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Title: From Germany to Bakur Author: CrimethInc. Date: October 22, 2015 Language: en Topics: Germany, kurdistan, Read All About It, interview Source: Retrieved on 2nd December 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2015/10/22/from-germany-to-bakur
Since their successful defense of KobanĂŞ against the Islamic State a
year ago, the Kurdish resistance movement has captured international
media attention. Meanwhile, their experiments in forming a stateless
society in the autonomous cantons of Rojava have fascinated anarchists
across the world. But in order to understand the Kurdish resistance in
Rojava (western Kurdistan), we need to take a broader look at struggles
for freedom and autonomy across the region. We interviewed two members
of a network of internationalist anarchists in Germany who have spent
time in Bakur (northern Kurdistan), learning from the struggles taking
place there. Beginning with a historical overview of the emergence of
the Kurdish movement and the PKK’s “new paradigm” of the last decade,
they describe how their experiences in Kurdistan have reframed their
understanding of anarchist struggles elsewhere across the globe.
36 and 39 of the Ex-Worker podcast, our discussion of the Kurdish
struggle for freedom and autonomy focused on Rojava (western Kurdistan).
But important struggles are taking place in other parts of Kurdistan as
well, some of which haven’t received as much attention. Could you
provide some historical context for the emergence of the Kurdish
movement, and describe the struggles unfolding today in Bakur (northern
Kurdistan)?
Well, the story begins with people sitting around a campfire in Upper
Mesopotamia long, long ago. Around 4300 years ago, a new social
structure began evolving in the Middle East, a highly aggressive form of
social organization that attacked the old communitarian structures: the
Sumerian priest state. The historical process that led to the revolution
in Rojava can’t be understood without recognizing the long tradition of
resistance and uprisings in the Kurdish regions across the Zagros and
Tauros mountain chains. It’s the area that was probably first targeted
for colonization by the evolving state system, whose roots lay in Lower
Mesopotamia, today’s northern Iraq, and which was also the predecessor
of today’s Western state system. The PKK and the Kurdish movement today
understand themselves within this long tradition of anti-governmental
resistance, counting themselves as the 29^(th) Kurdish uprising in
history. The Kurdish regions always lay on the edge of strong empires,
and have faced attacks by basically every imperial structure that
emerged in the region since a few thousand years ago. Because of the
mountainous terrain and the Kurds’ decentralized social organization in
village confederations, these regions were never fully conquered and
assimilated. As a result, for thousands of years they have faced efforts
by outside powers to push into their territory, and to co-opt feudal
Kurdish elites in order to secure obedience and to prevent (or at least
isolate) rebellion.
If we fast-forward to the 20^(th) century, we see these dynamics still
at play as the modern regional nation-state system emerges. The Turkish
state was founded in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire,
which had ruled the Kurdish territories in the east but had granted them
cultural and even political autonomy. During World War I, the Ottomans
allied with the Central Powers, forging particular political and
ideological links with Germany that continue to this day. After the
defeat of the Central Powers and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire,
Turkish nationalist groups fought for their own state. From its
founding, the ideology of the new state was ultra-nationalist. They
proclaimed Turkey a state for all Turkish people, and defined all people
living within its borders as part of the great Turkish nation, linking
their state to the idea of ethnic superiority. As a result, any people
that claimed a different ethnic or national identity, whether Assyrians,
Armenians, Kurds, or others, were treated like traitors and separatist
terrorists. Until the 1990s, Kurdish and other non-Turkish languages
were officially forbidden in Turkey—not just for affairs of state, but
even in private use.
We’re talking about all this history because it’s important to
understand the harshness of the conditions in which the Partiya Karkeren
Kurdistan (PKK), the Worker’s Party of Kurdistan, was founded. The
contemporary Kurdish movement emerged during the youth revolt of 1968 in
Turkey, where a revolutionary ferment was growing among socialist
organizations, radical students, workers, and peasants. In the 1970s, a
group of Kurdish and Turkish friends around Abdullah Ă–calan, Kemal Pir,
Haki Karer, and others gathered in Ankara and began discussing the
Kurdish question from a revolutionary perspective. One of their central
ideas was that Kurdistan was an internal colony, and needed to be freed
from colonial oppression to establish a socialist utopia. So the PKK was
founded in 1978, and began to organize according to the tenets of
classical Marxist-Leninist theory. Under “the old paradigm,” as they
call it today, the PKK aimed to organize a political vanguard and start
a revolutionary war to free the Kurdish territories and establish a
Kurdish state, which would then be used to establish socialism.
In the intensely oppressive climate of Turkey in the 1970s, many were
desperate to fight for another life, and the strategy and conviction of
the PKK spread rapidly. In 1984, they started a guerrilla struggle that
escalated into a brutal civil war. The guerrilla movement drew
considerable support from society, and in many regions could not be
separated from the broader population. In response, the Turkish army,
military police, and secret service started campaigns of retaliation to
defeat the rebels and intimidate the population. Under the auspices of
the NATO-sponsored “Gladio” anti-communist program, they destroyed some
4000 villages and killed more than 40,000 people.
In the wake of this bloodshed, the Kurdish liberation movement began a
process of reflection and self-criticism in the early 1990s. In addition
to facing brutal state and paramilitary repression, the guerrilla
movement was racked with internal problems, with some PKK leaders acting
in the manner of feudal warlords with a militaristic logic of blood
revenge. It had become clear that a merely military struggle wouldn’t
resolve anything. The old paradigm had led to unrelenting war and
hostility, and could neither address social problems within Kurdish
territories nor defend them effectively from external threats. The PKK
declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1993, halting the civil war to create
space for the movement to formulate a different paradigm for social
transformation. The Kurdish movement faced many setbacks and challenges
during this process of reflection—repeated efforts from the Turkish
state to provoke new outbreaks of civil war, the kidnapping and
imprisonment of PKK chairman Abdullah Ă–calan, and the ascent of more
old-fashioned feudal-style Kurdish parties such as the Barzani Clan in
Northern Iraq. Yet despite these challenges, between 1993 and 2005, the
Kurdish movement developed what they now call “the new paradigm,” which
would profoundly shift the goals and strategies of the Kurdish movement.
One major push towards this process of internal change came from the
Kurdish women’s movement. Thousands of women had joined the guerrilla
forces during the civil war. Often, they found themselves in conflict
with old-fashioned commanders who attempted to hold them in traditional
gender roles and did not treat them equally. In response, they
established completely autonomous female guerrilla groups, which was
quite a revolutionary act in their cultural context. They reclaimed for
themselves the right to fight in battle and organized on their own, as
part of the movement but making their own decisions autonomously. As our
friends have told us, there was also a difference in their way of
fighting: in male or mixed-gender units, competitive behavior persisted,
a heritage from many generations of hierarchical society that remains a
problem to this day. Dynamics among the female fighters were less
competitive; we can see evidence for this in the numbers of fallen
fighters. Most casualties took place when heading back from an action,
when attitudes of cockiness and pride over victory among the male
fighters were quite common. By contrast, in the women’s units, awareness
tended to be more long-range, and their fighters proved less vulnerable
to this potentially fatal overconfidence.
In addition to autonomous military units, Kurdish women also formed
social and political committees to discuss the problem of patriarchal
oppression. Today, the head of the women’s movement is the Komalen Jinen
Kurdistan (KJK), the Confederation of Women in Kurdistan, which is part
of the KCK, the general confederation, but makes decisions autonomously.
Also, the women’s movement maintains veto power over decisions made by
men’s groups or general assemblies. Under their influence, the Kurdish
movement has challenged long-standing patriarchal and hierarchical
patterns in their models of organizing.
The process of shifting towards a new paradigm was also pushed by an
ideological wing within the PKK around their chairman Abdullah Ă–calan,
who formulated the idea of democratic confederalism after undertaking a
deep historical analysis of the hierarchical system of Middle East and
beyond. He stressed that the problems of power, oppression, and violence
emerged from the historical process of civilization itself, beginning
with the ancient Sumerian priest states, which had posed the initial
challenge to the more egalitarian and often matricentric forms of social
organization that had preceded them. The problems of oppression,
warfare, and the quest for power are linked to the institutionalization
of patriarchal relationships in state structures and the priesthood. The
capitalist system, the nation-state, and industrialism are concepts that
evolved out of these hierarchical and male-dominated modes of thought.
Ă–calan also drew on the ideas of American anarchist Murray Bookchin for
his analysis of the utopian potential of democratic confederalism, and
stressed the importance of embracing a new ecological, democratic, and
gender-liberated paradigm. Central to his conception of the “new
paradigm” of the PKK was the idea of communalism, that each part of
society should organize itself and come together in a decentralized,
communitarian confederation.
Inspired by this new paradigm, the Komalen Ciwaken Kurdistan (KCK), the
Confederation of the Societies of Kurdistan, was founded in 2005. At its
core is a system of councils in neighborhoods, villages, and cities,
serving as a potent civil counter-power to foster the development of
autonomy from the nation-state and the capitalist economy. The KCK forms
the main assembly of the council system in Kurdistan, including
delegates from all the participating Kurdish regions. They elect an
executive body with a mandate to work on issues of importance for all
regions, such as diplomatic representation on a global level,
ideological and strategic proposals, and questions of defense. They also
administrate the People’s Defence Forces (HPG), containing the armed
wings from all parts of the movement. Over the past decade, despite
heavy repression and wartime conditions, the movement in northern
Kurdistan has created structures for a democratic, ecological, and
gender-liberated society.
Like the KCK, which encompasses the structures of democratic autonomy
throughout Kurdistan, the Demokratik Toplum Kongresi (DTK), the
Democratic Society Congress, comprises the council system in the region
of Bakur, or northern Kurdistan, which falls within the borders of the
Turkish nation-state. The DTK’s federated structure begins at the level
of the village or urban neighborhood up through district, city, and
ultimately the region of Bakur. At the highest level of the federation,
the DTK assembly includes recallable delegates from more than five
hundred civil society organizations, labor unions, and political
parties, with a forty percent gender quota and reserved positions for
religious minorities in the assemblies and a dual co-chair system with
one position reserved for a male and the other for a female. In classic
grassroots style, participants attempt to solve local problems on a
local level, and only if they cannot find a solution do they seek one on
the next level. Non-Kurdish people take part in some of the assemblies,
including members of the Azerbaijani and Aramaic communities. Also,
young people are organizing themselves both within and parallel to these
structures under the slogan “Capitalism is an old man—we’re a movement
made of the united powers of women and youth.” This sentiment emphasizes
the importance of youth and women’s organizing in overcoming the
entrenched legacies of hierarchy in Kurdish society, but also reflects
the philosophy that youth is not a matter of actual age, but rather a
mindset akin to the Zapatista slogan “caminando preguntando,” moving on
while continually questioning.
This federated structure of assemblies and civil organizations was
established to resolve common problems and to support the
self-organization of the whole population through bottom-up democratic
processes. Thus, rather than being defined purely in terms of ethnicity
or territory, the concept of democratic autonomy proposes local and
regional structures through which cultural differences can be freely
expressed. As a result, there are a colorful variety of educational,
cultural, and social organizations and experiments with cooperative
economics developing around northern Kurdistan. It’s worth highlighting
the mediation committees, which aim to find a consensus between parties
in conflict and therefore a long-term arrangement, rather than
postponement of the problem through punishment. This often leads to many
long discussions, but it shows a concept of collective responsibility in
which the accused shouldn’t be excluded through penalties or detention,
but should be made aware of the injustice and harm that his or her
behavior has caused. This has made the state courts superfluous in many
strongholds of the Kurdish liberation movement. Alongside these
mediation committees and other councils, you can find social centers for
youth and for women on all levels of society, with activities ranging
from Kurdish language courses and political seminars to music and
theater groups.
This is the context in which we should understand the success of the
ongoing revolution in Rojava. The Kurdish movement can look back on
forty years of radical struggle, with its failures, reflections, and
advances. Even though the formation of democratic autonomy in northern
Kurdistan has proved much more chaotic, remains entangled with the old
state structures, and is caught in a social and ecological war rather
than in a military one, it is widely comparable with the processes going
on in Rojava.
the recent anti-authoritarian direction of the Kurdish
struggle—including the structures of democratic confederalism, the
principles of women’s liberation, and so forth—are coming from the top
down, from Abdullah Ă–calan and the PKK leadership. It would seem like a
contradiction if an anti-authoritarian revolution were being directed
from above! What is your perspective on the relationship between the
ideology of the leaders in these organizations and the transformation of
social relations and structures in Kurdistan?
That’s a quite heavy point, which we discuss quite a lot, and which, at
least in Germany, is linked to a certain fear stemming from bad
experiences in revolutionary struggles. For sure, the question of
leadership and initiative is one of the most difficult ones when we’re
dealing with self-organization, and it is also a hard one for the
Kurdish movement. The real questions are: how can there be a drastic
revolutionary change in society? Who evaluates the need? And who makes
decisions about the direction? The answer has to be: everyone, for
everything, always. Perhaps the evolution of the Kurdish movement and
the PKK can offer a useful example, which has yet to be fully understood
in the Western world. Ă–calan and the PKK are not simply acting out a
fixed ideological pattern or a dogmatic system, like the one and only
true path of Marxism-Leninism asserted by the former socialist states.
Maybe the aesthetics of revolutionary socialism—the bearded leader and
the grim, selfless guerrilla warrior—mislead us, when we don’t look
beyond the image and inquire further.
What we’re seeing in Kurdistan today, both in Rojava and in the north,
is a new method by which the whole of society is coming into
consciousness. If we understand the persistence of state and patriarchal
oppression as a problem of people remaining unconscious of the
possibilities for resistance, we see the importance of activating the
consciousness of society. In all parts of Kurdistan where the liberation
movement organizes, we find committees forming what they call academies.
An academy can take many different forms, but we can most easily
understand it as a collective space for forming a common consciousness.
Some might be as simple as a discussion group that meets once a week,
but there are also longer, more intensive ones, in which all activists
participate (and, in recent years, any member of society who wants to
take part can join). The academies are always linked to other social
organizations; the youth groups and the women’s movement have their own
academies, while other groups organize general academies for everyone.
Each of these emphasizes self-empowerment, and in these institutions the
proposals offered by Ă–calan and the PKK are discussed and criticized
intensively. And those leaders are not the only ones offering proposals:
each institution, each committee, and each individual can spread their
own ideas.
This practice developed out of the process of political education within
the old PKK, where it was standard for every militant and guerrilla
fighter to receive both military and ideological training. As the new
paradigm emerged, it became clear that the goal was not simply to create
a well-educated philosophical vanguard like in the old cadre-system of
Leninism, but to liberate the consciousness of literally every person
who takes part in the process of forming the new society. Those who want
to self-organize have to reflect on their relation to the world, which
means deepening one’s exploration of philosophy.
One method often used in these academies is what we might call an
associative analysis. When discussing a certain topic, everybody offers
their own associations with it, and through the process of each person
sharing their impressions and experiences while others listen carefully
and strive to understand, a consensus can be formed. On a theoretical
level, this approach negates the opportunity for “objectivity,” and puts
a method of multiple subjectivities in its place. When you identify your
own position confronting a certain argument, including both your own
will to act as well as the fears that come up in you, then what is
strategically necessary will become clear.
Today, the role and position of militants in the PKK and PAJK (the Free
Women’s Party) has changed compared to the 1980s and ’90s. Their
self-image has grown closer to what we might understand as a militant
anarchist personality: fighting for self-empowerment and mutual aid.
Under the old paradigm, the militant needed to be selfless and
self-sacrificing. Although this conception is not totally gone, it is
changing, as discussions in the movement reject dichotomies and support
fighting both for individual processes of self-transformation as well as
for collective beauty and strength. As their conception of the role of
militants has changed, they’ve rejected the outdated idea of becoming a
vanguard. Instead, it comes down to living a well-organized, secular
ascetic form of life, based in the idea that fighting for our friends
and for the revolution is the best way a life can be lived.
radical struggles in Germany and beyond?
First, my engagement with the Kurdish liberation movement, as an
historical struggle and a society in rebellion, has actually made it
possible for me to believe again—not only that this world is absolutely
unacceptable, but in the possibility of fighting for another world. I
would call this reclaiming the power of imagination, which has unleashed
a huge feeling of motivation and also a certain seriousness in many of
our friends. It’s overwhelming to see the huge collective consciousness
in Kurdish society.
Looking back at Western metropolitan life, it seems so obvious how
patriarchy and capitalism have spread into every part of our lives. I
think we’ve made huge leaps in understanding our own history and society
through discussion with our friends from the Kurdish youth movement. In
particular, their focus on philosophy and self-perception has made clear
how much we, as anarchists or the radical left, are hampered by
moralism. We’ve learned to base our actions on these notions of
good/bad, right/wrong, and guilt/pity, drummed into us through religion
and academia and theory, rather than on our actual common ethical
attachments and friendships. To start the process of liberating
ourselves, we have to overcome the liberal bourgeois personality and
capitalist behavior, to vanquish the inner state mentality.
In contrast to this, in Germany and more broadly in the West we’re
confronted with internalized individualism and liberalism, not only in
the broader society but also within our political “scene”—a scene with a
general tendency towards nihilist lifestyles and identity politics. In
my observation, most of the militants in our scene, as well as the
majority of liberal youth, give an absolute precedence to the “freedom”
of the individual, simply following whatever drives and inclinations
come up for them, in an environment where everything is allowed. At the
same time there is a feeling of subjection and therefore an acceptance
of a predetermined, unchangeable environment. This often leads on the
one hand to a pessimistic sense of paralysis, hopelessness and
depression, and on the the other hand to a guilt-fueled re-entrenchment
in identities that derive from the power structures they are criticizing
(white, middle-class, privileged) and submersion in various forms of
commercialized lifestyle scenes (punk, hardcore, radical left,
“anarchist”)… all of which both lead to and arise from this omnipresent
individualism. I think it might be interesting to analyze the impact of
the youth rebellions of 1968, because it gave a huge drive to this
development. We’re confronted with masses of people around us blaming
the unconscious society, politicians, cops, or fascists as bogeymen, but
who have totally lost their grip on reality and their own responsibility
and agency. Instead, most of us keep on living the liberal myth of
economic success and retirement, fleeing into studies, work, leisure,
privatized political activism, holidays, parties, drugs,
consumption—suicide!
There’s a thin line between this present Western conception of anarchism
and liberalism. Although classical anarchists like Emma Goldman
recognized the importance of positive freedom, “freedom to,” liberalism
focuses on negative freedom, or “freedom from,” the notion that people
are free insofar as they are not constrained by laws and regulations.
This understanding of freedom fits easily into the ethos of
individualism, private property, and capitalism, completely denying the
dialectical relationship between individual and society and the fact
that human beings have always lived in communities as social
individuals, bound together through common rules and values. We think
that human values are socially determined, and that social rules and
regulations to uphold them do not represent a restriction on some
pre-existing freedom, but form part of the conditions of a free life,
which must include individual and collective freedom. As a
counterexample to the liberal “freedom” of Western anarchist and radical
left scenes, it’s worth mentioning that the Kurdish youth movement is
really strictly fighting against drug dealing and abuse, because the
Turkish state is clearly trying to destroy the movement not only with
tear gas and arrests but with all available means of modern
counter-insurgency, including support for drug dealing and prostitution.
We think there must be a collective reflection on how consumerism,
individualism, and other forms of liberalism function as a form of
counter-insurgency and how much we have internalized them into our
mentality and behavior. We need to organize self-defense against the
attacks of these capitalist ideologies that reduce us to nothing more
than consumers and self-owning entrepreneur/workers.
In contrast to these liberal illusions, our experiences with comrades in
the Kurdish movement have given us perspective on the importance of
solving this Western polarization between individual and society,
focusing on collective values and ethics rather than political and
identitarian viewpoints. Inspired by the example of the Kurdish
movement, I think we should study and reclaim our history as part of the
process of developing the self-awareness we need to solve the Western
dilemma we’re confronted with. Through criticism of civilization and
analysis of our communal and democratic heritage, we can develop
historical consciousness and confidence in what we’re doing. Abdullah
Ă–calan tried in his prison writings to delve into the historical
background of the Kurdish struggle quite deeply, so as to have the
opportunity to compare it to earlier experiences of revolutionary
struggles. Many in the PKK today draw on this history to critically
reflect on their ideology and strategies, weaving it into the process of
self-questioning and the creation of their own philosophy of
liberation—a revolutionary mythology, perhaps.
And at the same time, this doesn’t mean getting caught in nostalgia.
Instead, take inspiration from the renewing power of youth, of always
moving forward while questioning. Don’t be afraid of self-development;
be open to criticism and learn from your and others’ mistakes. Let the
process of revolutionary change start with yourself. Maybe that’s also
quite a good thing for European anarchists to remember: the
revolutionary process is never something outside of you; it has to be
identical with your own progress towards freedom, for you become a
symbiotic part of a free society. I think every militant anarchist
should accept our historical responsibility and the possibility of
gathering our collective power and agency to build and defend a society
based on creativity, diversity, and autonomy. But this means we have to
live the way we think and speak. So let’s sweep our liberal ideas into
the dustbin of history. Only then will we be able to move beyond common
theoretical agreement and be able “to change everything,” as you say!
Kurdish liberation struggle seems to be strong in Germany, with many
anarchists active in solidarity efforts and taking great inspiration
from Rojava and elsewhere in Kurdistan. Can you talk about the history
of these ties of solidarity? What are some of the concrete forms that
solidarity has taken?
At first, groups of solidarity emerged from the squatting movement in
Germany. Since the 1990s there were also German comrades who joined the
guerrilla struggle. Some of them died in the war, like Shehid Ronahi
(Andrea Wolf). She had to disappear because she was persecuted by the
German state for actions of the Red Army Fraction, so she joined the
ranks of PKK and fought as an internationalist. There were several
German militants who joined the armed Kurdish struggle, and so there are
some older comrades who can share their experiences and reflect on the
mistakes that were made in those days. In the ’90s there were also a lot
of problems between the German left and the Kurdish movement, coming
from both sides. On the one hand, the PKK was still entrenched in the
old paradigm and focused strongly on the struggle in Kurdistan to the
exclusion of everything else, which made it hard to establish a real
relationship of friendship. On the other hand, Germans maintained our
classic patterns of distance-keeping, criticizing without understanding,
and the arrogance of the metropole. When Ă–calan was arrested and the
movement struggled hard to survive, this tenuous solidarity fractured.
Fortunately, as the new paradigm first began to emerge, a new process of
learning began, although for a long time it moved quite slowly and
tentatively. German comrades again visited Kurdistan and got in contact
with organizations in diaspora, while others again joined the guerrilla
struggle. The PKK understands itself as internationalist, and it is of
great value for all sides when international ties are strengthened. It
was always hard to organize together with the Kurdish communities in
diaspora, and honestly, it remains a big problem to this day. Although
there are quite a lot of Kurdish people living in Europe, the
connections between them and other European radicals are not very
strong. That has different reasons: one of them is the fact that German
society is quite racist, and a lot of migrant communities are organizing
just among their own people as a kind of self-defense mechanism. Also,
nationalism tends to be stronger among Kurds in diaspora, and the
society in diaspora is often still organized along feudal lines. But in
the 1990s, there were common demonstrations, and today German and
Kurdish groups are once again marching together. But on a level of
common self-organization, we are still weak.
After the attack on Shengal and the siege of KobanĂŞ last year, attention
rose immediately, and the whole radical scene of Germany woke up. Since
then, something has begun slowly shifting as more and more people are
trying to find their way down to Rojava and some are joining the ranks
of the YPG/YPJ.
elsewhere about how to learn from and show solidarity with the Kurdish
struggle for liberation?
We think anarchists should understand the Kurdish liberation struggle as
their own, as an internationalist struggle. Appreciating the comrades in
Kurdistan can help us overcome the liberal illusions we’ve been
discussing. There must be a recognition, a consciousness, of
responsibility for the dilemma of the Middle East. Open-mindedness and
willingness to engage philosophically and theoretically with the
ideology of the movement is important, so that we can express
possibilities in many languages and colors. This requires that we
support the struggle in questions of communication, too, which can be
one part of several ways to support the struggle technically.
Furthermore, there has always been a warm invitation to actually go to
Kurdistan to learn, criticize, and refine ideas about local and
international organization. And as our Kurdish friends have emphasized
repeatedly, it’s ultimately up to those of us living in the Western
metropoles to build up our own revolutionary movements—that’s the
greatest help we could give them, for it is an opportunity for mutual
defense. Also, as far as we’ve heard, practical help is needed in
several subjects: knowledge about engineering, medical stuff, and all
sorts of practical things can be helpful.
anti-Kurdish repression going on in Turkey? How is the Kurdish movement
responding to this violence?
Right now we are in a situation of escalation. In response to his
party’s heavy electoral defeat in the parliamentary elections of June 7,
Turkish President Erdogan has declared war on the Kurdish population and
therefore terminated the peace process initiated by Ă–calan in 2013.
Since the massacre in the border city of Suruç, which cost the lives of
34 young Kurdish and Turkish radicals on their way to KobanĂŞ at the end
of July, there have been thousands of arrests and bombardments of PKK
guerrilla camps both in Bakur (northern Kurdistan/southeastern Turkey)
and in the Medya Defense Territories in Bashur (southern
Kurdistan/northern Iraq). While pogrom-like attacks against Kurds and
other social movements have been taking place in northern Kurdistan and
all over Turkey for weeks, the military conflict is escalating, with
many militants and civilians shot by the state. Most recently, the
Turkish army besieged the city of Cizre for a week, while Turkish
ultra-nationalists attacked Kurds and offices of the HDP (a Kurdish
political party) all over the country. Many Kurdish shops were burned
down by supporters of the AKP, Erdogan’s conservative Justice and
Development Party, as well as by members of fascist organizations like
the Gray Wolves, the youth organization of the fascist Nationalist
Movement Party. Similar attacks on Kurds and other opponents of the war
have taken place in Europe in recent days, and while the German state
keeps quiet about these attacks by Turkish nationalists, Kurdish
militants have been criminalized and arrested.
In the face of this violence, the movement has developed a model called
the theory of legitimate self-defense, or the theory of the rose. It’s a
metaphor based on the idea that every living being has to defend its own
beauty as it struggles to survive. All beings must create methods of
self-defense according to their own way of living, growing, and
connecting with others, in which one does not aim to destroy one’s
enemy, but to force it to change its intention to attack. Guerrilla
fighters discuss this as a defensive strategy in a military sense, but
it also works on other scales. In essence, we can understand it as a
method of self-empowerment. For a long time, the PKK guerrillas didn’t
do anything, granted that the Turkish state continued negotiations,
because they knew they couldn’t defeat them militarily. If you’re strong
enough and follow your way, there will be no need for violence; it
becomes simply a matter of organization. This understanding of
self-defense is also part of the new paradigm.
caught between various hostile states and armed forces, what do you
think it will take for a genuinely anti-authoritarian revolution to take
hold and last in the region?
Well, as we’ve learned from studying other revolutions across history:
the only opportunity for a revolution to last is for it to spread, to
widen its horizons and to overcome all the borders established to
contain it. As our Kurdish comrades explain, there are two pillars to
revolutionary struggle. The first and most important one is the process
of building democratic autonomy; it comes down to the simple question of
how we want to live, of how to organize our daily lives. Right now, it’s
hard to bring that question into focus, because the whole region is
burning and caught up in war. That’s why the second pillar is
self-defense by any means necessary. Both are crucial, and must be
applied on different levels. Revolutionary uprisings across history in
Europe and elsewhere that neglected one pillar or the other were
inevitably defeated.
It’s really important to strengthen the revolutionary position in
Kurdistan, not only militarily, but also by building communication with
comrades all over the world. As the revolutionary upheaval in Turkey
expands and support from within the West grows, there is less
opportunity for other regional powers to attack the Kurdish movement.
Moreover, we should recognize the huge potential that the experience of
this movement offers us to enlarge our own perspective. They organized
within a situation that has been more desperate than ours from the
beginning, and nevertheless they’ve succeeded. I’d say it is a certain
way of dealing with a concrete danger that made them that strong. Also,
it would be quite productive to exchange experiences. In specific
questions of self-organization, the methods and tools of anarchist
movements in the West are quite creative and could offer a lot of
support.
Right now in the Middle East, we have the strange situation of a
relative power balance, with Rojava positioned within the eye of the
storm. There is the grand vision of political Sunni Islam, pushed
forward by the governments of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, primarily. Then
there are the Shia states of Iran, Iraq, and the remnants of the Assad
regime in Syria. There is also NATO, of which Turkey is a member, though
it also asserts its own interests. In the middle we also have the
Islamic State (IS), a zombie army that cannot be controlled by anyone
anymore, even though it was probably created and supported to crush
Kurdish resistance and the regime in Damascus. So in this chaotic
situation, Rojava is still necessary for NATO, for example, as the only
local reliable option that has been able to defeat IS. So, yeah, Rojava
is kind of caught between all these military powers. But as we’ve
learned from many revolutions, war is not simply a matter of
mathematics. It’s more linked to a certain way of fighting, and a matter
of consciousness. We should learn from that.
kind of consciousness in armed struggle, that makes the Kurdish
resistance distinctive?
Let me share a story that a friend once told me. He took part in the
Qandil war in 2011. At that time, there was a pragmatic alliance between
Turkey and Iran: both had a problem with the Kurdish movement, and were
afraid of the military opportunities the guerrillas had. Qandil forms
the southern end of the Mediya Defense Territories, the
guerrilla-controlled mountains in the border regions of Iran, Iraq, and
Turkey. He told me about a situation when one and a half thousand
pasdaran, the Iran infantry regiments, tried to storm the hill where the
guerrillas were hiding. There were only about thirty comrades defending
their mountain. He explained that what the Iranian army tried to use
against them were just their bullets, and their fear of punishment from
their leaders. They ran blindly upwards, and were defeated. They had no
conviction, no energy, no friendship between them. On the other hand,
when his comrades defended their position, they didn’t just use their
weapons, he told me. They were fighting for their looted villages, for
their split families, with their fallen friends in mind, with the
consciousness that the attacking army would burn the mountains and
forests behind them and destroy the nature in their lands. They fought
for those who were too weak to stand alone, for all the parts of society
who stood behind them and had their back. Maybe it’s hard to understand
if you didn’t feel it yourself. But their energy was backed by a long
line of friends, historically experienced oppression, mutual
protection—a love for life and a belief in themselves.
All these things come first, he said, when you’re sitting next to your
friends in your guard position and raising your arms in defense: your
trust in your comrades, your gratitude for those who believe in a free
society living in the valleys, for the ones who cultivate the gardens
feeding you, your sadness about the horrors the state did to your
friends and families. And in the end, there’s the bullet you shoot at
the ones stumbling in your direction. How could they possibly win, he
asked, smiling.
Even the fighter who is objectively weakest can summon great strength,
if she’s fighting for her own sake and for those her heart belongs to,
without being pushed into a direction or ideology or being pressed to do
something she doesn’t want to. Those who fight for their society and the
symbiotic relationships that have protected and nourished them will
always defeat conventional methods based in mere destruction, hegemonic
interests and strategies based on hostility. It reminded me of the words
some philosophical friends from the West once said: connecting reality
to your own desires has revolutionary meaning. If you really know what
you’re fighting for, if you see the essentials of the situation you’re
in, you can link it to your will to live, which will give you a beauty
even beyond death. This guerrilla told me that they understand
themselves as life guards, using their own abilities to protect the life
of their society. It impressed me a lot.
It also poses the question: where will the revolutionary energy for the
West come from? We hardly understand our own situation, pressed into
pragmatic decisions based on a complex system of dependencies. Maybe
this is the lesson we have to learn for ourselves: what is the truth of
our common situation that we have to understand to begin? This is the
same reason why no other army right now can push back the IS forces in
Syria. In defending KobanĂŞ, the YPG/YPJ based their defense on this same
consciousness. Nobody could believe that they would free their city; it
goes beyond rationalism. It’s more about faith in yourself and belief in
your revolutionary energy, which evolves out of your desire to live.
That is the thing that has been nearly beaten out of you if you’ve been
raised in Western capitalism.
Another friend added that if you really want to create a new society
based in non-oppressive relationships, you’re trying to build something
that doesn’t exist yet. It forms part of a new world, another world. How
could you possibly understand it rationally from your point of view
today? It’s not in the books. You need to get crazy to overcome the
status quo; you need to be convinced by your fantasy and your desire.
That’s your problem in Europe, he concluded: you forgot how to do that.