💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › janet-biehl-kurdish-communalism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:04:58. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Kurdish Communalism
Author: Janet Biehl
Date: Sep. 10 2011
Language: en
Topics: kurdistan, communalism, interview
Source: http://new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism.  Proofread online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4145, retrieved on November 20, 2020.

Janet Biehl

Kurdish Communalism

During the past five years, the Kurds of southeastern Turkey have built

communalist institutions on a scale unprecedented in the world. Earlier

this year, in“Hasankeyf: A Story of Resistance,” I described the

long-term Kurdish resistance to a massive hydroelectric dam project,

coordinated by 36-year-old Ercan Ayboga.

After the article was published, Ercan (pronounced AIR-john) wanted to

reach out to communalists in other parts of the world, and make the

Kurdish achievement in assembly democracy known to them, so we agreed on

an interview. We began our conversation the by e-mail. Then in

September, I visited Diyarbakir for the Mesopotamian Social Forum, and

on a sunny day in Sumer Park, we sat down and continued the interview.

His calm determination and clear-headedness, were impressive to me. So

was the clear resolve of the Kurdish people to continue their fight for

“democratic autonomy,” even under conditions of persecution.

The war between the Turkish state and the PKK guerrillas, which began in

1984, continues to this day. The Turkish state routinely demonizes

Kurdish freedom activists as “terrorists” by associating them with the

PKK. Tragically, the press of Turkey’s NATO allies is silent, at best,

not only on the conflict but on the criminalization of Kurdish political

activity. The silence, in my view, must be broken, and the remarkable

Kurdish achievement made known to the world.

—Ercan, what is your background? Where do you live, and what is your

job?

—Around forty years ago my parents emigrated from Turkish Kurdistan to

Germany because of the bad economic situation in their homeland. So I

grew up in Germany, but our connection with Kurdistan never ceased, as

we visited every two years. Let’s say that I have two “identities,”

which I regard as an opportunity to know well both a Western and an

Eastern society. Since age sixteen, I have been continuously politically

active in different leftist German and Kurdish organizations. The main

two arenas for my engagement are the freedom struggle of the Kurdish

people, which started in the 1980s, and left organizations that oppose

war, discrimination against migrants, and the mistreatment of workers in

both Germany and Turkey.

After completing my studies in civil engineering and hydrology, I worked

for more than two years in the municipality of the largest city of

Turkish Kurdistan, called Diyarbakir (in Kurdish: Amed). Between the

fall of 2004 and the beginning of 2007, I was heavily involved in

establishing a campaign to oppose the large Ilisu Dam Project on the

Tigris River, which would have grave social, cultural, ecological, and

political impacts on many, many people. Since 2007 I worked in this

campaign, called the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive, as

international coordinator also from Germany, but spent two to three

months annually in Kurdistan. The Initiative has as its objective, not

only to see the cancellation of the Ilisu project, but to build up a

coalition of dam-critical and water-issue movements in the Republic of

Turkey. At the same time I began a Ph.D. on river restoration.

—Is Turkish Kurdistan a village society? How much is it industrialized?

—Kurdistan is no longer a classic village society. In the 1960s, the

Turkish state introduced the capitalist economy into Turkish Kurdistan,

and an industrialization process like that of Europe or North America is

under way, albeit in smaller steps. But the feudal elements are still

strong in half of the provinces, and industrial capitalism is still less

dominant in Kurdistan than in the Western Turkish provinces.

Turkish territory doesn’t have much oil, but all the oil it does have

lies in Kurdistan. The big five hydroelectric power plants on the

Euphrates River in Kurdistan produce an important part of the country’s

electricity. But the local population doesn’t benefit much economically.

The first agriculture in human history was developed here. Agriculture

remains the main source of income, as farmers till the soil in

subsistence farming. But now Turkey’s greatest cotton production also

happens here, and most of the hard wheat (used for pasta) comes from

Kurdistan. Up to the 1990s, animal husbandry was a significant part of

the economy, but the war between the Turkish Army and the PKK (Kurdistan

Workers Party) guerrillas destroyed most of it. While Turkey once

exported meat, for the past years it has imported meat.

The past twenty years have seen an enormous shift. In the armed

conflict, the Turkish Army destroyed 4,000 villages and forcibly

displaced at least two million people. Today around half of Turkey’s

Kurds no longer live in Kurdistan. Because of the war, and for economic

reasons, they have moved to Istanbul and other cities. The Kurdish

cities, like Diyarbakir, have grown fast (half of the people live in

cities now), and a large, impoverished lumpenproletariat has developed.

The eastern two-thirds of the mainly Kurdish-populated provinces are the

poorest in the Republic of Turkey. Three provinces in western Turkish

Kurdistan, where the freedom struggle is not so strong and the wartime

destruction was limited, are an exception.

According to recent statistics, Kurds constitute almost half of the

Turkish working class. They work mainly in the worst-paid sectors of the

economy, like construction, restaurants, tourism, and textile. They are

not well organized as workers and are not strong in the big labor

unions.

In recent years mining is on the rise in Turkish Kurdistan. Large

international companies are interested in chromium, coal, and gold. As

the most territory is mountainous, intensive mining exploitation would

negatively affect both the population and nature.

—What effect has the mountainous terrain had historically?

—The mountains of Kurdistan—the Eastern Toros and the Northern Zagros,

rainy, partly forested—have historically shaped Kurds’ character, making

them rebellious, robust, and stubborn. Considering that the Kurds have

never had their “own” strong state but instead have arranged themselves

within the dominant states of others (Turks, Arabs, Persians), we can

say that mountains are a principal reason why Kurdish culture has

survived.

That is especially true in the twentieth century, when repression and

efforts at assimilation became systematic. Starting in the 1960s and

1970s, Kurds based in the mountains waged classic guerrilla armed

struggles against the Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian states (in the smallest

part of Kurdistan, in Syria, there are almost no mountains). Although

they met with some defeats, the resistance has never been completely

destroyed, nor can it be. If the Kurds ever do achieve some rights, the

mountains will have played a crucial role.

Another effect of the mountains is that in some regions, the tribal

composition of Kurdish society is still dominant. Before the

mid-twentieth century, Kurdish society was organized primarily in

tribes. Most Kurdish people still have a strong village

character--almost every Kurd knows from which village he/she comes and

to which tribe or clan he/she belongs.

—Is Kurdish society traditionally patriarchal? How strong is Kurdish

feminism?

—Until the 1980s the Kurdish society was completely patriarchal. There

were no women’s rights or feminist groups, not even among the more

liberal Alevi Kurds. The most important dynamic in overcoming the

patriarchal structures became the Kurdish freedom movement. And without

women's participation, the movement could not possibly have achieved

broad popular support. By around 1990 women were participating widely in

this movement, and between 1990 and 1992 women were leading

demonstrations, which started to change the situation significantly. In

the middle of 1990s a broad ideological discussion started in the

movement, in which patriarchal structures in the whole society were

criticized systematically. Since then, many women’s organizations have

been founded in all areas of the struggle.

In the 2000s, patriarchal structures in half of Kurdish society—the part

influenced directly by the freedom movement—changed significantly. Women

became more present in the streets and in organizations. Unlike twenty

or thirty years ago, women now are accepted everywhere and murder of

women [in honor killings] is not accepted. Most of the other half of

Kurdish society has now been changing too.

Today women are present in all the political structures, at all levels,

in the Kurdish freedom movement, which is a result of the long gender

discussion and of women’s struggle within the movement and in the

democratic assemblies. For instance, in the BDP, all chairperson

positions must be held by a man and a woman, and there is a 40 percent

requirement for both sexes in all management boards, public parliaments,

and elected councils. As “gender liberation” is one of the three main

principles used by the freedom movement besides “democracy” and

“ecology,” a social perspective without women’s liberation is

unthinkable.

—Does assembly democracy have roots in Kurdish history?

—Assembly democracy has limited roots in Kurdistan history and

geography. As I’ve said, the society’s village character was and is

still fairly strong. Some villages had hierarchy and aghas (feudal big

land owners), but in others, where these factors were absent, villages

organized common meetings in the kom (village community) in which they

made decisions. In many cases, older women participated in these

meetings, but not young women.

In past centuries, tribes sometimes held assemblies with representatives

from all families (or villages) in order to discuss important issues of

the tribe or the larger society. The tribal leader carried out the

decisions that the assembly accepted.

During their long history, Kurdish tribes used from time to time and

from region to region a confederal organizational structure for facing

political and social challenges. It was based on voluntariness, so not

all tribes of a certain participated in the confederal structure. But in

most of Kurdistan, many non-Kurdish tribes or societies were not much

involved in the confederal system.

In the 1990s, as the Kurdish freedom movement grew stronger, an effort

was made to build up assemblies in “liberated” villages. PKK guerrillas

promoted village assemblies, and in villages where the guerrillas were

strong, most of the people accepted them. But just as they were getting

under way, the Turkish army destroyed 4,000 villages and their political

structures. Thereafter the repression intensified. Since 2005, in some

of the villages that were close to the freedom movement, this idea has

been developed again. Some villages organize regular democratic

assemblies, fully including women and all parts of the society.

—How did communalist ideas become known among Kurds? How important are

the writings of Murray Bookchin? Does communalism have other

intellectual sources?

—The Kurdish freedom movement had its ideological sources in the 1968

student movement and the Turkish left’s Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist,

Maoist, Trotskyist, and other communist theories. At the end of the

1980s, the Kurdish freedom movement embarked on a critique of the

actually existing (state) socialist model, and in later years it would

be deepened. The critique of the 1990s said, among other points, that

it’s important to change individuals and society before taking the power

of any state, that the relationship between individuals and state must

be organized anew and that instead of big bureaucratic-technocratic

structures, a full democracy should be developed.

In 1999, when the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured and the

guerrilla forces were withdrawn to Iraqi Kurdistan, the freedom movement

underwent a process of comprehensive strategic change. It did not give

up the idea of socialism, but it rejected the existing Marxist-Leninist

structure as too hierarchical and not democratic enough. Political and

civil struggle replaced armed struggle as the movement’s center.

Starting in 2000, it promoted civil disobedience and resistance (the

Intifada in Palestine was also an inspiration).

Further, the movement gave up the aim of establishing a Kurdish-dominant

state, because of the existing difficult political conditions in the

Middle East and the world; instead, it advanced a long-term solution for

the Kurdish question within the four states Turkey, Iran, Iraq and

Syria: democratic confederalism. It now considers it more important to

have a democratic, social and tolerant society than to have one’s own

state. For Turkey, it has proposed the foundation of a second or

democratic republic.

During this process of strategic change, the freedom movement activists

read and discussed a new literature that supported and could make

contributions to it. It analyzed books and articles by philosophers,

feminists, (neo-)anarchists, libertarian communists, communalists, and

social ecologists. That is how writers like Murray Bookchin, Michel

Foucault, and Immanuel Wallerstein came into their focus.

The Kurdish freedom movement developed the idea of “democratic

confederalism” (the Kurdish version of communalism) not only from the

ideas of communalist intellectuals but also from movements like the

Zapatistas; from Kurdish society’s own village-influenced history; from

the long, thirty-five-year experience of political and armed struggle;

from the intense controversies within Turkish

democratic-socialist-revolutionary movements; and from the movement’s

continuous development of transparent structures for the broad

population.

—Have those factors and the Declaration of Kurdish Confederalism,

published in March 2005, led to the creation of democratic,

decision-making assemblies?

—This declaration was the first step in developing communalism in

Kurdistan. Since then, Abdullah Öcalan wrote three comprehensive

Defenses, the first in 2001 in two volumes, the second in 2004, and the

last and most comprehensive in 2009 in five volumes, all of which has

further developed the content of the communalism idea.

We foresee communalism as developing first in Turkish Kurdistan. Since

2007 the freedom movement has created democratic and decision-making

assemblies in neighborhoods of cities where it is strong, particularly

in the provinces of Hakkari, Sirnak, Siirt, Mardin, Diyarbakir, Batman,

and Van. The assemblies were established to make decisions on all common

problems, challenges, and projects of the respective neighborhood

according the principles of a base democracy—the whole population has

the right to participate. In some of the assemblies, non-Kurdish people

are participating, like Azerbaijanis and Aramaic people.

In Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkish Kurdistan, there are

assemblies almost everywhere. They are stronger in the city than in the

rural areas. There are even some assemblies in faraway Istanbul.

There are assemblies at several levels. At the bottom are the

neighborhood assemblies. They choose the delegates that constitute the

city assembly. In Diyarbakir, ideas are discussed in the city assembly,

of which the city council is part—not officially, not legally, but in

our system. If the city assembly makes a certain decision on an issue,

then the city council members who are part of the city assembly will

promote it. (But the city council also has members from the other

parties, like the ruling AKP, which don’t agree with it.) The city

council has the legal power to make decisions that become laws. But for

the people, the city assembly is the legitimate body.

When decisions on a bigger scale have to be taken, the city and village

assemblies of a province come together. In the provinces of Hakkari and

Sirnak, the experience has had very positive results. The state

authority has no influence on the population—the people don’t accept the

state authorities. There are two parallel authorities, of which the

democratic confederal structure is more powerful in the practice.

At the top of this model is the DTK (Democratic Society Congress), which

brings together all Kurds in the Republic of Turkey. It consists of more

than five hundred civil society organizations, labor unions, and

political parties—they make up 40 percent of its members; 60 percent of

its members are delegates from village assemblies.

The DTK provincial assemblies were crucial in electing the candidates

for the Turkish parliament of the legal pro-Kurdish party, the BDP

(Peace and Democracy Party). For the last elections, the Diyarbakir

provincial assembly decided on six candidates chosen by the DTK—those

selected became candidates of the BDP for parliament. (Six of 36 elected

candidates are now in prison—the court did not release them. We don’t

know when or whether they will be liberated.)

Slowly but surely, democratic confederalism is gaining acceptance by

more Turkish Kurds. Recently, the DTK presented a draft paper on

democratic autonomy for Turkish Kurdistan. At a big meeting in

Diyarbakir in July 14, 2011, the DTK declared itself in support of

“democratic autonomy.” It seeks to realize democratic autonomy step by

step, by Kurds’ own means, and especially where the Kurdish freedom

movement is strong. Much of Kurdish society approved, but the idea was

controversial in Turkish society.

—What are the peace villages?

—One result of the discussions of democratic confederalism has been an

objective to found new villages on the communalist idea or transform

existing villages whose conditions are suitable for that. Such villages

are to be democratic, ecological, gender equal, and/or even peace

villages. Here peace not only refers to the armed conflict; it expresses

the people’s relationships among themselves and with the natural world.

Cooperatives are the economic and material base of these villages.

The first peace villages were developed in 2010. In Hakkari province,

which borders Iraq and Iran and where the freedom movement is very

strong, several villages decided to develop a cooperative economy. The

new political and social relationship of the population and the economy

are suitable for that, as the freedom movement is very strong there,

with direct support from 90 percent of the society. Close to the city of

Weranshah (Viranşehir), the construction of a new village with seventy

households based on the idea of peace villages just started. In Van

province, activists have decided to build a new ecological women’s

village, which would be something special. This would enforce the role

of women in the society. Women who have been victims of domestic

violence will be accepted. These small communities could supply

themselves with all or almost all the necessary energy.

—How widespread are the assemblies in Turkish Kurdistan?

—In reality, the assembly model has not yet been developed broadly for

several reasons. First, in some places the Kurdish freedom movement is

not so strong. Almost half of the population in Turkey’s Kurdish areas

still do not actively support it. In those places there are no few or no

assemblies.

Second, the discussions among the Kurds on democratic confederalism have

not proceeded everywhere as well as they might.

And third, the repression by the Turkish state makes further development

very difficult. About thirty-five hundred activists have been arrested

in the past two and a half years, since 2009, which in many regions has

significantly weakened the structures of democratic confederalism. There

have been trials for two years. The military clashes between Turkish

Army and the Kurdish guerrillas are once again on the increase. Seven

days ago [c. September 20] they arrested seventy people from a city

assembly in a province near the Iraqi border. The state simply says

these assemblies are coordinated by the KCK (Union of Communities in

Kurdistan), the umbrella structure of the leftist Kurdish freedom

movement in Middle East ,of which today PKK is a part, which is an

illegal structure, and that becomes the pretext for arresting them.

—You take a huge risk, just by participating.

—People have been arrested whose only activity was to participate in a

city assembly. In the last six months 1,650 people have been arrested

for being in the KCK.

—What happens to them when they are arrested?

—They go to jail. Eventually they will have a trial, on a charge that

the state concocts. But the delays are long. And they can’t speak

Kurdish in the courts, because the state doesn’t accept the language.

—Are they ever found innocent and freed?

—Of all the thousands of people arrested and charged with KCK membership

[see below for KCK] in recent years, only one has gone free. All the

others are in prison.

—You have taken communalism farther than anyone anywhere on the

planet—and you do it under extreme adversity. I want to pause for a

moment to let that sink in.

All right. What is the freedom movement’s thinking about the rest of

Anatolia, the non-Kurdish parts of Turkey?

—The Kurds are a large ethnic culture in the Republic of Turkey—25 to 30

percent of the whole population. They were one of the republic’s two

founding cultural elements, but in the years after the founding in 1924,

they were deceived and repressed. The Turkish government has long

rejected any basic and autonomous rights for the Kurds. Even the

language was forbidden from being spoken in the streets.

But for a thousand years before 1924, the relationship between the Turks

and the Kurds was mostly positive, which shows the deep connections

between the two cultures. This fact should be the foundation of

reorganizing an equal relationship.

The Turkish Kurds’ legal party, the BDP, proposes “democratic autonomy”

for the whole republic. It prepared a document by that name at the end

of 2010. Generally it envisages a fundamental democratization in the

Turkey’s political and administrative structure, achieving it through

democratic participation by incorporating people into processes of

decision-making. The essential vision is not to create smaller

structures with characteristics of the nation-state; rather, the

democratic decision-making structures in the societies should be

developed through a combination of base democracy and council democracy.

And rather than being a purely “ethnic” and “territorial” conception,

democratic autonomy proposes a regional and local structure through

which cultural differences are able to freely express themselves. Thus

it proposes to establish twenty to twenty-five regions in Turkey with

major autonomous rights. These autonomous regions and their assemblies

would also assume major responsibilities in fields like education,

health, culture, agriculture, industry, social services and security,

women, youth and sports. The central government would continue to

conduct foreign affairs, finance and external defense services.

In addition, the Kurdish freedom movement demands that Turkish Kurdistan

have control over its own “security,” or self-defense; and the right to

manage the natural environment and natural resources. At the same time

it demands that Turkish Kurdistan be able to establish specific social,

cultural, economic and political ties with the other three parts of

Kurdistan, in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

—Do these ideas have support in the Kurdish regions of Iran, Iraq, and

Syria?

—In Turkey, the Kurdish freedom movement is in implementation phase, but

in the three other parts, the Kurds are in the first stage of discussing

democratic confederalism. The existing Kurdish parties and organizations

that are not part of the Kurdish freedom movement give no importance to

it. They support either full independence for Kurdistan or a classical

model of autonomy and federation.

But organizations that are part of or close to the KCK, and

intellectuals and small groups, promote democratic confederalism as well

as the democratic autonomy project of the DTK. The thirty-five hundred

activists arrested since 2009 have all been members of the KCK which is

an illegal organization. Every two years they have meetings with

delegates from all four countries—they meet secretly—in the mountains.

In Iranian Kurdistan, the PJAK (Party for Free Life in Kurdistan), which

is part of KCK, promotes democratic confederalism. Especially young

Kurds have started to discuss this idea, as it is different from the

past perspectives of an independent state or a federation. Iran, with

its very rich cultural diversity (here there were no massacres or

displacements of Kurds, as in Turkey), is a state where a confederal

structure would make much sense. More than the other states, Iranian

society is ready for such a political structure.

In Syrian Kurdistan, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is also

part of the KCK, promotes democratic confederalism. Many Syrian Kurds

have supported the freedom movement since the 1980s and now promote the

idea of confederalism. The PYD became active politically in the last

five to six years. Since the start of the broad protests in Syria in

March 2011, this perspective has become very powerful. The Kurds join

the protests and have become a crucial factor in the whole struggle.

They demand not only autonomy but democracy for all of Syria and

democratic autonomy for the Kurdish regions, and the right to organize

and defend themselves against attacks.

Iraqi Kurdistan also has a party that is part of the KCK: the Party for

a Democratic Solution in Kurdistan (PCDK). But this party cannot work

legally, as some years ago the regional Kurdish government forbade it.

So democratic confederalism is discussed very only in a very limited way

by intellectuals, the media, or the population and is not (yet) a big

subject. Only in the regions close to the borders, which are under the

control of the PKK guerrillas, is democratic confederalism discussed

openly and deeply.

But Iraqi Kurdistan has its own constitution and parliament—a more or

less autonomous state in its own right!

Iraqi Kurdistan has no elements of communalism because the regional

government is conservative, authoritarian, and non-ecological, and does

not support women's rights. It superficially has a representative

democracy, but in reality the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK) and the

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (YNK) share the power fifty-fifty and are

very corrupt. Since the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003, all the small

progressive elements of these two parties have been lost.

But in the mountainous areas in Iraqi Kurdistan, the KCK/PKK

guerrillas—which control those areas--have brought a very different

understanding. Today in the 60 to 70 villages where the guerrillas are

dominant, the population has started to establish democratic assemblies

that include women. The people have started to learn to organize by

their own means and to make decisions based on specific democratic

procedures.

As a result we have a very contradictory situation. The region governed

by the PDK and the YNK does not have even the basic elements of a normal

Western representative democracy, and in the region controlled by PKK

there are growing elements of democratic confederalism.

The political development in Iraqi Kurdistan shows that even in an

oppressed culture, a broad, base-democratic organization is necessary.

It would not help much the Kurds to have their own state or even

autonomy if democracy, participation, tolerance, and ecological

orientation are missing from the political structures and

decision-making processes.

—What happens if the popular democracy that spans established state

boundaries makes a decision that collides with one of the four

nation-states?

—The Kurdish freedom movement has declared that it is not against

existing state boundaries and does not want to change them. But at the

same time the movement expects that the states respect all decisions of

the population. The movement speaks of two authorities, one the state

and the population. In democratic confederalism, two different regions

of neighboring states can come closer, for instance in terms of culture,

education, economy, without challenging the existing states. But in a

system of democratic confederalism, the Kurds of different states, or

any other suppressed culture in more than two different states, would

come closer after decades of separation. This aspect is still not

defined well und needs to be discussed deeper.

—What is the movement’s thinking about the greater Middle East?

—The Kurdish freedom movement proposes democratic confederalism for all

countries and cultures of Middle East, as it is more appropriate than

the existing centralized, half-decentralized, or totalitarian political

structures there. Before the twentieth-century foundation of

nation-states in the Middle East, the structures did not control the

societies deeply; the different regions had certain freedoms and

self-government, and the tribal structures were dominant. Here many

local structures are still strong and resist the state influence.

Further, in the Middle East the cultural diversity is so high that a

communalist society could much better consider this richness. It would

allow ethnically or religiously nondominant groups to organize

themselves and contribute significantly to a dynamic cultural diversity.

Direct democratic structures may make sense here too: in the recent

uprisings in many countries, new democratic movements were born or have

been strengthened. We would like to object to opinions that consider

Arabs or other populations incapable of democratic thinking.