Rojava

by Alex de Jong
New Politics
Winter 2016 Vol:XV-4 Whole #: 60

The siege of Kobani by Islamic State (ISIS) brought worldwide attention to the Syrian Kurdish PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, Democratic Union Party), the leading force in the Kurdish-majority areas in northern Syria. The PYD calls this region Rojava—literally meaning “land of the sunset” but also translated as “West Kurdistan.”

The discourse of the PYD, revolving around terms like democracy and equality and stressing women’s rights, exercises a strong attraction on the worldwide left. Likewise, the struggle of the YPG/YPJ fighters (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, People’s Protection Units/Yekîneyên Parastina Jinê, Women’s Protection Units), organized by the PYD against ISIS, receives widespread sympathy.

Previously I have written so many articles in Kurdish and English about Rojava but this one is different. In this article I am not talking about the positive sides of Rojava only, in fact, I cover the negative sides as well. And also the article is not just about Rojava, it is also about Bakur ( the Turkey part of Kurdistan) .

I know it is difficult for many people to accept criticisim about both movements Rojava and Bakur for different reason. However, I am trying to assess both fairly and I am happy and open to receive different opinions and criticism.

By Zaher Baher
January 30, 2016

by Steve Rushton
Occupy.com

Rojava’s social revolution deserves more global attention and solidarity. The Kurdish autonomous region in Northern Syria is a working experiment creating a society based on direct democracy, with women’s empowerment central in that model. It is being organized beyond and outside a state-centric capitalist system; mutual aid and cooperation are challenging structural exploitation and inequality. Remarkably, all of this emerges out of the Syrian crisis where the predominantly Kurdish Rojava experiment continues despite an existential fight against ISIS, the fascist and genocidal caliphate.

The following article was written by somebody who currently resides in Rojava for the Crimethinc Ex-Worker podcast’s review of the year 2015…

Dear friends,

A friend told us you‘re collecting impressions and reviews on the year 2015 out of a emancipatorian, revolutionary perspective, which seems quite a good idea to us. It’s always good to strengthen our collective consciousness and awareness; to understand the unity of all the revolutionary processes, the great story we‘re in – the global struggle for a new world, in which all worlds fit.

We‘re writing you from Cizre Canton, Rojava, Syria, as some friends, who came here from central europe. We wanted to learn from the Kurdish struggle and connect our different backgrounds to its great treasure of experiences, its philosophy and its methods of organizing.

Akbar Shahid Ahmed
12/18/2015
Foreign Affairs Reporter, The Huffington Post

ISTANBUL -- Last fall, Islamic State fighters launched a coordinated, large-scale assault on the Kurdish town of Kobani on Syria's northern border with Turkey. Fresh from victories that granted them an aura of invincibility, the extremists were about to remove the single irritant on a wide swath of the border they otherwise controlled.

The world watched in resignation. The lone superpower said it would not help. U.S. officials grimly predicted the city would fall. Yet the small band of Kurds held on for days, then weeks. The U.S.-led coalition against the self-described Islamic State began to help, first with a smattering of airstrikes then with daily assaults. And by January, in a stunning turnabout that has been called a contemporary Stalingrad, the Kurds won.

By Ramor Ryan
TeleSur
December 2, 2015

Paul White’s new book, “The PKK – Coming Down from the Mountains,” is a useful critical analysis exploring the group’s history and ideological evolution.

Kurdish liberation forces have come to global attention as the front-line defenders in the heroic battle against the marauding Islamic State group threat on the ground in northern Syria.

Hand in hand with beating back the advance of the Islamic State group, the Syrian Kurds – organized in People’s Protection Units (YPG) – are also implementing a democratic revolution within the liberated territory of Rojava, part of the historic homeland of the Kurdish people.

To better contextualize these rebels–currently supported by US-led coalition air strikes, and also a source of inspiration for leftists the world over – one must look beyond Syria into the greater Kurdish region, and at the YPG’s much-larger affiliate, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

by Janet Biehl
1st December 2015
Kurdish Question

Since 2014 solidarity activists, independent leftists, and others have been crossing the Tigris to study the developments in Rojava, the independent multiethnic enclave in northern Syria. Here the Kurdish people, whose aspirations have been stomped on for generations throughout the Middle East, are building a society structured institutionally around an assembly / council democracy and a commitment to gender equality. Most remarkable of all, they do so under conditions of brutal war (defending their society against the jihadists Al Nusra to Daesh) and economic and political embargo (from Turkey to the north).

By Michelle Goldberg
Slate

There is an astonishing story in Sunday’s New York Times about Rojava, a Kurdish region in Northern Syria that’s ruled by militant feminist anarchists. Rojava’s constitution enshrines gender equality and religious freedom. An official tells journalist Wes Enzina that every position at every level of government includes a female equivalent of equal power. Recruits to Rojava’s 6,000-strong police force receive their weapons only after two weeks of feminist instruction. Reading Enzina’s piece, it’s hard to understand how this radical experiment in democracy in one of the bloodiest corners of the world isn’t better known internationally, particularly on the left.

At the start of piece, Enzina himself isn’t quite sure Rojava is real. It sounds too fantastical:

by Libertarian International Brigades

The following article is an interview with an environmentalist, vegetarian anarchist from Turkey who is a member of Sosyal isyan (Social Insurrection) fighting as part of Birleşik Özgürlük Güçleri (United Freedom Forces) alongside the YPG / YPJ in Kobane, Rojava. The interview was conducted by H. Burak Öz and originally appeared on the jiyan.org website. We would like to thank the comrade Ece for translating the interview into English for us.

Environmentalist, vegetarian, anarchist combatants who fight in Kobane

Perhaps the last place you would expect to find a thriving experiment in direct democracy is Syria. But something radical is happening, little noticed, in the eastern reaches of that fractured country, in the isolated region known to the Kurds as Rojava.

Just as remarkable, perhaps, is that the philosophy that inspired self-government here was originated by a little-known American political thinker and one-time “eco-activist” whose ideas found their way to Syria through a Kurdish leader imprisoned upon an island in the Sea of Marmara. It’s a story that bizarrely connects a war-torn Middle East with New York’s Lower East Side.

I visited Rojava last month while filming a documentary about the failings of the western model of democracy. The region covers a substantial “corner” of north-east Syria and has a population of approximately 3m, yet it is not easy to get to. The only passage is by small boat or a creaky pontoon bridge across the Tigris from Iraq.