organising and
communal resources, on conflict resolution, and on organising protests,
with a huge impact.

46
6. Platforms

47
Why platforms? Background, idea and aim

Methods of criticism and self-criticism are tools used regularly within

the structures of the revolutionary movement in North and East Syria.
To understand what this tool is based on and how it can grow to its full
potential we must look at the development of the foundational principles
of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement. In the movement’s ideology and
practice, it is clear that we have to see every single individual as part
of society and history. If we understand ourselves and everybody else in
this context, we see that there are thousands of years of struggle between
oppression and the search for freedom written in our own personalities.
Everybody embodies parts of this dialectic.

How can we support the parts within ourselves that seek freedom? How
can we learn to build a personality with which we can support ourselves
and others? Who do we want to be? Xwebûn is the aim that we are
communally working towards. Not to become consumed by individualistic
personal development, but by seeing how big structures function at the
level of human interaction we can see how all the pieces fit together. One
tool for this is the model of criticism/self-criticism, which works on the
assumption that we are all mirrors of our history and society. Criticism is
given to a behaviour or approach, not to a person.

Platforms encourage individuals to reflect upon parts of their character

that need improvement and to find ways to progress. At the core of any
criticism given to another comrade is the belief that the comrade can
and wants to change. In this way, giving a critique to a comrade should
indicate care. Criticism is based on building community and struggle
together, and on the responsibility to fully support each other.

During any process of criticism/self-criticism it is important that comrades

do not immediately respond to criticisms and try to find meaning in all
critiques that are given to them. If someone feels that a critique is really
not justified it is permitted to speak up. However, this should wait until
after all other comrades have had a chance to express opinions. This is to
avoid defensive reactions and give time to reflect.

48
Sharing the power of individual development as part of a collective creates
an environment of closeness that cannot be damaged by past mistakes
and failures. Instead, it establishes the foundation of a collective force
fighting for a free life.

Platforms are based on sharing reports on each personal life story. Topics
included in the report are childhood and upbringing, family, politicisation,
relationship to womanhood, relationship to men and women, working and
social life back home and in Rojava, including the education. Afterwards,
the rest of the friends give criticism and perspectives.

Every criticism creates a new horizon, leading to the development and

broadening of the mind and inner strength. The real solution and struggle
against the reality of the capitalist system that isolates, suffocates and
drives people into depression is the love of community and comradeship.
Personality analysis is a basis of this communality.

49
7. On hope

50
Writing from one member of the Şehid Malda Education Term, shortly after
the invasion of North and East Syria by the Turkish state in October 2019.

We wanted to plant a garden.

I still have the seeds in my cupboard: lettuce, carrots, beetroot, cabbage.

We had so many dreams and plans for this piece of ground. We had tilled
the soil and composted our kitchen waste for months, hacked back purple
thistles that grew above our heads and scraped our fingers raw, raked
armloads of dry golden grass, itchy in the heavy heat of summer.

When the brown hen decided to roost on her eggs even though we
had no rooster, we walked around the village and traded her eggs with
neighbours who had fertilised eggs. We snuck them into her nest and
they hatched a few weeks later, a brood of chicks from a dozen different
mothers and fathers. We watched her care for them as they grew.

When the attacks came the shells ripped through our neighbourhoods
and tore open the earth. We had to abandon the garden. We gave the
chickens away. We started putting coffins into the ground, instead of
seeds.
This week it rained for the first time in months- the parched earth drank
it in, we inhaled the smell of a new world. But we rejoiced not because the
downpour would give our seedlings life, but because mud makes it harder
for tanks to attack our villages and towns, because clouds provide cover
from drones raining down missiles on our homes.

Now we watch the vultures of the world descend, ready to pick through
rubble and shallow graves in their insatiable hunger. Ready to gorge
themselves, even while the footsteps of our fallen friends still echo in the
streets of Sere Kaniye. I’m scared that the only thing that will be left to us
when we’re old is to look each other in the eye and say “remember when
we were free?”

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Hope has always been the hardest seed to grow. It feels too tender and
fragile to exist in this world. Sometimes we smother it with fleece and
netting, protecting it from the harshness of our surroundings. But in order
for it to grow, it needs to be buffeted by wind so it can cross pollinate, it
needs to learn how to defend itself against birds and grow strong roots so
it can hold onto the earth. It will grow weathered and tough, it will lose
leaves and branches.

But, my friends, when the summer comes, its fruit will be the sweetest of
all.

52
Andrea Wolf Institute of
the Jineolojî Academy

jineoloji.org