roarmag article on the new libertarian course of the PKK

[Sasha]

The new PKK: unleashing a social revolution in Kurdistan

by Rafael Taylor on August 17, 2014

http://media.roarmag.org/2014/08/Kurd_Syria.jpg
As the prospect of Kurdish independence becomes ever more imminent, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party transforms itself into a force for radical democracy.

Excluded from negotiations and betrayed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne after having been promised a state of their own by the World War I allies during the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds are the largest stateless minority in the world. But today, apart from a stubborn Iran (http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/12072014), increasingly few obstacles remain to de jure Kurdish independence in northern Iraq. Turkey and Israel have pledged support while Syria and Iraq’s hands are tied by the rapid advances of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS).
With the Kurdish flag flying high over all official buildings and the Peshmerga keeping the Islamists at the gate with the assistance of long overdue US military aid, southern Kurdistan (Iraq) join their comrades in western Kurdistan (Syria) as the second de facto autonomous region of the new Kurdistan. They have already started exporting their own oil and have re-taken oil-rich Kirkuk (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-kurds-begin-pumping-kirkuk-oil-1457096), they have their own secular, elected parliament and pluralistic society, they have taken their bid for statehoodhood (http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/29062014) to the UN, and there is nothing the Iraqi government could do — or the US would do without Israeli support — to stop it.
The Kurdish struggle, however, is anything but narrowly nationalistic. In the mountains above Erbil, in the ancient heartland of Kurdistan winding across the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, a social revolution has been born.
http://media.roarmag.org/2014/08/Syria_and_Iraq_2014-onward_War_map.png (http://media.roarmag.org/2014/08/Syria_and_Iraq_2014-onward_War_map.png)

Image: Current map of Syria and Iraq. Yellow shades in northern Syria are areas controlled by Syrian Kurds, green shades in northeastern Iraq are areas controlled by Iraqi Kurds (source: Wikimedia Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Syria_and_Iraq_2014-onward_War_map.png)).
The Theory of Democratic Confederalism
At the turn of the century, as the lifelong US radical Murray Bookchin gave up on trying to revitalize the contemporary anarchist movement under his philosophy of social ecology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ecology), PKK founder and leader Abdullah Öcalan was arrested in Kenya by Turkish authorities and sentenced to death for treason. In the years that followed, the elderly anarchist gained an unlikely devotee in the hardened militant, whose paramilitary organization — the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — is widely listed as a terrorist organization for waging a violent war of national liberation against Turkey.
In his years in solitary confinement, running the PKK behind bars as his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, Öcalan adopted a form of libertarian socialism so obscure that few anarchists have even heard of it: Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_municipalism). Öcalan further modified, rarefied and rebranded Bookchin’s vision as “democratic confederalism,” with the consequence that the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (Koma Civakên Kurdistan or KCK), the PKK’s territorial experiment in a free and directly democratic society, has largely been kept a secret from the vast majority of anarchists, let alone the general public.
Although Öcalan’s conversion was the turning point, a broader renaissance of libertarian leftist and independent literature was sweeping through the mountains and passing hands between the rank-and-file after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. “[They] analysed books and articles by philosophers, feminists, (neo-)anarchists, libertarian communists, communalists, and social ecologists. That is how writers like Murray Bookchin [and others] came into their focus,” Kurdish activist Ercan Ayboga tells us (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism).
Öcalan embarked, in his prison writings, on a thorough re-examination (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=2ZYaX07cEUAC&pg=PT3&lpg=PT3&dq=Prison+Writings:+The+PKK+and+the+Kurdish+Questi on+in+the+21st+Century+Abdullah+Ocalan&source=bl&ots=xlmCeHiqMH&sig=1Gcb0TZHyK4JxuZ38TBnO4cxR-g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Tk57U92zB9iLqAbLrYCIAg&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=futile%20separatism%20and%20violence&f=false) and self-criticism of the terrible violence, dogmatism, personality cult and authoritarianism he had fostered: “It has become clear that our theory, programme and praxis of the 1970s produced nothing but futile separatism and violence and, even worse, that the nationalism we should have opposed infested all of us. Even though we opposed it in principle and rhetoric, we nonetheless accepted it as inevitable.” Once the unquestioned leader, Öcalan now reasoned (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=2ZYaX07cEUAC&pg=PT3&lpg=PT3&dq=Prison+Writings:+The+PKK+and+the+Kurdish+Questi on+in+the+21st+Century+Abdullah+Ocalan&source=bl&ots=xlmCeHiqMH&sig=1Gcb0TZHyK4JxuZ38TBnO4cxR-g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Tk57U92zB9iLqAbLrYCIAg&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=Dogmatism%20is%20nurtured%20by%20abstract%20trut hs&f=false) that “dogmatism is nurtured by abstract truths which become habitual ways of thinking. As soon as you put such general truths into words you feel like a high priest in the service of his god. That was the mistake I made.”
Öcalan, an atheist, was finally writing as a free-thinker, unshackled from Marxist-Leninist mythology. He indicated (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy) that he was seeking an “alternative to capitalism” and a “replacement for the collapsed model of … ‘really existing socialism’,” when he came across Bookchin. His theory of democratic confederalism developed out of a combination of inspiration from communalist intellectuals, “movements like the Zapatistas (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism)”, and other historical factors from the struggle in northern Kurdistan (Turkey). Öcalan proclaimed himself a student of Bookchin, and after a failed email correspondence with the elderly theorist, who was to his regret too sick for an exchange on his deathbed in 2004, the PKK celebrated him (http://new-compass.net/articles/bookchin-%C3%B6calan-and-dialectics-democracy) as “one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century” on the occasion of Bookchin’s death two years later.
The Practice of Democratic Confederalism
The PKK itself has apparently taken after their leader, not only adopting Bookchin’s specific brand of eco-anarchism, but actively internalizing the new philosophy in its strategy and tactics. The movement abandoned its bloody war for Stalinist/Maoist revolution and the terror tactics that came with it, and began perusing a largely non-violent strategy aimed at greater regional autonomy.
After decades of fratricidal betrayal, failed ceasefires, arbitrary arrests and renewed hostilities, on April 25 of this year the PKK announced an immediate withdrawal of its forces from Turkey and their deployment to northern Iraq, effectively ending its 30-year-old conflict with the Turkish state. The Turkish government simultaneously undertook a process of constitutional and legal reform to enshrine human and cultural rights for the Kurdish minority within its borders. This came as the final component of long-awaited negotiations between Öcalan and Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan as part of a peace process that began in 2012. There has been no PKK violence for a year and reasonable calls (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/pkk-terror-group-status_b_3289311.html) for the PKK to be delisted from the worlds’ terrorist lists are being made.
There remains, however, a dark history to the PKK — authoritarian practices which sit ill beside its new libertarian rhetoric. Raising money through the heroin trade, extortion, coercive conscription and general racketeering have been claimed or attributed to branches at various times. If true, no excuses can be made for this type of thuggish opportunism, despite the obvious irony that the genocidal Turkish state (http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=13491) itself was in no-small part funded by a lucrative monopoly (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-top-opium-producer.aspx?pageID=238&nID=35024&NewsCatID=345) on the legal export of state-grown “medical” opiates to the West and made possible by its conscription and taxation for a massive counter-terrorism budget and oversized armed forces (Turkey has NATO’s second largest army (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marietje-schaake/nato-and-turkey_b_1433661.html) after the US).
As is the customary hypocrisy of the war on terror, when national liberation movements mimic the brutality of the state, it is invariably the unrepresented who are branded as the terrorists. Öcalan himself describes (http://mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/prison-writings-pkk-and-kurdish-question-21st-century?print) this shameful period as one of “gangs within our organization and open banditry, [which] arranged needless, haphazard operations, sending young people to their death in droves.”
Anarchist Currents in the Struggle
As a further sign that it is abandoning its Marxist-Leninist ways, however, the PKK have recently begun to make explicit overtures to anarchist internationalism, even hosting a workshop at the International Anarchism Gathering in St. Imier, Switzerland in 2012, which lead to confusion, dismay and debate online (http://libcom.org/forums/middle-east/pkk-political-evolution-17082012), but which went largely unnoticed by the wider anarchist press.
Janet Biehl, Bookchin’s widow, is one of the few western anarchists to study the KCK on the ground, and has written extensively about her experiences on the New Compass website, also sharing interviews with Kurdish radicals (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism) involved in the day-to-day operations of the democratic assemblies and federal structures, as well as translating and publishing the first book-length anarchist study (http://new-compass.net/publications/democratic-autonomy-north-kurdistan) on the subject: Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan: The Council Movement, Gender Liberation, and Ecology (2013).
The only other English-speaking anarchist voice is the Kurdistan Anarchist Forum (KAF), a pacifist group (http://www.indymedia.org.nz/articles/1410) of Iraqi Kurds living in Europe who claim (https://libcom.org/news/interview-anarchist-iraqui-kurdish-05032010) not to “have any relationships with other leftist groups.” While supporting a federated Kurdistan, the KAF declares (http://www.anarkismo.net/article/22396) that it will “only support the PKK when they give up the armed struggle completely, engage in organising popular grassroots mass movements for the sake of achieving the people’s social demands, denounce and dismantle centralised and hierarchical modes of struggle and instead turn to federated autonomous local groups, end all relations and dealings with the states of the Middle East and the West, denounce charismatic power politics, and convert to anti-statism and anti-authoritarianism — only then will we be happy to cooperate with them fully.”
Following Bookchin to the Book
That day (minus the pacifism) might not be far off. The PKK/KCK appear to be following Bookchin’s social ecology to the book (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy), with almost everything up to and including their contradictory participation in the state apparatus through elections, just as prescribed in the literature.
As Joost Jongerden and Ahmed Akkaya write (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy), “Bookchin’s work differentiates between two ideas of politics, the Hellenic model and the Roman,” that is, direct and representative democracy. Bookchin sees his form of neo-anarchism as a practical revival of the ancient Athenian revolution. The “Athens model exists as a counter- and under-ground current, finding expression in the Paris Commune of 1871, the councils (soviets) in the spring-time of the revolution in Russia in 1917, and the Spanish Revolution in 1936.”
Bookchin’s communalism contains a five-step approach:


Empowering existing municipalities through law in an attempt to localize decision-making power.
Democratize those municipalities through grassroots assemblies.
Unite municipalities “in regional networks and wider confederations … working to gradually replace nation-states with municipal confederations”, whilst insuring that “’higher’ levels of confederation have mainly coordinative and administrative functions.”
“Unite progressive social movements” to strengthen civil society and establish “a common focal point for all citizens’ initiatives and movements”: the assemblies. This cooperation is “not [perused] because we expect to see always a harmonious consensus, but — on the contrary — because we believe in disagreement and deliberation. Society develops through debate and conflict.” In addition, the assemblies are to be secular, “fight against religious influences on politics and government,” and an “arena for class struggle.”
In order to achieve their vision of a “classless society, based on collective political control over the socially important means of production,” the “municipalization of the economy,” and a “confederal allocation of resources to ensure balance between regions” is called for. In layman’s terms, this equates to a combination of worker self-management and participatory planning to meet social needs: classical anarchist economics.

As Eirik Eiglad, Bookchin’s former editor and KCK analyst, puts it (http://new-compass.net/articles/communalist-alternative-capitalist-modernity):

[I]Of particular importance is the need to combine the insights from progressive feminist and ecological movements together with new urban movements and citizens’ initiatives, as well as trade unions and local cooperatives and collectives … We believe that communalist ideas of an assembly-based democracy will contribute to making this progressive exchange of ideas possible on a more permanent basis, and with more direct political consequences. Still, communalism is not just a tactical way of uniting these radical movements. Our call for a municipal democracy is an attempt to bring reason and ethics to the forefront of public discussions.
For Öcalan, democratic confederalism means (http://www.amazon.com/Democratic-Autonomy-North-Kurdistan-Liberation/dp/8293064269/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384781139&sr=8-1&keywords=kurdistan%20democratic%20autonomy#reader_ 8293064269) a “democratic, ecological, gender-liberated society,” or simply “democracy without the state.” He explicitly contrasts “capitalist modernity” with “democratic modernity,” wherein the formers’ “three basic elements: capitalism, the nation-state, and industrialism” are replaced with a “democratic nation, communal economy, and ecological industry.” This entails “three projects: one for the democratic republic, one for democratic-confederalism and one for democratic autonomy.”
The concept of the “democratic republic” essentially refers to attaining long denied citizenship and civil rights for Kurds, including the ability to speak and teach their own language freely. Democratic autonomy and democratic confederalism both refer to (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy) the “autonomous capacities of people, a more direct, less representative form of political structure.”
Meanwhile, Jongerden and Akkaya note (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy) that “the free municipalism model aims to realize a bottom-up, participative administrative body, from local to provincial levels.” The “concept of the free citizen (ozgur yarttas) its starting point,” which “includes basic civil liberties, such as the freedom of speech and organization.” The core unit of the model is the neighborhood assembly or the “councils,” as they are referred to interchangeably.
There is popular participation (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism) in the councils, including from non-Kurdish people, and whilst neighbourhood assemblies are strong in various provinces, “in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkish Kurdistan, there are assemblies almost everywhere.” Elsewhere, “in the provinces of Hakkari and Sirnak … there are two parallel authorities [the KCK and the state], of which the democratic confederal structure is more powerful in practice.” The KCK in Turkey (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy) “is organized at the levels of the village (köy), urban neighbourhood (mahalle), district (ilçe), city (kent), and the region (bölge), which is referred to as “northern Kurdistan.”
The “highest” level of federation in northern Kurdistan, the DTK (Democratic Society Congress) is a mix of the rank-and-file delegated by their peers with recallable mandates, who make up 60 percent, and representatives from “more than five hundred civil society organizations, labor unions, and political parties,” who make up 40 percent (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism), out of which approximately 6 percent (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy) is “reserved for representatives of religious minorities, academics, or others with a particular expertise.”
The proportion of the 40 percent who are similarly delegated from directly democratic, non-statist civil society groups compared to those who are unelected or elected party bureaucrats is unclear. Overlap of individuals between independent Kurdish movements and Kurdish political parties, as well as the internalization of many aspects of the directly democratic procedure by these parties, further complicates the situation. The informal consensus (http://www.amazon.com/Democratic-Autonomy-North-Kurdistan-Liberation/dp/8293064269/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384781139&sr=8-1&keywords=kurdistan%20democratic%20autonomy#reader_ 8293064269) among witnesses, nevertheless, is that the majority of decision-making is directly democratic through one arrangement or other; that the majority of those decisions are made at the grassroots; and that the decisions are executed from the bottom-up in accordance with the federal structure.
Because the assemblies and the DTK are coordinated by the illegal KCK, of which the PKK is a part, they are designated as “terrorists” (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism) by Turkey and the so-called international community (the EU, United States and others), by association. The DTK also selects the candidates of the pro-Kurdish BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) for the Turkish Parliament, which in turn proposes “democratic autonomy” for Turkey, in some type of a combination (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism) of representative and direct democracy. In line with the federal model, it proposes the establishment of approximately 20 autonomous regions which would directly self-govern (in the anarchist and not the Swiss model) “education, health, culture, agriculture, industry, social services and security, women’s issues, youth and sports,” with the state continuing to conduct “foreign affairs, finance and defense.”
The Social Revolution Takes Off
On the ground, meanwhile, the revolution has already begun.
In Turkish Kurdistan, there is an independent educational movement of “academies” that hold discussion forums and seminars in neighborhoods. There is Culture Street (http://rudaw.net/english/opinion/06012014), where Abdullah Demirbas, the mayor of Sur Municipality in Amed celebrates “the diversity of religions and belief systems,” declaring that “we have begun to restore a mosque, a Chaldean-Aramaic catholic church, an orthodox Armenian Church, and a Jewish Synagogue.” Elsewhere, Jongerden and Akkaya report (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy), “DTP municipalities initiated a ‘multilingual municipality service,’ sparking heated debate. Municipality signs were erected in Kurdish and Turkish, and local shopkeepers followed suit.”
The liberation of women is pursued by the women themselves through the initiatives of the DTK’s Women’s Council, enforcing new rules like the “forty percent gender quota” (http://www.amazon.com/Democratic-Autonomy-North-Kurdistan-Liberation/dp/8293064269/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384781139&sr=8-1&keywords=kurdistan%20democratic%20autonomy#reader_ 8293064269) in the assemblies. If a civil servant beats his wife, his salary is directly transferred (http://rudaw.net/english/opinion/06012014) to the survivor to provide for her financial security and use as she sees fit. “In Gewer, if a husband takes a second wife, half of his estate goes to his first.”
There are “Peace Villages” (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism), new or transformed communities of cooperatives, implementing their own program fully outside of the logistical constraints of the Kurdish-Turkish war. The first such community was constructed in Hakkari province, bordering Iraq and Iran, where “several villages” joined the experiment. In Van province, an “ecological women’s village” is being built to shelter victims of domestic violence, supplying itself “with all or almost all the necessary energy.”
The KCK holds biennial meetings in the mountains with hundreds of delegates from all four countries, with the threat of the Islamic State to autonomous southern and western Kurdistan high on their agenda. The Iranian and Syrian KCK-affiliated parties, PJAK (Party for Free Life in Kurdistan) and PYD (Democratic Union Party) promote democratic confederalism as well. The Iraqi KCK party, PCDK (Party for a Democratic Solution in Kurdistan) is relatively insignificant, with the ruling centrist Kurdistan Democratic Party and its leader Massoud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan, only recently decriminalizing and starting to tolerate it.
In the northernmost mountainous areas in Iraqi Kurdistan where the majority (http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/Listedterroristorganisations/Pages/KurdistanWorkersPartyPKK.aspx) of PKK and PJAK guerrillas live, however, radical literature and assemblies thrive (http://new-compass.net/http:/new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism), with integration between the mountains’ many Kurds continuing after decades of displacement. In recent weeks, these militants have come down from the northernmost mountains to fight alongside the Iraqi Peshmerga against ISIS, rescuing 20,000 Yazidi and Christians (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJS65CWQfSQ&feature=youtu.be) from the Sinjar Mountains and being visited by Barzani (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/iraq-turkey-kurds-fight-islamic-state-201481581133776796.html) in a public display of gratitude and solidarity, much to the embarrassment of Turkey and the United States.
The Syrian PYD has followed Turkish Kurdistan’s lead in the revolutionary transformation of the autonomous region under its control since the outbreak of the civil war. After “waves of arrests” under Ba’athist repression, with “10,000 people [taken] into custody, among them mayors, local party leaders, deputies, cadres and activists … the Kurdish PYD forces ousted the Baath regime in northern Syria, or West Kurdistan, [and] local councils popped up everywhere.” Self-defense committees were improvised to provide “security in the wake of the collapse of the Ba’ath regime,” and “the first school teaching the Kurdish language” was established as the councils intervened in the equitable distribution of bread and gasoline.
In Turkish, Syrian and to a lesser extent Iraqi Kurdistan, women are now free to unveil and strongly encouraged to participate in social life. Old feudal ties are being broken, people are free to follow any or no religion, and ethnic and religious minorities live together peaceably. If they are able to confine the new caliphate, PYD autonomy in Syrian Kurdistan and KCK influence in Iraqi Kurdistan could ferment an even more profound explosion of revolutionary culture and values.
On June 30, 2012, the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCB), the broader revolutionary leftist coalition in Syria of which the PYD is the main group, has now embraced (https://www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_P KK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy) “the project of democratic autonomy and democratic confederalism as a possible model for Syria” as well.
Defending the Kurdish Revolution from IS
Turkey, in the meantime, has threatened to invade (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/dd2c9d8c-ec74-11e1-8e4a-00144feab49a.html#axzz24jZSUofl) Kurdish territories if “terrorist bases are set up in Syria,” as hundreds of KCK (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/14/us-syria-crisis-kurds-idUSKBN0FJ2A820140714) (including PKK) fighters from across Kurdistan cross the border to defend Rojava (the West) from the advances of the Islamic State. The PYD alleges (http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2014/6/syriakurd1247.htm) that Turkey’s moderate Islamist government is already engaged in a proxy war against them by facilitating the travel of international jihadists across the border to fight alongside the Islamists.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, Barzani, whose guerrillas fought alongside Turkey against the PKK in the 1990s in exchange for access to Western markets, has called for a “unified Kurdish front” (http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/kurds-the-new-middle-east-7377) in Syria through an alliance with the PYD. Barzani brokered the “Erbil Agreement” (http://www.ostomaan.org/articles/news-and-views/13577) in 2012, forming the Kurdish National Council, with PYD leader Salih Muslim confirming (http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/kurds-the-new-middle-east-7377) that “all parties are serious and determined to continue working together.”
Still, while the study and practice of libertarian socialist ideas among the KCK leadership and rank-and-file is undoubtedly a positive development, it remains to be seen how serious they are about renouncing their bloody authoritarian past. The Kurdish struggle for self-determination and cultural sovereignty form a silver lining in the dark clouds gathering over the Islamic State and the bloody inter-fascist wars between Islamism, Ba’athism and religious sectarianism that gave birth to it.
A socially progressive and secular pan-Kurdish revolution with libertarian socialist elements, uniting the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds and re-invigorating the Turkish and Iranian struggles, may yet be a prospect. In the meantime, those of us who value the idea of civilization owe our gratitude to the Kurds, who are fighting the jihadists of Islamist fascism day and night on the frontlines in Syria and Iraq, defending radical democratic values with their lives.

“[I]The Kurds have no friends but the mountains”
– Kurdish proverb




source: http://roarmag.org/2014/08/pkk-kurdish-struggle-autonomy/

[human strike]

So this is why there were PKK members in the black bloc at Genoa...

I'd heard rumours of the PKK moving towards libertarianism - is it actually for real then?

[DOOM]

So this is why there were PKK members in the black bloc at Genoa...

I'd heard rumours of the PKK moving towards libertarianism - is it actually for real then?

Yeah, I know some kurds and they confirmed this, one of them is a libertarian communist. However, there may still be some MLs.

[Sasha]

yes, though like the article itself already touches on, it is to be seen whether a long functioning ML-styled organization can be truly transformed towards a libertarian movement, especially if it is seemingly as much if not more dictated from above as demanded from the grassroots. Not to mention what possible influences the wars in iraq and syria have and the de facto establishment of a bourgeois, oil rich kurdish nationstate in northen iraq are having.

some earlier post from me on the subject:


a recent article on developments within the (former) PKK.
http://roarmag.org/2014/07/kurdistan-rojova-syria-autonomy/
note though that its not clear (to me at least) in how far this ideological development from Ocalan in prison is actually translated on the ground by the till recently marxist-leninst pkk cadre and supporters and whether such a shift really can be directed from above. but the little information coming from Rojova sounds interesting and slowly promising .


information from Rojava: http://rojavareport.wordpress.com/
an old thread on libcom on the sincerity of the PKK's shift: http://libcom.org/forums/middle-east/pkk-political-evolution-17082012
very indepth, lenthy article on Bookchin, Ocalan, dialectism and social ecology: http://new-compass.net/articles/bookchin-%C3%B6calan-and-dialectics-democracy (http://new-compass.net/articles/bookchin-%C3%B6calan-and-dialectics-democracy)

for now i remain skeptical but very interested. whether they succeed or not it is at least the most progressive movement of any substance in the middle east at the moment and as such deserves our attention.

[aty]

Of course we need to support the PKK and YPG in its move away from the nationalist project and towards a more libertarian socialist project.
This can be a blueprint for all of the middle east whose nationalstates are just a product of the west, there have never really been real modern nationalstates in the middle east except the ones created by the west.

ISIS is tapping into that fact with their borderless Islamic State and the PKKs project may very well be the socialist answer to their fascism.

[The Jay]

I'm reading this book titled Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan (http://www.amazon.com/Democratic-Autonomy-North-Kurdistan-Liberation/dp/8293064269/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1&keywords=democratic+autonomy+in+north+kurdistan) and it is pretty interesting if anyone wants to check it out. It talks about this new current.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Alright, so if you don't mind me asking, what does any of this have to do with socialism, if socialism is the destruction of class society? All this - Bookchin's city-state fetish, "democratic municipalities", "ecological industry", self-magagement all of this is more than possible within capitalism, as evidenced by Switzerland, by Ben Bella's bourgeois regime in Algeria, and so on.

[aty]

Alright, so if you don't mind me asking, what does any of this have to do with socialism, if socialism is the destruction of class society? All this - Bookchin's city-state fetish, "democratic municipalities", "ecological industry", self-magagement all of this is more than possible within capitalism, as evidenced by Switzerland, by Ben Bella's bourgeois regime in Algeria, and so on.
I think you have misunderstood the project...evidenced by Switzerland, what?

[Sasha]

i would say that for example the zapatista's have been a lot more succesful in creating a classless society with real communist potential (as in still operating within the reality of worldwide capitalism) than your dear Bolsheviks ever did.
so maybe give them a chance and see whether and how they fuck up and criticize them for that instead of relying on cheap strawman to discard them from the get go?

[Tim Cornelis]

What the PYD and TEV-DEM say they are trying to implement in Syria is a liberal democracy similar to the Swiss model. Bookchin's Communalism is something different entirely. The abolition of commodity production, markets, money, 'the economy', has, of course, nothing in common with the Swiss model. But 870 has a tendency to lie about and misconstrue his opponents political positions.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I agree sasha that we have to be critical (sceptical?) of a change towards libertarian socialism that comes not only from above, but in a seeming moment of epiphany from an absent autocrat.

I'm also a bit sceptical as to the deference to Bookchin; it would be more promising to see a plurality of libertarian ideas being reference in the PKKs ideological move towards libertarianism.

However, it is certainly a positive step, insofar as the outcome of the process (Regardless of whether it started at the top or at the grassroots) positions the PKK in opposition to crass nationalism and towards a radically progressive change in Kurdish society, should they ever manage to gain social liberation from occupation.

[Sasha]

I'm also a bit sceptical as to the deference to Bookchin; it would be more promising to see a plurality of libertarian ideas being reference in the PKKs ideological move towards libertarianism.



as far as i heard there i also a widening variety of anarchist and zapatista literature being spread among both the people living in the towns under YPG control and among the pkk-insurgents in the mountains.
A person that i know with close family ties to PKK members also said that since a few years this kind of literature is also not only not suppressed anymore by the commanders (as it was previously) but actually encouraged to be shared.
And while the talk by the PKK on the anarchist international confrence in st imier should certainly been seen as a public relations move fact is that they did attend the whole conference.

[VivalaCuarta]

Are you guys writing "libertarian" because you forgot how to spell "liberal" or do you really think there is a difference?

[Sasha]

there is also the increased support from Syriac and Armanian christians even going so far as taking up arms in the YPG as they are the most effective protection against religious and ethnic persecution in the region.

and last but not least they are cobbling sweet homemade tanks together, how can one be dismissive of that :lol::

https://rojavareport.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ypgtank.jpg

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think you have misunderstood the project...evidenced by Switzerland, what?

Switzerland shows that decentralisation, municipal governance, referenda etc. are more than compatible with capitalism.


i would say that for example the zapatista's have been a lot more succesful in creating a classless society with real communist potential (as in still operating within the reality of worldwide capitalism) than your dear Bolsheviks ever did.
so maybe give them a chance and see whether and how they fuck up and criticize them for that instead of relying on cheap strawman to discard them from the get go?

Well, you might say that, but that would only reflect on your politics. Obviously the Zapatistas haven't been successful in creating a classless society, as you can't have communism in one country region (!). So what have the Zapatistas accomplished? Set up some cooperatives? Become media darlings? I'm sure the bourgeoisie are running for their lives as we speak.

I don't think the PKK will "fuck up", I think what they're trying to accomplish has nothing to do with ending class society. They can have all of the confederations of municipalities and ecological industry (i.e. green capitalism!) they want, as long as the means of production are in private hands nothing has changed.

[Sasha]

So now i as an Anarchist have to argue a form of "transitional state" (as seen from a Communization theoretical perspective) with a Bolshevik?

revelft, where actual if not perfect revolutionary movements get burnt to the ground while being supportive of bourgeois military-junta's and bonapartist dictatorships is just fine...

[Tim Cornelis]

Switzerland shows that decentralisation, municipal governance, referenda etc. are more than compatible with capitalism.



Yeah uh, someone who is not on the ignore list of 870, explain to this idiot that none of that is what Communalism is. 870, pathological strawmanning, etc.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So now i as an Anarchist have to argue a form of "transitional state" (as seen from a Communization theoretical perspective) with a Bolshevik?

revelft, where actual if not perfect revolutionary movements get burnt to the ground while being supportive of bourgeois military-junta's and bonapartist dictatorships is just fine...

A transitional state is a state that is transitioning into something. I don't see the evidence that the PKK area is transitioning into another mode of production or that it has the capacity to do so, as even the most elementary measures associated with a transitional state - the expropriation of the bourgeoisie etc. are not in place, and the projected "future state" is some pseudo-Proudhonian confederation of municipalities nonsense instead of a society where the means of production are held in common and operated by society to satisfy the needs of its members.

Don't worry, though, you will find a lot of ostensible "Bolsheviks" who are really into this sort of nonsense. Guess that's better than going on coffee-picking expeditions.

[Rafiq]

There is a difference between experimenting with different models of statehood, fulfilling your "ideals" and acting as a class.

Social ecology is not Communist. Social ecology is an argument: that capital is better fulfilled under these "ideal" means than hegemonic ones.

[Devrim]

I agree sasha that we have to be critical (sceptical?) of a change towards libertarian socialism that comes not only from above, but in a seeming moment of epiphany from an absent autocrat.

I think that sceptical is a better view.


However, it is certainly a positive step, insofar as the outcome of the process (Regardless of whether it started at the top or at the grassroots) positions the PKK in opposition to crass nationalism and towards a radically progressive change in Kurdish society, should they ever manage to gain social liberation from occupation.

I don't think that anybody who knows the PKK thinks that there has been any real change. The PKK is still a reactionary nationalist organisation as it always has been. I think the fact that it openly advocates ethnic cleansingin Syria should be enough to give this away.

Devrim

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't think that anybody who knows the PKK thinks that there has been any real change. The PKK is still a reactionary nationalist organisation as it always has been. I think the fact that it openly advocates ethnic cleansingin Syria should be enough to give this away.

Devrim

I'm pretty sure I asked you for a source months ago for this claim, and you did not produce one. All the evidence I see is that it advocates a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural (liberal) democracy. So this claim remains strange.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I think that sceptical is a better view.



I don't think that anybody who knows the PKK thinks that there has been any real change. The PKK is still a reactionary nationalist organisation as it always has been. I think the fact that it openly advocates ethnic cleansingin Syria should be enough to give this away.

Devrim

Do you have a source for this? Aside from a Kurdish acquaintance, I don't have any real interaction with the PKK.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Switzerland shows that decentralisation, municipal governance, referenda etc. are more than compatible with capitalism.


And there are a great many countries that show that centralisation, national government etc. are also more than compatible with capitalism.

I don't think the issue here is as simple as centralisation v decentralisation, but rather: what is the best process for achieving freedom from imposed authority, if we accept that the freedom of proletarians from the social control of the ruling class (or of any class from another class) is a pre-requisite for a post-class society.

I am suspicious of the potency of the impact of any libertarian swing by the PKK, solely because, as you correctly highlight with Switzerland, small nations in the middle of a capitalist world tend not to have the ability, centralised or decentralised, to address the issue of class in society, from a revolutionary perspective.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

And there are a great many countries that show that centralisation, national government etc. are also more than compatible with capitalism.

Well, yeah. The point was that the form of governance is secondary to its class content.


I don't think the issue here is as simple as centralisation v decentralisation, but rather: what is the best process for achieving freedom from imposed authority, if we accept that the freedom of proletarians from the social control of the ruling class (or of any class from another class) is a pre-requisite for a post-class society.

I am suspicious of the potency of the impact of any libertarian swing by the PKK, solely because, as you correctly highlight with Switzerland, small nations in the middle of a capitalist world tend not to have the ability, centralised or decentralised, to address the issue of class in society, from a revolutionary perspective.

I'm not sure we're speaking the same language here, to be honest. When you talk about "the freedom of any class from another class" - well, communists don't want that, do we? We want the proletariat to assume power as the ruling class, in the process dissolving itself. Likewise it doesn't make much sense, from my standpoint, to talk about "small nations" (Kurdistan isn't exactly small!) "addressing the issue of class in society from a revolutionary perspective); nations are not the agents of historical change, classes are.

[Devrim]

Do you have a source for this? Aside from a Kurdish acquaintance, I don't have any real interaction with the PKK.


I'm pretty sure I asked you for a source months ago for this claim, and you did not produce one. All the evidence I see is that it advocates a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural (liberal) democracy. So this claim remains strange.

You did ask me for a source for this, twice in fact, and both times I provided it. Here it is again:


One day those Arabs who have been brought to the Kurdish areas will have to be expelled

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/24112013

Devrim

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I'm not sure we're speaking the same language here, to be honest. When you talk about "the freedom of any class from another class" - well, communists don't want that, do we? We want the proletariat to assume power as the ruling class, in the process dissolving itself.

No. "We" don't all want to establish a new ruling class. We have numerous historical examples that provide evidence of the sad fallibility of that strategy in reality.


Likewise it doesn't make much sense, from my standpoint, to talk about "small nations" (Kurdistan isn't exactly small!) "addressing the issue of class in society from a revolutionary perspective); nations are not the agents of historical change, classes are.

True. Rather what i'm saying is that within a small nation you are unlikely to find a critical mass of workers who are able to effect anything like a revolutionary change in their relationship to the means of production. Any revolutionary strategy needs to be broader, geographically speaking, in order to sustain a revolutionary threat to the status quo under capitalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

No. "We" don't all want to establish a new ruling class. We have numerous historical examples that provide evidence of the sad fallibility of that strategy in reality.

Hence my comment about us two not speaking the same language. I don't even know what you would propose - some sort of democratic state that is "neutral" between classes? But in any case that is not what the actual socialist movement stands for.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Hence my comment about us two not speaking the same language. I don't even know what you would propose - some sort of democratic state that is "neutral" between classes? But in any case that is not what the actual socialist movement stands for.

The actual socialist movement being? The revolutionary left minus all the currents you have unilaterally decided aren't "actually" socialist. :rolleyes:

The state can never be neutral. I don't know why you're so wedded to the existence of the state (even if you say it will wither away at some undefined future point, in some undefined way). The history of the state is bound up in the history of capital. Defeat capital and I think we go a long way to being able to do away with national executive political bodies, militaries en masse, national financial and economic bodies etc.

The state in terms of a national executive, national judiciary, national law-enforcement and national capital-related financial & economic bodies need not exist after capital has been defeated. I would say that the idea of the 'withering away' of the state should be replaced with the idea of the planks of the state being 'quickly demolished', with no new ruling class assuming the levers of the state.

[Fourth Internationalist]

I would say that the idea of the 'withering away' of the state should be replaced with the idea of the planks of the state being 'quickly demolished', with no new ruling class assuming the levers of the state.

Do you identify as an anarchist or as a Marxist (which is currently displayed as your tendency)?

[Zukunftsmusik]

I think some of the attitudes shown towards this (not necessarily (only) here on RL) is rather problematic. For all the talk about "municipalism", "libertarian communsim," the on-paper criticism of nationalism, I don't think this denies PKK's nationalist goals. In fact, I see no reason for the PKK to exist as such if the project of nationalism is abandonded - this is their raison d'être. This is also shown by some of the ambiguities here - on the one hand, Öcalan claims to have abandonded nationalism (though what does that matter for a movement consisting of hundreds of thousands?), on the other the leader of the Syrian section is saying the fraternalising with arabs and so on are merely temporal and that they have to be "expelled" eventually - or ethnic cleansing, as Devrim says.

Whether this is a positive development or not, depends on your political perspectives, obviously (especially viz. "spaces of autonomy" (autonomy from what? The various nation states? Certainly not capital as such?) and their potential, actual content etc.). I'm highly skeptical (to say the very leasy) of this. If anything, it's a more "libertarian", directly democratic approach to organisation (in so far this has actually been implemented on the ground) within an already nationalist movement - good for them, I guess. To say this is a "social revolution" is to stretch the term to put it very mildly.

[aty]

I don't think that anybody who knows the PKK thinks that there has been any real change. The PKK is still a reactionary nationalist organisation as it always has been. I think the fact that it openly advocates ethnic cleansingin Syria should be enough to give this away.

Devrim

No they dont, they are actively trying to avoid ethnic conflict and have not taken over Hasake and Qamishli and Tell Hamis only to avoid ethnic conflict. This despite ISIS launching attacks from the sunni arab communities. In the last months arabs have even began to join the YPG.

If you call the YPG reactionary in the context of the syrian and iraqi civil war you are just delusional.

Arabs joining YPG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7htHklVUKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg6V5fb5WwU

[Devrim]

No they dont, they are actively trying to avoid ethnic conflict

So is the quotation above not true or is expelling Arabs not ethnic cleansing.

Devrim

[aty]

So is the quotation above not true or is expelling Arabs not ethnic cleansing.

Devrim
I remember it not being true, I cant find how Moslem later answered on this. I remember it was taken out of context from a 45 minutes tv-interview, what he said was that sunni arabs who had moved in during the civil war by ISIS and al-Nusra may had to leave the houses they occupied. But Rudaw is a KDP-media who are constantly telling lies about PKK and YPG.

Just last week they lied about PKK had stopped Peshmerga and USA from rescuing the Yezidis, the only thing PKK and YPG wanted was that they coordinated with them so they would not shoot at each other by mistake. They changed parts of the article after huge backslash. http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/15082014

[Devrim]

I remember it not being true, ... But Rudaw is a KDP-media who are constantly telling lies about PKK and YPG.

It also appeared in pro-PKK media such as Kurdish News Weekly Briefing (http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/2013/11/29/kurdish-news-weekly-briefing-3-29-november-2013/)as well as other sources.However, if you don't want to believe...

Devrim

[bropasaran]

Isn't the PKK's tendency towards libertarian socialism it's old course, not a new one?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Do you identify as an anarchist or as a Marxist (which is currently displayed as your tendency)?

I am in the middle of a bit of personal and political introspection at the moment.

I like Marx's critique of capitalist society and his economic history of the middle ages, but I have also been sympathetic to libertarian socialism for quite a while in terms of its explicit formulations against all forms of imposed authority.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The actual socialist movement being? The revolutionary left minus all the currents you have unilaterally decided aren't "actually" socialist. :rolleyes:

The state can never be neutral. I don't know why you're so wedded to the existence of the state (even if you say it will wither away at some undefined future point, in some undefined way). The history of the state is bound up in the history of capital. Defeat capital and I think we go a long way to being able to do away with national executive political bodies, militaries en masse, national financial and economic bodies etc.

The state in terms of a national executive, national judiciary, national law-enforcement and national capital-related financial & economic bodies need not exist after capital has been defeated. I would say that the idea of the 'withering away' of the state should be replaced with the idea of the planks of the state being 'quickly demolished', with no new ruling class assuming the levers of the state.

I assumed you were talking about a state because:

(1) we are talking about an organisation that, its "libertarianism" aside, is committed to building a national state, albeit a "democratic", "confederal" etc. state;

(2) you were talking about different classes (and "no class having power over another class", as if that is even possible), so I charitably assumed you were talking about a state society.

But now you're talking about a stateless society with classes, and about financial bodies existing after capitalism had been defeated. To be honest I don't know what you're talking about.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I assumed you were talking about a state because:

(1) we are talking about an organisation that, its "libertarianism" aside, is committed to building a national state, albeit a "democratic", "confederal" etc. state;

(2) you were talking about different classes (and "no class having power over another class", as if that is even possible), so I charitably assumed you were talking about a state society.

But now you're talking about a stateless society with classes, and about financial bodies existing after capitalism had been defeated. To be honest I don't know what you're talking about.

I was talking about libertarianism more generally, not the PKK and democratic confederalism specifically.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I was talking about libertarianism more generally, not the PKK and democratic confederalism specifically.

What sort of "libertarianism"? Certainly not anarchism, where figures like Pelloutier and others have always made clear that they expected the proletariat to smash the bourgeois state, defend its conquests etc. Certainly none of them imagined that "no class would have power over another".

I mean, what sense does this make? Either the proletariat exercises its power by expropriating the bourgeoisie, the petite-bourgeoisie etc., or the bourgeoisie remains un-expropriated and in power - unless you think the bourgeoisie could somehow exist without having power over other classes.

[Tim Cornelis]

I assumed you were talking about a state because:

(1) we are talking about an organisation that, its "libertarianism" aside, is committed to building a national state, albeit a "democratic", "confederal" etc. state;

Someone who is not on the ignore list of 870, point this out.

The Koma Civaken Kurdistan is formally not committed to building a national state. Quite explicitly it's not:

"The democratic confederalism of Kurdistan is not a State system, it is the democratic system of a people without a State ... It takes its power from the people and adopts to reach self sufficiency in every field including economy.
The democratic confederalism is the movement of the Kurdish people to found their own democracy and organize their own social system... The democratic confederalism is the expression of the democratic union of the Kurdish people that have been split into four parts and have spread all over the world... It develops the (notion of) a democratic nation instead of the nationalist-statist nation based on strict borders."

http://www.freemedialibrary.com/index.php/Declaration_of_Democratic_Confederalism_in_Kurdist an

[Devrim]

Someone who is not on the ignore list of 870, point this out.

The Koma Civaken Kurdistan is formally not committed to building a national state. Quite explicitly it's not:

"The democratic confederalism of Kurdistan is not a State system, it is the democratic system of a people without a State ... It takes its power from the people and adopts to reach self sufficiency in every field including economy.
The democratic confederalism is the movement of the Kurdish people to found their own democracy and organize their own social system... The democratic confederalism is the expression of the democratic union of the Kurdish people that have been split into four parts and have spread all over the world... It develops the (notion of) a democratic nation instead of the nationalist-statist nation based on strict borders."

http://www.freemedialibrary.com/index.php/Declaration_of_Democratic_Confederalism_in_Kurdist an

This is complete and utter nonsense.

Devrim

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

This is complete and utter nonsense.

Devrim

I actually laughed at that, but I guess Tim got what he wanted. I don't know if he actually believes that a confederation of municipalities on a national basis is not a state, or if he's just miffed about something, but if it walks like a state and serves as an executive committee of one sector of the bourgeoisie like a state...

[Tim Cornelis]

This is complete and utter nonsense.

Devrim

How?


I actually laughed at that, but I guess Tim got what he wanted. I don't know if he actually believes that a confederation of municipalities on a national basis is not a state, or if he's just miffed about something, but if it walks like a state and serves as an executive committee of one sector of the bourgeoisie like a state...

Equally formally, democratic confederalism advocates for the abolition of the bourgeoisie. And it wants to establish confederations with non-Kurdish areas. So again, formally it's not committed to establishing a national state.

[Devrim]

How?
Equally formally, democratic confederalism advocates for the abolition of the bourgeoisie.

Well first it is theoretical nonsense, and second it has no connection to the reality on the ground whatsoever.

How the PKK has managed to succed in remarketing itself towards the Western left and liberals would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

Devrim

[Tim Cornelis]

Well first it is theoretical nonsense, and second it has no connection to the reality on the ground whatsoever.

How the PKK has managed to succed in remarketing itself towards the Western left and liberals would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

Devrim

That doesn't address what I said. I very specifically emphasised 'formally'. Realistically, it does not. In the first place because there doesn't seem to be much interest in advocating or establishing democratic confderalism; in the second place because democratic confederalism is a flawed ideological framework. Nevertheless, formally, the KCK is committed to a stateless society. And I don't see how this statement is complete and utter nonsense.

[Devrim]

That doesn't address what I said. I very specifically emphasised 'formally'. Realistically, it does not. In the first place because there doesn't seem to be much interest in advocating or establishing democratic confderalism; in the second place because democratic confederalism is a flawed ideological framework. Nevertheless, formally, the KCK is committed to a stateless society. And I don't see how this statement is complete and utter nonsense.

Formally the French state is committed to liberty, fraternity, and equality.

If it has no connection to reality what is the point of mentioning it.

It's a bit like saying "there can't be racism in France, they are committed to equality".

Also as has been pointed out on a theoretical level, it is also nonsense.

Devrim

[aty]

You are saying it has no connection to reality but you are not telling us why. All you have given us is strawman arguments. Why should we not support a more libertarian movement in the kurdish regions? What harm would it do?

[Devrim]

Why should we not support a more libertarian movement in the kurdish regions? What harm would it do?

You can support a more libertarian movement in Kurdish regions if you want. I am just saying that the PKK isn't it.

What harm can it do? The PKK? I'd say quite a lot. It's a viscous nationalist organisation with a long list of crimes against the working class.

Devrim

[aty]

You can support a more libertarian movement in Kurdish regions if you want. I am just saying that the PKK isn't it.

What harm can it do? The PKK? I'd say quite a lot. It's a viscous nationalist organisation with a long list of crimes against the working class.

Devrim
Why should we not support them in their new path that is obviously being taken? Why should we not support them in their fight against the fascists in ISIS?

I think you are yourself driven by nationalist sentiment.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Why should we not support them in their new path that is obviously being taken? Why should we not support them in their fight against the fascists in ISIS?

I think you are yourself driven by nationalist sentiment.

Not everyone who opposes the bourgeois leadership of the Kurdish struggle is a dominant-nation chauvinist. In fact (and Devrim would undoubtedly see this differently) I would say communists have a duty to oppose such leadership. What the PKK wants has nothing to do with socialism, even if they invoke Bookchin, who for his part wasn't much of a socialist either.

[Devrim]

Why should we not support them in their new path that is obviously being taken?

I don't believe that any new path is being taken. I think that there is a change in the way that the PKK markets itself in the West, which has no connection to how they behave on the ground.


Why should we not support them in their fight against the fascists in ISIS?

It's not a football match where you have to pick a side to support. It's a bit more serious than that.


I think you are yourself driven by nationalist sentiment.

I am not an ethnic Turk. I do live here as it says on the profile. I think the Turkish states behaviour towards Kurdish people is criminal. I am not driven by nationalism on this question.

Devrim

[aty]

I don't believe that any new path is being taken. I think that there is a change in the way that the PKK markets itself in the West, which has no connection to how they behave on the ground.
It's not a football match where you have to pick a side to support. It's a bit more serious than that.
I am not an ethnic Turk. I do live here as it says on the profile. I think the Turkish states behaviour towards Kurdish people is criminal. I am not driven by nationalism on this question.

Devrim
But, it is obviously not only in theory, there were several examples of how this was put into practice. Are this untrue and what proof do you have? You have so far given us nothing.

I mean, look at his video. How could we not support this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCCODxq8diI

[Devrim]

You have so far given us nothing.

No, so far I claimed that the PKK was advocating ethnic cleansing, people said source it, so I did quoting from one of their leaders. You then said that the piece was anti-PKK propaganda, so I sourced it from a pro-PKK site. You declined to comment.


But, it is obviously not only in theory, there were several examples of how this was put into practice.

The PKK's practice towards women is appealing.

This is a good description by a founder member of the PKK of how it really is:


Apo has forced dozens of our female comrades to immoral relations with him, defiled most and declared the ones who insisted on refusing to be people 'who haven't understood the party, who haven't understood us' and has heavily repressed them, and even order the murder of some claiming they are agents. Some of our female comrades who are in this situation are still under arrest and under torture, being forced to make confessions appropriate to the scenarios that they are agents (…) The relations between men and women within the party have turned into a harem in Apo's palace and many female comrades were treated as concubines by this individual.


I mean, look at his video. How could we not support this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCCODxq8diI

It's a propoganda video.

Devrim

[The Modern Prometheus]

Are you guys writing "libertarian" because you forgot how to spell "liberal" or do you really think there is a difference?

There is a huge difference between Libertarian Communism and left Libertarianism in general and Liberalism. Right Libertarianism aka American Libertarianism on the otherhand is derived from Liberalism which is what makes it so different from actual Communism.

After seeing the success of groups like the EZLN i don't think the PKK adapting a Libertarian Communist ideology while still keeping National Liberation in mind is a bad idea at all. The Communist revolution has to start somewhere after all and it does fit in with Marxist-Leninist ideology as well.

I just hope the PKK hangs ISIS from the highest spot they can find to set examples of what happens to such barbarians.

[Sasha]

This is a good description by a founder member of the PKK of how it really is:



since Sener was trying to replace Ocalan through a internal coup i hardly think we should take his words at face value now should we...

[Devrim]

since Sener was trying to replace Ocalan through a internal coup i hardly think we should take his words at face value now should we...

No, of course not. It just happens to tally with what ex-members of the PKK all seem to say, but let's not believe them either. Let's here it from the horse's mouth:


These girls mentioned. I don't know, I have relations with thousands of them. I don't care how anyone understands it. If I've gotten close with some of them, how should this have been? (…) On these subjects, they leave aside all the real measurements and find someone and gossip, say 'this was attempted to be done to me here' or 'this was done to me there'! These shameless women both want to give too much and then develop such things. Some of the people mentioned. Good grace! They say 'we need it so, it would be very good' and then this gossip is developed (…) I'm saying it openly again. This is the sort of warrior I am. I love girls a lot, I value them a lot. I love all of them. I try to turn every girl into a lover, in an unbelievable level, to the point of passion. I try to shape them from their physique to their soul, to their thoughts. I see it in myself to fulfill this task. I define myself openly. If you find me dangerous, don't get close.

Do you think that this sort of stuff would even be acceptable in the SWP?

Devrim

[aty]

But now you have just begun posting up old stuff about Öcalan. You have still given us nothing in your claim that the new ideological turn is just a paper product and that these ideas are not actually being implemented and shared among these groups. It is still only strawman arguments from your side. No organisation is perfect, certainly not one who involves tens of thousands.

I still cant see what is worse about PKK than any other leftist organisation in Europe, or in the rest of the world. I still support FARC against the colombian government despite their flaws, I still support the IRA despite their flaws. I just wonder what have created your animosity against the PKK-movement. They are by far the most progressive organisation in the middle east today that have some sort of following to speak about.

[Devrim]

But now you have just begun posting up old stuff about Öcalan.

Yes, of course it's old. I don't think anybody who knows anything about the subject believes that I am suggesting that this is how Öcelan behaves now. He is in prison and has been for years. I do believe though that this statement says a lot more about the nature of the PKK than their own current propoganda.


You have still given us nothing in your claim that the new ideological turn is just a paper product and that these ideas are not actually being implemented and shared among these groups.

Has anybody given us anything except their own propoganda. I don't think that you'd find anybody in the Middle East who isn't a PKK supporter who would take the PKK's turning over of a new leaf seriously. Basically they have found a new way of marketing themselves in Europe. There has been no real change on the ground.


It is still only strawman arguments from your side.

This is not what a strawman argument is at all.


No organisation is perfect, certainly not one who involves tens of thousands.

It's not that I don't think that its perfect. I think it is anti-working class.


I still cant see what is worse about PKK than any other leftist organisation in Europe, or in the rest of the world.

If the PKK is the left, then I want nothing to do with the left. It is not a socialist organisation in any way. It's a nationalist organisation. It its time it has been involved in murderous attacks against socialist groups and workers. Some people in the West now seem to thing it has completely changed its spots and has now become, at the orders of its leader, some sort of libertarian socialist organisation. I don't think that it's true.

I don't think that it has anything to do with socialism or the working class, and I think the fact that the leader of its section in Syria is openly talking about expelling Arabs as sufficient evidence of this. Of course this is quite obvious from its own propaganda, which has virtually nothing to say about class, and class struggle.


I still support FARC against the colombian government despite their flaws, I still support the IRA despite their flaws.

I don't support these sort of groups. I don't think that socialism can be brought about by armed gangs.

What were the IRA's flaws? Are you referring to the sectarian murders of protestant workers? I think that these sort of things are anti-working class, not just a flaw.


I just wonder what have created your animosity against the PKK-movement.

I'd imagine its the fact that I am much more familiar with their behaviour than you are.

Devrim

[aty]

So far I have seen nothing that supports your claims, but in the article I see loads of examples of how they are building organisations and councils all over the areas they are active in.
They have obviously moved away from the idea of the state and borders and instead propagate self-rule for everyone, how is that nationalistic in any more sense of any other leftist organisation? Or do you think that minorities have no right to their mother language and to choose how their culture should be? Is it this that bothers you, their fight for self determination against the turkish nationalism?

What they are talking about in Syria is about arab settlers moved in by the syrian state after they cleansed areas from kurds. The same thing that the israelis does on the west bank. You dont think the palestinians that fled during the Nakba have the right to return?

Just to conclude, kurds are a people that have been oppressed by Turkey and other states for over a hundred years. It is very easy to sit as a westerner and smash down on them not being the perfect organisation that they could be in their fight against this oppression against them. Yes, they may very well be to anti-imp but if I got too choose between the PKK or the YPG against the turkish och syrian state I know what i would support.

Especially a movement that have started to show interest in the ideas of libertarian socialism in the last decades and are actively starting to implement some of those ideas. I dont see why we should not support such a move even if its still only in theory. To be fair, there are many libertarian socialist organisations in the west but not many of them(anyone?) have started implementing their ideas either....

You are just basically bashing down on them without seeing anything positive about their ideological development. Explain to me how a perfect movement should look like, you act like you have all the answers but you have not. The PKK-movement have moved a lot further being a workers movement than any other movement in the middle east. Or in Europe. With your standards all libertarian socialists in Europe are not really socialist because it is only in theory. It is only marketing.

[aty]

He stressed the PKK's recent change in policy that means it is no longer fighting for an independent state (an original PKK tenet), but a democratic confederation. "Our aim is not an independent Kurdish state, but a democratic Kurdistan, under a confederate system that defends equality and freedoms," a female fighter from Turkish Kurdistan told VICE News. Magid added that they welcomed other nationalities and religions.

More marketing? https://news.vice.com/article/meet-the-pkk-terrorists-battling-the-islamic-state-on-the-frontlines-of-iraq?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

[The Modern Prometheus]

I supported the PKK before this and still support them now. They have a legitimate right to a autonomous Kurdish region. As for the mistakes the PIRA made (who don't even exist anymore) it was regrettable but they were not sectarian in nature. In fact many of the PIRA and INLA members where Protestants. The ANC where not perfect either back when they fought the apartheid government. They where dirty wars and it was a different time.

I really don't like the sort of Communists who go screaming bloody murder at the mere thought of national liberation. Atleast the PKK are doing something to stop ISIS which is more then we can say for any other group in the region.

[The Modern Prometheus]

More marketing? https://news.vice.com/article/meet-the-pkk-terrorists-battling-the-islamic-state-on-the-frontlines-of-iraq?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

That's some pretty good propaganda actually. I wouldn't doubt but the Kurdish forces with the help of the PKK are the ones that will actually end up being the downfall of ISIS. Especially if the Americans can carry out targeted bombings on ISIS targets. In a war like this one must have a united front in order to win.

[Devrim]

I wouldn't doubt but the Kurdish forces with the help of the PKK are the ones that will actually end up being the downfall of ISIS. Especially if the Americans can carry out targeted bombings on ISIS targets. In a war like this one must have a united front in order to win.

And this is where we end up. With people who call themselves socialists calling for the Americans to bomb the Middle East, again. It's not a surprise after all this time, but it is still disgusting.


At least the PKK are doing something to stop ISIS which is more then we can say for any other group in the region.

Well further South there are Shia groups that are doing something to stop ISIS. Are you suggesting thst we should all start supporting the newly reformed Mahdi army too?

ISIS is a flash in the pan. It won't control these parts of Iraq in two or three years, and will be relegated to a mere footnote in the history of the region. The Americans, I imagine will still be murdering people in the Middle East in a decade or two. These are the people who you are lining yourself up with.

And just quickly onto Ireland:


As for the mistakes the PIRA made (who don't even exist anymore) it was regrettable but they were not sectarian in nature.

Really, Kingsmill wasn't a sectarian massacre then, just a regrettable mistake?


In fact many of the PIRA and INLA members where Protestants.

This is just not true, a couple of handfuls were at most.

Devrim

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The ANC where not perfect either back when they fought the apartheid government.

And where are the ANC now? They're front-men for the neo-apartheid government. There is no reason to suppose the PKK would do anything else, particularly not their "democratic confederalism" which is about as socialist as Georgism, distributism and other attempts to abolish capitalism without abolishing capitalism.


I wouldn't doubt but the Kurdish forces with the help of the PKK are the ones that will actually end up being the downfall of ISIS. Especially if the Americans can carry out targeted bombings on ISIS targets. In a war like this one must have a united front in order to win.

And where do you think ISIS came from? It didn't simply condense out of the aether one morning. Its origins lie in the same sort of imperialist intervention you explicitly advocate - not to mention the sheer incredulity of a socialist believing imperialists that their bombings will be "targeted".

[Devrim]

So far I have seen nothing that supports your claims, but in the article I see loads of examples of how they are building organisations and councils all over the areas they are active in.

Oh, it says it in the article, it must be true.


More marketing? https://news.vice.com/article/meet-the-pkk-terrorists-battling-the-islamic-state-on-the-frontlines-of-iraq?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

Well yes, they are having a propaganda offensive at the moment. Do you think it is just a coincidence that their are pro-PKK articles turning up everywhere at the moment? It's what any large scale, reasonably well organised, group would do.

The impression that I get, and I can read article in local languages, and I have friends who are PKK supporters, as well as other people who have been there who I have talked to, is that the military is running the whole thing, and any local 'councils' are just for show.


They have obviously moved away from the idea of the state and borders and instead propagate self-rule for everyone, how is that nationalistic in any more sense of any other leftist organisation?

I don't take all of the Boochinite 'democratic confederalism' seriously. I think that the PKK was looking for an ideology as its old one was seriously out of date, and they picked up on this one. I just don't think that they've changed.


Or do you think that minorities have no right to their mother language and to choose how their culture should be? Is it this that bothers you, their fight for self determination against the turkish nationalism?

I have said this before, but apparently you didn't take any notice, so once more; I think that the Turkish state is a terrorist state. I believe people should be able to speak whatever languages they choose, and that the language laws in Turkey were a disgusting attack on the Kurdish community (as well as others). I am not in any way a Turkish nationalist, nor actually am I an ethnic Turk, not that it should be important.


What they are talking about in Syria is about arab settlers moved in by the syrian state after they cleansed areas from kurds.

So you have stopped denying that they said this, then? It's a little more complicated than that. In the early 1970s there were Kurdish villages that were cleansed of Kurds and then populated by Arabs along the border with Turkey. However, the area that is Kurdistan has always been one which is very diverse in both a linguistic and religious sense. There is not a solid area of Kurdish speaking Kurds, which borders an area of Arabic speaking Arabs, and so on. In the area which Kurds were cleared from there were already many Arabs.

Now, disregarding the fact that the majority of those Arabs he was referring to weren't actually brought in, but were actually born there, what he says is "there will be war between Kurds and Arabs". This means all Arabs, you can't just say we are going to have a war against those specific Arabs. This is how ethnic war starts. It ends up in massacres and ethnic cleansing. It is completly the opposite of a socialist policy which is based on the common interests of the exploited. Instead it sets the exploited against each other to kill and be killed on behalf of capital.


Just to conclude, kurds are a people that have been oppressed by Turkey and other states for over a hundred years. It is very easy to sit as a westerner and smash down on them not being the perfect organisation that they could be in their fight against this oppression against them. Yes, they may very well be to anti-imp but if I got too choose between the PKK or the YPG against the turkish och syrian state I know what i would support.

I'd imagine I am better informed than you are about the terroristic treatment of Kurdish people by the Turkish state and other states in the region. It's not a question of choosing between different types of nationalist though. Another choice is possible, one that poses class unity against national unity.


You are just basically bashing down on them without seeing anything positive about their ideological development. Explain to me how a perfect movement should look like, you act like you have all the answers but you have not. The PKK-movement have moved a lot further being a workers movement than any other movement in the middle east. Or in Europe. With your standards all libertarian socialists in Europe are not really socialist because it is only in theory. It is only marketing.

I think the whole point is that the PKK is not a workers' movement. It's a nationalist movement. Any workers' movement will be tainted by the excrement of capitalist society, but it will still be a class movement.

Devrim

[The Modern Prometheus]

And this is where we end up. With people who call themselves socialists calling for the Americans to bomb the Middle East, again. It's not a surprise after all this time, but it is still disgusting.


As long as the bombs fall in the right places who cares?



Well further South there are Shia groups that are doing something to stop ISIS. Are you suggesting thst we should all start supporting the newly reformed Mahdi army too?

So by that logic we shouldnt support anyone in this fight?


ISIS is a flash in the pan. It won't control these parts of Iraq in two or three years, and will be relegated to a mere footnote in the history of the region. The Americans, I imagine will still be murdering people in the Middle East in a decade or two. These are the people who you are lining yourself up with.

ISIS needs to be defeated and by the way they where blatantly running all over Iraq before the PKK stepped in a wouldn't call them a flash in the pan. As for the Americans they are foreigners and have had enough of Iraq i think for awile.




And just quickly onto Ireland:



Really, Kingsmill wasn't a sectarian massacre then, just a regrettable mistake?



This is just not true, a couple of handfuls were at most.

Devrim

Kingsmill was carried out as a renegade attack the army council didn't sanction it as far as i can tell from any semi reliable sources. There had been sectarian attacks by Loyalists only the night before and some people got it in their heads to kill some Protestants to get the Loyalists to back off on their attacks. Was it completely irrational as well as reactionary? Certainly but those where not exactly the best of times back then. It was a nasty war what can you say about it. There never was another incident like Kingsmill on the Republican side atleast. Mistakes where made but every group makes them. The Republic of China didn't turn into a Communist wonderland either but i'm not gonna ***** forever about that. All you can do is move on and groups that many left Communists deride as simply being Nationalist did do alot to gain civil rights for their people.

[Zukunftsmusik]

As long as the bombs fall in the right places who cares?

You have some sound principles, I must say.


So by that logic we shouldnt support anyone in this fight?

I think what you need to ask yourself is what kind of logic drives you to having to "support" a side in this (or any) conflict by necessity.


As for the Americans they are foreigners and have had enough of Iraq i think for awile.

The Americans are literally discussing bombing as se speak.


Mistakes where made but every group makes them.

This is a truism. For communists, the question is on what terrain the group situates itself - nation building or class struggle.


The Republic of China didn't turn into a Communist wonderland either but i'm not gonna ***** forever about that. All you can do is move on and groups that many left Communists deride as simply being Nationalist did do alot to gain civil rights for their people.

You're shifting the goal posts by miles for each sentence here. This paragraph hardly makes sense.

[The Modern Prometheus]

You have some sound principles, I must say.


Why because i am not totally against using a enemy to the greater advantage. I think it's rather utopian to stick to some kind of pure vision of class struggle in something like this.



I think what you need to ask yourself is what kind of logic drives you to having to "support" a side in this (or any) conflict by necessity.


Well i support what the PKK where fighting for before this and i sure as shit support them against the horrible atrocities ISIS are committing and their nihilistic vision of Islam they want to impose on the whole region.



The Americans are literally discussing bombing as se speak.

No shit really? It doesent mean a ground invasion though as i can't see the American public going for it at all.




This is a truism. For communists, the question is on what terrain the group situates itself - nation building or class struggle.


The 2 are connected in my opinion. Class struggle and the right of a nation to self determination go hand in hand.



[QUOTE]You're shifting the goal posts by miles for each sentence here. This paragraph hardly makes sense.

I was merely emphasizing how if you look at any movement you are going to see mistakes that everyone would just as soon forget. That and how left Communists (not all of them by any means) instantly deride any national liberation group as engaging in nothing but bourgeois nationalism when they have done far more in recent years to help their own peoples rights then any "pure" Socialist organization not that such a thing ever existed. Because you know bourgeois elements haven't existed in every Marxist revolution to date. The PIRA and the INLA where a necessary force during the "troubles" as who the fuck else where going to defend the Irish in the 6 counties against the states blatant attack on their civil rights and very existence by Unionists, Loyalist thugs and the British Army. Yes there where members of the PIRA who committed horrible sectarian acts (mostly during the 70's) but there where also many people in the organization who where good Socialists and wanted to work towards a Socialist united Ireland.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Why because i am not totally against using a enemy to the greater advantage. I think it's rather utopian to stick to some kind of pure vision of class struggle in something like this.

Except, of course, the communist opposition to "using" (haha, sure, the great imperialist cartels and imperial powers are going to be "used" by some group of seven people) imperialist intervention is practical. Every imperialist intervention creates more problems than it solves. ISIS itself is the result of imperialism! And now you want the Americans to bomb them (and they'll bomb only Islamists, honest guvnor), and create another group like ISIS or two-three such groups in the long run. If anything it is the pro-imperialists who are utopian, because apparently they believe imperialism is both benevolent and led by functionally brain-dead people who would allow themselves to be co-opted to some progressive goal.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

The idea that the US military can be used by socialists as useful idiots is a ridiculous notion, unless you know absolutely nothing about the history of American foreign policy. The Kurds will be, once again, the useful idiots for the Americans this time around. Maybe the US can use them to remove Assad after this :rolleyes:

I think it's cool that more Kurds and maybe Arabs will be introduced to libertarian communist ideas as a result of this shift in rhetoric, but it's just propaganda. Any struggle that relies on professional-styled standing armies to pursue it's goals is destined for a new dictatorship and nothing else. I hope they beat ISIS and everything but these groups are not communists.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The idea that the US military can be used by socialists as useful idiots is a ridiculous notion, unless you know absolutely nothing about the history of American foreign policy. The Kurds will be, once again, the useful idiots for the Americans this time around. Maybe the US can use them to remove Assad after this :rolleyes:

I think it's cool that more Kurds and maybe Arabs will be introduced to libertarian communist ideas as a result of this shift in rhetoric, but it's just propaganda. Any struggle that relies on professional-styled standing armies to pursue it's goals is destined for a new dictatorship and nothing else. I hope they beat ISIS and everything but these groups are not communists.

I personally hope the people of the region drive away all sectarian militias, which includes the PKK and its military wing. As for libertarian communism, I don't think Book Chin's strange "democratic confederalism" fits the bill.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I'm not too keen on bookchin and honestly any ideology adopted by the PKK now will be something that we all look at with scorn a few decades from now, but the shift in rhetoric alone will influence how some people's views will change in the future and that can be positive. It would be really nice if communism could be brought about by armed gangs but we all know it can't so it's weird to see so many anarchists jumping on this as something to be hopeful about, there's a better chance that this will lead to anarchism being discredited than there is that it will lead to the creation of an outpost of anti-capitalism that we could all rally around or something.

[The Modern Prometheus]

Except, of course, the communist opposition to "using" (haha, sure, the great imperialist cartels and imperial powers are going to be "used" by some group of seven people) imperialist intervention is practical. Every imperialist intervention creates more problems than it solves. ISIS itself is the result of imperialism! And now you want the Americans to bomb them (and they'll bomb only Islamists, honest guvnor), and create another group like ISIS or two-three such groups in the long run. If anything it is the pro-imperialists who are utopian, because apparently they believe imperialism is both benevolent and led by functionally brain-dead people who would allow themselves to be co-opted to some progressive goal.

I am not Pro-Imperialist but if the Americans could keep their airstrikes limited to what they have already done in this conflict then i don't see any harm in it. You are right of course about the dangers of dealing with capitalists in such a manner and yes ISIS where created by the very imperialists who are now (though not officially) conveniently helping the PKK under the cover of helping the Peshmerga. Of course dealing with imperialists is dangerous and yeah going by American foreign policy history you can see how dangerous it is.

However i really can't see the Kurds being lent any other favors for anything else other then doing in ISIS and the notion of them say becoming some US backed anti-Assad group is plain foolish. The Kurds in Syria such as the PYD acted on a mostly defensive strategy and have far more of a bone to pick with the Islamist's then the Assad regime. They where certainly not friends with the likes of the al-Nusra Front much less more extreme Islamic groups in that region. They certainly don't like Assad as Assad did bow to Turkish pressure and we all know what happened there but Assad is hardly the Kurds biggest worry at the moment.

I don't see what's so bad about turning Iraq and Syria's misfortune into a gain for the Kurds even if it means being on the same side as the devil that created the thugs your currently fighting temporarily. The harmony won't last as the PKK and the US certainly see eye to eye on nothing else besides the fact that ISIS needs to be stopped. But the weakening of the government in Iraq and well as the situation in Syria could very well end up being a gain for the Kurds to finally work towards creating a autonomous Kurdish region.

[Devrim]

Kingsmill was carried out as a renegade attack the army council didn't sanction it as far as i can tell from any semi reliable sources.

Does that make it alright then?


There had been sectarian attacks by Loyalists only the night before and some people got it in their heads to kill some Protestants to get the Loyalists to back off on their attacks. Was it completely irrational as well as reactionary?

No, it's a completely rational thing to do within the logic of nationalism. That's what happens, one of our side kills one of day side, so then we take revenge, and then they respond, and we get to a situation where workers are killing each other.

How is it possible to build class unity in a situation like that? And without class unity we can forget any talk of socialism whatsoever. There have been times in Northern Ireland when workers have united across the sectarian divide, postal strikes, and protestant workers striking in support of nurses are just two prominent examples, but every time other workers murder people on 'the other side, it just creates more barriers to this happening.


There never was another incident like Kingsmill on the Republican side atleast. Mistakes where made but every group makes them.

There were lots of sectarian attacks from both sides during the war. What about Enniskillen for example? Of course you can say, it was a mistake, and that it wasn't meant to target civilians, but that is the nature of these sort of wars. Mistakes are made, and whatever excuses their are, the other side sees it as a sectarian massacre, and it leads to an increase in sectarian tension, and creates further barriers to class unity.

You seem to be getting very confused about the nature of events though:


As for the mistakes the PIRA made (who don't even exist anymore) it was regrettable but they were not sectarian in nature.


Yes there where members of the PIRA who committed horrible sectarian acts (mostly during the 70's) but there where also many people in the organization who where good Socialists and wanted to work towards a Socialist united Ireland.

Can you make up your mind? I also believe that there were many people who subjectivly considered themselves to be socialist on the Republican side, whereas the loyalist side was certainly contained many more outright sectarian bigots. It doesn't matter though. You end up in a cycle of sectarian tension.

It is the same in the Middle East. The Turkish states barbaric actions in the South East make Kurds hate Turks. Everytime that the PKK kills a young solider, and remember that soldiers here are conscripts, and the ones who get killed mostly often come from the working class and the peasantry because the children of the rich don't get sent to the war, it increase the hate of Turks for "baby killers" and "terrorists". What do you think will happen when the PKK start expelling Arabs in Syria? What you end up with is just the same as in Ireland, a cycle of ethnic hatred.

This is not to draw any kind of moral equivalence, or say that the violence is in any way proportional. It isn't. The point isn't to moralise though, but to try to find a way out of the situation. Things like the TEKEL strike in 2010 and the 'workers spring' that followed it built real class unity. This is where communist an intervene.


The Republic of China didn't turn into a Communist wonderland either but i'm not gonna ***** forever about that.

This is because armed groups can not build socialism. Socialism can only be created by the working class as a whole.

Devrim

[Devrim]

I am not Pro-Imperialist but if the Americans could keep their airstrikes limited to what they have already done in this conflict then i don't see any harm in it.

Should we ask them too, nicely?


As long as the bombs fall in the right places who cares?

They don't. 'Smart bombs' launched in the Gulf war killed people in Turkey. A US 'smart bomb' in the Serbian conflict hit a block of flat in Sofia, Bulgaria.


The harmony won't last as the PKK and the US certainly see eye to eye on nothing else besides the fact that ISIS needs to be stopped.

The PKK wants to deal with the US. In the past they have held meetings with the state department in Washington. If they think there is any chance of this they will make any accommodations the US wants. Part of the logic behind this new 'libertarian course' is in convincing the West that they are not a terrorist separatist group out to dismember Turkey, a Western ally, which is obviously very against the idea of a Kurdish state on its territory.

Devrim

[RedSonRising]

Another article on autonomous Kurdish organization in Syria:

Rojava revolution: building autonomy in the Middle East

http://roarmag.org/2014/07/rojava-autonomy-syrian-kurds/

With the rise of jihadist groups in the Middle East, I find myself troubled with the question of how the politics of “insurgency” in this region has shifted so dramatically from a secular leftist tendency that used to challenge political Islam and Islamic rules in the social life to an extremist Islamist tendency that finds its ideal society in the time of Prophet Mohammad centuries ago. It is not that left is not present or without alternative, but one cannot ignore how marginalized they have become.

Not long before, there were many radical and leftist movements throughout the region. From Kabul to Palestine, radical student groups, feminist organizations, national liberation and anti-colonial struggles, labor and peasant movements, and leftist intellectuals were those in the front-line of struggle against authoritarian regimes, regressive religious beliefs, and imperialist powers’ domination in the region. Where are they now? What happened that made jihadist groups the ones who change the geopolitics of the region? How have the politics of the younger generations reversed from criticizing Islam into promoting the most extreme reading of it?

Those are some questions for all of us from the region who wish another future for it. Yet, answering these questions has deep roots in the history of colonialism and imperialism in the region as well. Without doubt, those in the West who excitingly follow the mainstream media’s coverage of the Islamic State’s (generally known by its former acronym ISIS) brutal advance toward major cities in Iraq and Syria do not bother to look at the role of their governments in the current chaos. Not to mention how the mainstream media portrays the people of the region as fanatics who are divided into sectarian religious and ethnic groups that cannot co-exist together and have no respect to humane values.

A century of oppression and domination

Taking a glance at the contemporary history of the Middle East, one can look for the main cause behind the rise of these groups hidden in the politics of colonial powers in the region from the beginning of the 20th century until today. The upcoming centenary of the 1916 Sykes-Picot secret agreement that divided the Ottoman Empire into artificial nation states marks a century of colonial domination followed by corrupt governments in the hands of oil lords and controlled and supported by imperial powers.

This system of control through authoritarian regimes intensified during the Cold War in order to prevent the former Soviet Union’s influence in the region. Consequently, an ongoing crusade against the left started by those regimes in power. The massive wave of oppression, arrest and slaughter of leftist activists and intellectuals throughout the region — especially during the 1970s and 1980s — has had irreversible effects on the social dynamics and movements in the region.

Leftist organizations were shut down, and tens of thousand of members of leftist parties, trade unions, and student movements were killed during the 1980s in the prisons of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and other countries in the region. Many more were sentenced to long-term imprisonment, and many of those who stayed alive and outside of prison had to leave their own homeland and go in exile to seek safety for themselves and their families. It is during this time that jihadist groups started to rise because of the major support they received from Western powers in the role of proxy organizations to erase all traces of the political left in the region.

The Mujahedeen in Afghanistan are only one of many example of this practice. These groups provided extra assistance in silencing the left, after which they started to grow like cancer cells in every corner of the region. Moreover, in the last decade, these groups — especially after the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq — have gained a legitimate presence and status among the people as those who fight “foreign invaders” and “infidels”.

Despite their apparent resistance against the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, from the perspective of Western powers they are still the best choice in controlling the region with minimal costs. Simultaneously, it has turned the region into the killing fields where Islamist extremists can take their fight without making trouble in the Western countries. Many reports have mentioned the foreign Islamist fighters among the ranks of ISIS.

Neoliberal Islam

Extremist Islamist groups are only one component of the politics of promoting Islam as the natural enemy of the left. Since the wave of imperialist wars in the region after 9/11, a new agenda emerged aiming to promote “moderate” political Islam in accordance with the neoliberal world economy. The fundamental pillar of this agenda is the AKP government in Turkey. The AKP (Justice and Development Party) has been perceived as the ideal version of a moderate Islamic state with neoliberal economic policies that could both reconcile the people’s rage against the West while responding to their own religious concerns, and work as agents of global capital in the region.

The Turkish government, after being greeted as the model for the future of the Middle East, gained more power and confidence in their claims for a leading role in the Sunni Islamic global community. However, Turkey’s leading role only brought more devastation and sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis. The reckless support of the AKP government, along with the governments of the Gulf countries, for the jihadist groups fighting against the Assad regime has plunged Syria into unprecedented chaos.

Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, the Turkish government has played a key role in worsening the situation by turning Turkey, and especially the country’s southern provinces bordering Syria, into a transit location for extreme Islamists from all around the world on their way to Syria. Besides providing a safe haven for (aspiring) jihadists, there have been allegations that Turkey has also provided jihadist groups logistical and military support.

ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front are the two main jihadist groups that have benefited from this support. Looking at the current situation, the only way the “moderate” Islam agenda has been successful is in continuing the oppression and marginalization of the secular and leftist opposition. The harsh crackdown on the Gezi resistance last summer, which somehow represented the frustration of the people in Turkey with their government’s neoliberal agenda, was a grave example of this.

There is little doubt that jihadist groups pose an immediate threat to the region. It is not only that they destroy every trace of civilization; even more horrifying is their role in trivializing the value of life, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake wherever they go. The question of “what is to be done” to stop this onslaught is no longer about wishing for a better future — it demands an immediate response.

However, viewed in a broader context, it is obvious that these groups are one part of a larger problem. Therefore, any alternative to the current situation has to be transformative for everyone suffering at the hands of not only jihadist groups, but also at the violence and suppression of authoritarian regimes and imperialist rule in the region.

The alternative? Kurdish autonomous rule in Syria

Kurds are known to be the largest nation in the world without its own state. The history of the Kurds is often associated with countless uprisings in the face of systematic oppression by the nation states controlling their lands. Since the creation of nation states after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire by British and French colonialists, Kurdistan has been divided between four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds were the first victims of colonialist agreements.

The secret Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 ignored the right of the Kurds to rule their own land. This led to many decades of massacres, oppression, and assimilation. The Kurds’ language was banned, their rights were denied, and they were displaced from their ancestral lands. The artificial borders that were agreed upon in both the Sykes-Picot agreement and in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that fixed the borders of Turkey continue to haunt the Kurdish people living around them.

People in need of food and medicine in the Kurdish region of Syria cannot get any help from their families living on the other side of the border. While most of the guns and military equipment have been delivered to Syrian rebels through Turkey, the border between the two Kurdish regions has been closed, and many new military posts have been built.

As mentioned before, Syria is currently witnessing the most terrifying manifestation of these historic policies of divide-and-rule in the Middle East. The sociopolitical situation in Syria leaves no space for imagination. Therefore, it is critical for the left to seek an alternative and to strengthen its front. With the conviction in mind that in the most unexpected places the most realistic alternatives can emerge, the Rojava region in Syria (with Rojava meaning “West”, as in West of Kurdistan — a term used for the Kurdish region of Syria) can propose an alternative for the future of the region.

The Kurds in Syria have shown their ability and willingness to be an alternative voice in the middle of the turmoil in the region. Since the Syrian conflict intensified and turned into a civil war, the Kurdish movement led by the PYD (Democratic Union Party) in Syria has taken control of the majority of the Kurdish region in this country. In November 2013, the PYD announced that they had finished all the preparations for declaring autonomy, and a constitution called the Charter of Social Contract was proposed.

The people’s revolution in Rojava resulted in the construction of an autonomous region divided into three autonomous cantons each with democratic autonomous self-administration. The Cizre (Al-Jazeera) Canton declared autonomy on January 21, followed by Kobane Canton on January 27, and Efrin Canton on January 29.

The PYD insists on forming an alternative for all and not pursuing any ethnic group’s demands and interests. At the same time, they refused to become part of the civil war in Syria and declared that they would only use their military forces to defend themselves against any assaults coming from either the Assad’s regime or NATO-supported opposition groups, including jihadist groups such as ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front. Yet, these three cantons have been under immense attacks by ISIS.

Right now, ISIS has focused its attacks on the Kobane canton where the Kurdish self-defense forces YPG (the Peoples’ Defense Units) are fighting off the determined radicals of ISIS in a historic act of resistance.

Intercontinental similarities

Is Rojava becoming the Chiapas of the Middle East? This is the question I ask whenever I hear more stories coming from this tiny region that concern the only flicker of hope amidst this chaos. Even though academically speaking the Kurds can hardly be considered an “indigenous group”, their status and political situation in the Middle East can be compared to that of some indigenous populations in Latin America.

Despite some political differences between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas and the Kurdish movement led by the PYD in Syria, there are many similarities between these two in terms of their position in both regional and international affairs. The pursuit of creating an autonomous government, the rise of popular assemblies, the emphasis on gender equality and empowering women on every level of social and political life, the anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian ideology, the stress on ecological preservation and respect for all living creatures, self-defense, and many other aspects indicate how the Rojava revolution resembles the resistance of the Zapatistas in Southern Mexico.

The Charter of Social Contract, as the foundation of Rojava’s autonomous cantons, is a historic breakthrough in the region in terms of the democratic principles that guide social and political life. The Charter, which is currently being implemented in all three of the autonomous cantons, appears as a democratic agreement — inclusive of all parties involved in governing Rojava. Without exaggeration, it is the most democratic constitution that people of this region ever had.

The first paragraph of the Charter’s preface says,

“[w]e the peoples of the democratic self-administration areas; Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians (Assyrian Chaldeans, Arameans), Turkmen, Armenians, and Chechens, by our free will, announce this to ensure justice, freedom, democracy, and the rights of women and children in accordance with the principles of ecological balance, freedom of religions and beliefs, and equality without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, creed, doctrine or gender, to achieve the political and moral fabric of a democratic society in order to function with mutual understanding and coexistence within diversity and respect for the principle of self-determination and self-defense of the peoples.”

It continues,

“The autonomous areas of the democratic self-administration do not recognize the concept of nation state and the state based on the grounds of military power, religion, and centralism” (translation by author).

The Democratic Society Movement, or TEV-Dem as it is known in Kurdish, is responsible for implementing these principals in everyday life. Without doubt, they have yet to achieve an ideal society, and the movement admits that it is still in the process of construction. Keeping in mind that the Rojava region has been under ruthless isolation by all sides, most importantly the Syrian and Turkish governments, Syrian rebel groups, and the pro-West Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. The Western media, including independent and alternative outlets, have largely ignored their resistance or have otherwise failed to pay attention to them. The Kurds have not received the solidarity and support they deserve.

Ertugrul Korkcu, a Turkish MP from the leftist pro-Kurdish HDP party (Peoples’ Democracy Party), recently said that the Kurds are playing the role of the Russians in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Politically speaking, the Kurds are not a homogenous group, but there is some truth in Kurkcu’s statement as the situation in the Middle East evokes the image of Europe in the early 20th century. More precisely, jihadist groups have become the tools in the hands of colonial powers and authoritarian regimes to establish and strengthen their hegemony in the region.

Rojava can be an alternative as it exhibits a potential form of autonomous self-government that fundamentally challenges the oppressive rituals within religious communities and proposes a working pattern of co-existence with all the cultures and beliefs in the area, without violating the rights of any. Rojava’s experience in autonomy can be a model for a democratic confederalism in the Middle East, where every community has the right of self-determination and self-government. Moreover, it is a very progressive experiment, as women are the very the engine of change. Hevi Ibrahim, the head of the autonomous Afrin canton, is just one shining example.

Rojava’s alternative is neither imaginative nor utopian. This alternative has already proved its viability through practical solutions and the everyday realization of the ideas presented in The Charter of Social Contract. In fact, Rajova asserts itself as the most realistic democratic alternative in the most unexpected of places. Expressing solidarity with the Rojava revolution is an urgent task for everyone who cares about the future of the Middle East.