Democratic Confederalism and Insurgency in Kurdistan

The PKK’s Struggle in Bakur and Rojava, 2004–2016

Table of Contents
Summary
[1-2 pages]
Key Lessons from the Kurdish Experience

DO DONT
Live in the same conditions and Remain cliquishly separated from the
communities as the people you’re trying to people at large
organize

Focus on cadre education and internal Ignore the need to continuously develop
cohesion individual and collective capacities

Avoid dangerous confrontations with the Rush into battles for which you are
state in early, vulnerable stages unprepared

Disperse leadership responsibilities and Place supreme authority in the hands of a

allow vibrant internal debate of movement single individual, no matter how charismatic
strategy

Make your rhetoric accessible to ordinary Obscure your most important ideas with
people jargon-filled rhetoric and slogans

[continue]
Introduction: Search for a Model

On February 15th, 1999, Abdullah Öcalan was captured in Kenya and handed over to the
Turkish intelligence services. The CIA and Mossad assisted Turkey’s MIT (Millî İstihbarat
Teşkilatı – National Intelligence Organization) in what PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê –
Kurdistan Workers’ Party) supporters refer to as an “international conspiracy” to destroy the
organization.1 Turkish and American officials believed that decapitating the PKK – by
capturing or eliminating Öcalan – would lead to its demise. This presumption was not
unreasonable. The PKK operated as an extraordinarily hierarchical party under the
unquestionable authority of Öcalan himself. And after six years of bleeding manpower and
territory in the guerrilla struggle, the PKK looked poised to collapse.

But it didn’t. Instead, the PKK embarked on a remarkable strategic transformation, shifting
the strategic focus of the movement from rural guerrilla warfare to an urban insurgent social
movement. From the early 2000s onward, a new complex of organizations would attempt to
create direct democratic councils in Turkish Kurdistan and give new life to the struggle
through multiple avenues of civil resistance. The strategy of “democratic confederalism”
contained a number of contradictions, and its implementation has been uneven throughout
Kurdistan. Nevertheless, it has managed to mobilize far greater numbers of Kurds in active
struggle, particularly in urban areas, than the guerrilla strategy of the 1980s and 1990s. At the
time of this writing, there appears to be no chance of the PKK-affiliated social movement
being defeated, despite the massive violence and repression of the Turkish state.

This strategy developed at a peculiar moment in history. The post-2008 surge in mass unrest,
culminating in uprisings and even a couple revolutions, shattered arrogant predictions of the
perpetual reign of liberal capitalist hegemony. But the radical left, which should be the
primary benefactor of this popular discontent, remains bereft of a strategy for enacting
revolutionary change. Confidence in Marxism-Leninism, the preeminent revolutionary theory
of the 20th century, greatly eroded after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Chinese
state’s voluntary transition to capitalism.2 Non-hierarchical, ‘spontaneous’ uprisings – from
the Arab uprisings to the movements of the squares and Occupy – succeeded in mobilizing
millions of people, but hit an inevitable wall over questions of power and organization.
Where revolutions actually occurred, as in Tunisia and Egypt, the revolutionaries lacked the
means to actually enact structural change. As an Egyptian revolutionary candidly admitted to
me: “Power was in the streets, but none of us were prepared to take it. We simply didn’t
expect the revolution to really happen. We had no plan.”3 In most places, these movements
did not even progress to a revolutionary stage, and entered demobilization phases relatively
quickly. The ‘radical’ electoral projects that emerged from this demobilization – SYRIZA,
Podemos, etc. – have thus far proven every bit as trapped by capitalist logics as their social
democratic predecessors.

This essay argues that the PKK’s strategy from the 2000s onward may hold the key to solving
the strategic and organizational puzzle facing today’s radical left. The story of democratic
confederalism in practice is more complex than many of the movement’s allies typically let
on. But it is undeniable that democratic confederalism proved itself capable of mobilizing
masses of participants for insurgent action, meaningfully changing social relations before ‘the

1
2
This statement includes both the original Marxism-Leninism and its numerous descendants. Maoism is the
most significant of these.
3
Paraphrased conversation with an Egyptian activist. (2016)
revolution,’ and breaking the deadlock of the stalled guerrilla struggle. By borrowing and
adapting the strategies of the late PKK, radicals elsewhere may be able to break out of their
own strategic aporias.

Most of the existing assessments of democratic confederalism are based on the experience of
the project in Rojava, the autonomous SDF-controlled region of northern Syria. There, the
council system is particularly well-developed, and even critics admit that grassroots
participation in council democracy is quite extensive.4 Rojava’s inhabitants cannot rely on a
state, and the responsibility for social reproduction and governance falls on them. But Rojava
is not an accurate proxy for activists in much of the world, particularly in Europe and North
America. In these countries, state withdrawal or collapse is unlikely. Activists and
revolutionaries have to work under the constant threat of police harassment, military
intervention, and state cooptation. This is the same situation that Kurdish activists face in
Bakur (Turkish Kurdistan). There, state interference in the project continues on a daily basis.
The experience of democratic confederalism in Bakur is a far more realistic proxy for our
purposes. It will thus be the primary focus of this study.

This study is not primarily concerned with the theory or discourse of democratic
confederalism. Most of what has been written about democratic confederalism focuses
extensively on its theoretical dimensions, with relatively little emphasis on what the project
actually looked like in practice.5 The only substantive work dealing with the practice of
democratic confederalism in Bakur is TATORT Kurdistan’s Democratic Autonomy in North
Kurdistan (2014). Part of this gap, no doubt, is due to the difficulties of conducting fieldwork
in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, both of which are war zones. Reliable primary
sources are also scarce. My own intended fieldwork was foreclosed by the onset of civil war
in Bakur in 2015. I have attempted to remedy this shortcoming by conducting in-person and
remote interviews with movement activists who had direct experience implementing
democratic confederalism in Bakur. In spite of their limited number, these interviews
revealed a number of hitherto unpublished details about the challenges of putting the
confederalist strategy into practice.6

This essay is divided into four overarching parts. To begin, I provide a basic framework for
studying insurgent social movements. Next, I offer some brief background on the structural
position of the Kurds in Turkey and the early history of the PKK. In the main body, I describe
the practice of democratic confederalist strategy, focusing mainly on Turkish Kurdistan.
Finally, I conclude by critically analyzing the contradictions in actually-existing-democratic-
confederalism and offering some succinct thoughts on the prospects for emulating this
strategy elsewhere.

What is Insurgency?

An insurgency is an organized movement aimed at overturning the established social order in

a particular area. In analyzing the strategy of democratic confederalism, we will borrow the
4
Michiel Leezenberg. “The ambiguities of democratic autonomy: the Kurdish movement in Turkey and
Rojava,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. (2016) p. 12.
5
In a sense, studies of the Soviet Union based on the writings of Lenin and Stalin or studies of pre-Deng China
based on the writings of Mao have given way to studies of Rojava and Bakur based on the writings of Öcalan. It
should go without saying that this is a profoundly anti-materialist mode of analysis that contributes little to a
realistic understanding of the dynamics at work in these societies.
6
This consisted of three in-person and remote interviews with Kurdish activists. For security reasons, neither
names nor locations will be provided.
concept of an “insurgent social movement” from Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin Jr.’s
incisive study of the Black Panther Party. Bloom and Martin state that an insurgent social
movement is “the proliferation of a set of practices – including a relatively consistent set of
targets, frames, and repetoires – that are immediately disruptive to established social
practices.” Their “main theoretical argument is that when, given a particular political context,
a set of insurgent practices draws broad allied support in resistance to repression by
authorities, it provides insurgents with a sustainable source of political leverage, and
insurgency proliferates.”7

Most literature on insurgency focuses on armed guerrilla movements located in either rural or
urban settings. The writings of theorists like Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Võ Nguyên Giáp,
and Carlos Marighella focus on the strategic challenges of conducting a successful guerrilla
struggle.8 From the 1980s through 1999, the PKK’s strategy was predominantly based around
this kind of classical guerrilla campaign in the mountains of southeastern Turkey. This essay
is focused on the PKK’s transformation from a traditional armed insurgency into an insurgent
social movement, which nevertheless retained armed components. This entailed the
proliferation of a new central practice: the creation of a system of non-state-sanctioned
popular councils and assemblies, tasked with both governing social life and conducting the
political struggle in urban areas. This was nothing less than an attempt to radically undermine
the legitimacy of the Turkish state by constituting a new Kurdish political subject ‘beyond the
state.’ The focal shift to unarmed confrontation, civil activism, and an urban center allowed
the movement to cultivate a wider range of allies in the face of state repression.

Fundamentally, an insurgency is a political struggle for the loyalty of the population between
incumbents (typically: a state) and challengers (the insurgency). The insurgency/counter-
insurgency literature:

tends to focus on structural dynamics that influence whether the population of a region or
country will support an insurgent movement. It focuses less, however, on the local forms of
organization and logistical structures that heavily influence both the adoption of pro-insurgent
ideology and the ability to sustain an active insurgency. Insurgencies often rely on
sympathetic local organizations, such as village assemblies or friendly tribes, for different
forms of logistical support. Where such organizations are absent, or where they are considered
insufficiently trustworthy or dangerously independent, insurgencies must construct their own
local organizations to govern the territories they control. The form of, capacities of, and
relationships between these local organizations are of extraordinary importance in
determining the outcome of a struggle.9

Without a logistical base, there can be no sustained insurgency.

This is the most persuasive reason to use the frame of ‘insurgency’ rather than the frame of
‘revolution,’ even as we attempt to develop revolutionary theory. In many activist circles, the
word ‘revolution’ conjures up images of a sudden, unexpected change more akin to a force of
nature than a planned, human-directed process. By contrast, insurgency evokes a prolonged
struggle “in order to attain specific intermediate objectives leading finally to the overthrow of

7
Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther
Party. (2014) Introduction, Endnote 36.
8
9
Ben Reynolds. “’A Duality of Power’: Local Organization in the Algerian War of Independence,” Unpublished
Manuscript. (2017) p. 1.
the existing order.”10 Would-be revolutionaries cannot simply ‘sharpen their claws’ and wait
for the next outburst of popular frustration. They must take an active role in building mass
support for revolutionary change and creating the organizational and logistical structures that
will allow oppressed people to enact that change.

A Different Model of Insurgency

Most insurgencies have traditionally operated as and continue to operate as states-in-waiting.

Insurgencies try to win the loyalty of their constituents, but they also organize them to
maximize the resources that can be extracted from them for the purpose of forwarding the
struggle. In its struggle to liberate Algeria from French colonial dominion, the FLN created a
clandestine network (the Organisation Politico-Administrative, or OPA) to govern the
Algerian population and secure manpower and supplies for its fighters. But these bodies were
hierarchical cells designed more to control the peasantry than empower them over the long
term. After the war, promises of a peasant-centered socialism were abandoned as the military
took charge of the Algerian state and pursued a centralist political agenda.11

This is a story that we have seen repeated time and time again in liberation struggles. The
state-in-waiting postpones concerns about social organization until after its victory over the
oppressor. The clandestine political system it develops is focused on resource extraction,
rather than the democratic participation of the people ‘being liberated.’ Enthusiasm for the
struggle often obscures these deficits until it is too late to remedy them.

Democratic confederalism proposes a new model of insurgency centered on the construction

of a network of directly-democratic assemblies and councils tasked with directing the
liberation struggle and governing social life. At the same time, the movement makes
simultaneous use of a wide range of tactics ranging from legal and civic action to armed
struggle. This strategy is intended, ideally, to shift the primary locus of insurgent action from
party activists and guerrillas to the broad mass of the population.12 This new model of
insurgency has three critical advantages over its forebears:

1. It mobilizes more participants in active forms of insurgent political action, increasing

the strength of the insurgency
2. It lays the groundwork for an alternative form of political and social organization that
is remarkably different from hierarchical state power.
3. It cultivates a wider social base and slate of movement allies than insurrectionary or
guerrilla activity alone, increasing the costs of state repression and the movement’s
resiliency in the face of that repression.

This is not to say that the PKK has executed its project of radical direct democracy perfectly
or even consistently. In fact, the PKK’s organizational structure and authoritarian tendencies
have often presented significant barriers to the spread of the democratic confederalist project.
10
David Galula. Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. (1964) p. 2. Galula is one of the more
insightful counterinsurgency theorists, and his work is certainly worth a read for would-be insurgents hoping to
understand the opponent’s theoretical framework. In particular, see his firsthand account of the war in Algeria:
David Galula. Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958. (1963)
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2006/RAND_MG478-1.pdf.
11
Peter Knauss. “Algeria’s ‘Agrarian Revolution:’ Peasant Control or Control of Peasants?,” African Studies
Review, Vol. 20, No. 3. (1977) pp. 65-78.
12
It is difficult not to notice the affinities of democratic confederalism with Maoism, which is probably a
significant part of the ideology’s ‘silent lineage.’
If anything, the PKK’s successes in implementing the confederalist strategy are all the more
remarkable given its troubled history with intra-movement democracy. The challenges that
the organization faced, and continues to face, putting its rhetoric into practice will be
discussed below.

Background: The Kurds in Turkey

Figure 1: Map of Turkish southeastern provinces, including areas with Kurdish majority.

Kurds make up around a quarter of the Turkish population, numbering around 15–20 million
out of a total population of almost 80 million.13 The Turkish Republic was born in 192- from
the ashes of the defeated Ottoman Empire. Despite initial motions toward a religiously-
inspired accommodation between Turks and Kurds, Turkish leaders rapidly embarked on a
program of forced laicization and “Turkification,” which included the denial of Kurdish
identity. Early revolts lead by landowning Kurds and religious leaders, most prominently the
Sheik Said Uprising of 1925, were easily crushed by the Turkish army. Fragmentation based
on tribal identity, dialect, and region made it impossible for the landowning class in Turkey
to lead an effective challenge against a modern state.14

Contrary to popular romantic narratives, there was virtually no effective Kurdish resistance in
Turkey from the late 1930s to the late 1960s. While some Kurds lived in urban centers like
Ankara and Istanbul, the vast majority lived in the rural southeast under an essentially feudal
agricultural system. The southeast was, and is, known for its underdevelopment relative to the
rest of Turkey. Large landowning tribal leaders presided over a population of impoverished
peasants and agricultural laborers. The arrival of the tractor in the 1950s further concentrated
land and power in the hands of the landlords. The declining demand for agricultural labor
pushed Kurds to migrate to the cities, where they formed part of the urban proletariat and
underclasses. Children of the peasantry and urban proletariat who managed to secure a
university education would form the vanguard of the Kurdish nationalist revival of the 1960s
and 1970s.15
13
The tricky question of Kurdish self-identification is outside the scope of this paper. For discussion, see:
Martin van Bruinessen. “The Ethnic Identities of Kurds in Turkey,” in Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey,
ed. Peter Andrews and Rudiger Benninghaus. (1989) pp. 613-621.
14
David McDowall. A Modern History of the Kurds. (1996) pp. 184-211.
15
Ibid. pp. 398-401, 408-409.
By the 60s and 70s, pressures to assimilate (by speaking Turkish) and a continued ban on the
Kurdish language seemed to be doing their intended word. Kurdish dialects were still orally
transmitted, but even a nationalist as eminent as Abdullah Öcalan spoke better Turkish than
Kurdish and published his works in Turkish. Despite a growing national consciousness
among some young people and left-leaning students, the Turkish state seemed to have
triumphed in its struggle against Kurdish identity. Against this backdrop of total defeat, rising
radicalization and left-wing organization across Turkey culminated in a street war between
right-wing and left-wing militants in the 1970s. It was from this radical milieu that the PKK
would emerge.16

The PKK in Turkey and Syria: 1973 to 1999

The group that would become the PKK was founded by a group of six students in Ankara –
Abdullah Öcalan, Haki Karer, Baki Karer, Fehmi Yilmaz, Ali Haydar Kaytan, and Ibrahim
Aydin – in 1973. They called themselves the “Kurdistan Revolutionaries,” and took their
time establishing a small network of fellow sympathizers based upon long, intensive
discussions. The group was formed largely of students who had experience in or sympathies
with the contemporary Turkish radical left.17 The Kurdistan Revolutionaries distinguished
themselves from their leftist counterparts in two main ways: First, they argued that Kurdish
liberation could not be subordinated to the struggle for socialism in Turkey as a whole.
Second, they learned that a prolonged period of preparation would be necessary before
entering into armed confrontation with the state, otherwise the movement would immediately
be crushed.18

The group expanded slowly, mainly by word of mouth. Finally, they made the crucial
decision to move their base of operations from the university milieu of Ankara to largely-
rural Kurdistan, where the vast majority of Turkey’s Kurdish population actually lived. 19 In
1977, the killing of Haki Karer in a Gaziantep coffeehouse by a leader of another small
Kurdish leftist organization, Stêrka Sor, pushed the group to become more professional and
more aggressive toward competitor organizations. Haki Karer’s alleged killer was eventually
killed and the Kurdistan Revolutionaries made it “clear that any attack on its members would
meet serious revenge and that they would not hesitate to wipe out an entire branch or
organization as a form of retaliation…”20 Over the next year the group occasionally clashed
with leftist competitors.21

In November 1978, 22 delegates met in Fis, a village outside of Diyarbakir, to formally found
the PKK. Abdullah Öcalan was named General Secretary of the Party, and a Central
Committee was formed. The party was organized along then-typical Leninist lines.22 Its
analysis of the Kurdish problem, and belief in the necessity of armed struggle, were not
16
Seevan Saeed. Kurdish Politics in Turkey: From the PKK to the KCK. (2016) p. 52; McDowall. A Modern
History of the Kurds. pp. 411-413.
17
To give an idea of the barriers facing such a movement, many of these discussions began with attempts to
convince potential members that they actually were Kurds in the first place.
18
Ahmed Akkaya and Joost Jongerden. “The Kurdistan Worker’s Party and a New Left in Turkey: Analysis of
the Revolutionary Movement in Turkey through the PKK’s Memorial Text on Haki Karer,” European Journal
of Turkish Studies. (2012) http://ejts.revues.org/4613.
19
Ali Kemal Özcan. Turkey’s Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan. (2006) pp. 94-
97.
20
Akkaya and Jongerden. “The Kurdistan Worker’s Party and a New Left in Turkey,” European Journal of
Turkish Studies. (2012)
21
Özcan. Turkey’s Kurds. pp. 96-97.
radically different from other small Kurdish leftist organizations. What set the PKK apart was
its willingness to back up its rhetoric with deeds, its internal discipline and cadre education,
and its constant focus on winning the loyalty of the local Kurdish peasantry. The PKK spent
much of its early efforts recruiting through professional associations like a leftist teachers’
union (TÖB-DER), engaging in labor politics, and participating in local elections. 23

The PKK identified the aghas – landowning leaders of Kurdish tribes – as one of the primary
obstacles to Kurdish liberation. At this point in time, a tiny [-]% of landowners owned [-]%
of the land in the Kurdish southeast. These aghas were quasi-feudal intermediaries in the
Turkish political system, wielding their influence over their tenants to deliver masses of votes
in parliamentary elections. Many of the landlords sided with the ultranationalist MHP, whose
paramilitary wing – the neo-fascist Grey Wolves – fought leftist groups and committed
numerous atrocities during the street wars of Turkey’s 1970s.24 The aghas treated the local
peasants like serfs, abusing and humiliating them as they saw fit.

The PKK’s first targets were not state officials but the agha class. In May 1978, a member of
the landowning Suleymanlar tribe in Hilvan killed Halil Cavgun, a member of the soon-to-be
PKK. Peasants in the town were initially reluctant to support the PKK in a feud with the tribe,
but the party eventually won their support by demonstrating its tenacity and willingness to
fight for their interests. In July 1979, the PKK formally announced its existence by
attempting to assassinate Mehmat Celal Bucak, head of the powerful Bucak tribe. The PKK
lost many members in the ensuing clashes, but it also managed to gain a base of support and
recruits in the peasantry. Still, police repression and pressure from other Kurdish groups
hemmed the PKK in. Under mounting pressure and sensing the coming military coup, Öcalan
and other PKK cadre fled the country for Syria.25

The Turkish military coup of 1980 imprisoned tens of thousands of mostly left-wing activists,
Kurds, and ordinary citizens. The military’s reign of mass detention and terror shattered the
organized left throughout Turkey.26 But the PKK survived in Syria, quietly operating with the
tacit acceptance of the Baathist government. (This arrangement allowed the Syrian
government to use the PKK to place pressure on Turkey in a number of disputes. It also drew
the attention of Syrian Kurds to the plight of Kurds in Turkey rather than the abuses suffered
under the Baathist state.) The PKK established links with a range of mainly-Palestinian
groups in Lebanon, including Fatah, the DFLP, the PFLP, and the Lebanese Communist
Party, using their training camps to gain valuable experience in guerrilla warfare. PKK cadre
even fought alongside these organizations during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The

22
Ibid. pp. 94-97. The PKK’s first, and last, internal election before the democratic confederalism period was
held in 1976, when Öcalan was named the organization’s leader.
23
Francis Patrick O’Connor and Leonidas Oikonomakis. “Preconflict Mobilization Strategies and Urban-Rural
Transition: The Cases of the PKK and the FLN/EZLN,” Mobilization: An International Quarterly, Vol. 20, No.
3. (2015) p. 385.
24
After World War II, NATO organized a “trans-continental” network of clandestine paramilitary forces to
oppose local communist parties and to act as guerrilla forces in the case of hypothetical Soviet invasions. In
Turkey, these forces were known as the “counter-guerrilla.” Turkey’s counter-guerrilla “developed an organic
relationship with the MHP and its Grey Wolves youth wing… The existence of this counter-guerrilla force was
only officially acknowledged after its counterpart became public knowledge in Italy in 1990.” From: Francis
Patrick O’Connor. “Armed Social Movements and Insurgency: The PKK and its Communities of Support,”
Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute. (2014) “Chapter V:
Insurgency and the City”
25
Aliza Marcus. Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence. (2007) pp. 44-49.
26
O’Connor and Oikonomakis. “Preconflict Mobilization Strategies and Urban-Rural Transition,” Mobilization:
An International Quarterly. pp. 388-389.
party also reached out to its former leftist competitors in exile, apologizing for its previous
aggression toward fellow revolutionaries and offering to cooperate in a united front.27

In 1984, the PKK decided it was time to start its guerrilla war. Öcalan gave the order and less
than a hundred militants crossed the border from Syria into Turkey, splitting into three armed
units. In August, these militants launched simultaneous, well-organized attacks on an army
barracks and a gendarmerie barracks in the mountain towns of Semdinli and Eruh. They
escaped without casualties into the surrounding mountains. These and other successful
attacks that year did not kill many soldiers, but they emboldened sympathizers and spread
awareness of the organization’s existence.28 Still, almost “no one [gave] the guerrilla more
than three months to survive.”29

The ensuing guerrilla war of the late 1980s and early 1990s claimed thousands of lives and
bogged down the armed forces of NATO’s second largest military power. By the end of the
period, the Turkish military and gendarmerie had retreated from many of their outposts in
rural Kurdistan and concentrated their forces in larger cities and military bases. Turkish
forces proved unable to both defeat the guerrillas amidst the mountainous landscape and cut
them off from their logistical support in the villages. In 1985, the Turkish state introduced the
“village guard” system – an attempt to enlist local Kurds as a paramilitary anti-PKK force.
Participants were paid relatively handsome salaries, relative to the going local rate, to
“defend” their villages against the PKK. Those who refused to join were subjected to
collective punishment by the Turkish army. In 1987, the PKK responded by brutally
attacking villages that joined the system, demonstrating the total helplessness of the poorly
trained forces in the face of a disciplined guerrilla army.30

The PKK committed many errors and atrocities during this period. It took an intransigent line
toward perceived collaboration with the Turkish authorities, crushed internal dissent
ruthlessly, and even introduced conscription in some rural areas.31 But despite these errors,
which alienated some Kurds, the PKK never lost a significant base of support. Many local
Kurds perceived the attacks on village guard families as targeted and somewhat justified, and
some stories of guerrillas kidnapping young Kurds may have been mutually-agreeable
fictions designed to protect their families from state reprisals. And no matter what the
guerrillas did, they could never match the sheer brutality of the Turkish military government
imposed on the region. Turkish forces were infamous for perpetrating extrajudicial killings,
vanishing perceived PKK sympathizers, mass incarceration, torture, and rape. These crimes,
the enduring poverty of Turkish Kurdistan, and the continued persecution of Kurdish identity
furnished no shortage of recruits for the guerrillas. According to the U.S. State Department,
the PKK had 15,000 guerrillas and a supporting part-time militia of up to 75,000 by 1995.32

27
Ibid. pp. 52-65.
28
Ibid. pp. 79-82.
29
Hamit Bozarslan. “Between İntegration, Autonomization and Radicalization: Hamit Bozarslan on the Kurdish
Movement and the Turkish Left (Interview by Casier, M. & Grojean, O.),” European Journal of Turkish
Studies, No. 14. (2012) https://ejts.revues.org/4663.
30
I use the word “brutally” here in its fullest sense – the PKK guerrillas killed entire families who were deemed
to be collaborators, not merely the men who actively took part in the system. The village guards, for their part,
were implicated in just as many abuses and atrocities. David Romano. The Kurdish Nationalist Movement:
Opportunity, Mobilization, and Identity. (2006) pp. 86-87.
31
Özcan. Turkey’s Kurds. pp. 198-199.
32
Ibid. pp. 77-78, 86-88; Joost Jongerden. The Settlement Issue in Turkey and the Kurds: An Analysis of Spatial
Policies, Modernity, and War. (2007) p. 51, Footnote 7.
 Figure 2: Map of Turkish southeastern border region.

Then the serhildans came. In 1990, a strongly nationalist family in Nusaybin claimed the
body of their son, who was killed while fighting with the guerrillas. Security forces attacked
the funeral procession in the city, sparking a wave of mass protests and clashes in border
towns like Nusaybin, Cizre, Kızıltepe, İdil, and Silopi. For years afterward, Kurdish new year
(Newroz) celebrations in urban Kurdistan inevitably featured street clashes between
protestors and state forces reminiscent of the Palestinian intifadas. This marked a significant
shift in the nature of the conflict. Almost all of the PKK’s guerrilla activity took place in rural
areas, but Kurdish resistance started to enter the more dangerous realm of the cities. The
Turkish state responded with predictable brutality, with the army killing hundreds of civilians
and leveling entire towns. (In 1992 the military destroyed 70% of the buildings in Sirnak, a
town of 25,000.) This state terrorism only helped to cement urban Kurdish support for the
PKK.33

Even if the PKK supported the uprisings verbally, it was unable to direct or capitalize upon
them. Some have argued that Ocalan and the PKK leadership were afraid of losing control of
the movement, and there is perhaps some truth in this. But the PKK was fundamentally
unequipped to handle the challenges posed by an urban insurgency. Its networks in the cities
were oriented toward channeling supplies and recruits to the rural battleground. Even if it had
wanted to intervene, it had neither the tactical nor the strategic repertoire to make use of the
urban rebellions.34 Its strategic vision had always relied upon its rural guerrilla force wresting
territorial control from the state, not largely-unarmed mass uprisings.

The serhildans actually marked the peak of the PKK’s strength as an organization founded
upon guerrilla warfare. The party had serious difficulties integrating the mass influx of urban
Kurdish recruits, leading to paranoiac purges and killings. In 1993, Öcalan and Turgut Özal,
then President of Turkey, seemed to be on the brink of negotiating a peace deal through the
mediation of Jalal Talabani. But Özal died of a heart attack, perhaps induced by poison, on
his way to present plans for a pro-Kurdish reform package to the Turkish National Security
33
Marcus. Blood and Belief. pp. 140-144, 175-178; Güneş Murat Tezcür. “Violence and nationalist
mobilization: The onset of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey,” Nationalities Papers. (2014)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2014.970527. p. 259.
34
Marcus. Blood and Belief. pp. 180-181.
Council. The package was never presented. If Özal’s one hand held the keys to peace, his
other concealed a new counter-insurgency strategy that would change the course of the war.

In 1993, not long before his death, Turgut Özal penned a secret letter detailing a proposal to
combat the insurgency. Özal recommended the wholesale “evacuation” of villages and
hamlets in the Kurdish mountainous regions and the interspersed resettlement of the villagers
throughout western Turkey. Large dam projects would flood many of the abandoned
settlements, ensuring that return would be impossible. Özal further proposed a complete
restructuring of the armed forces to allow for an aggressive counterinsurgency strategy aimed
at pursuing and surrounding the PKK guerrillas. Finally, he suggested that capitalist
development of the region’s urban centers be encouraged as part and parcel of the
counterinsurgency strategy.35

Most of Özal’s proposals were implemented after his death. Villages had been razed
previously in a somewhat ‘haphazard’ fashion, often due to a village’s refusal to join the
village guards or perceived support for the PKK. But the army now undertook a systemic
campaign of destroying Kurdish settlements throughout the rural southeast. Every village
now faced a terrible choice: join the village guards or be forcibly expelled. Throughout the
1990s the Turkish state destroyed over 3,000 settlements, forcibly displacing somewhere
between 1.5 and 3 million people. At the same time, the Turkish troop presence in the region
doubled from 185,000 to 360,000. Infrastructure projects managed by the Southeast Anatolia
Project (GAP) were used to gather intelligence about the region and deny areas to the
guerrillas. The only Özal proposal that was ignored was the project of deliberate, planned
resettlement. Instead, displaced Kurds swelled the urban centers of southeastern Kurdistan,
western Turkey, Ankara, and the southern coast with little to no guidance from authorities,
forming new slums.36

The Turkish state intended to “drain the sea” of guerrilla support by expelling the majority of
the rural inhabitants of the mountainous southeast.37 The state identified both spatial and
population-based elements to the ‘PKK problem.’ It thus decided to ‘fix’ the problem by
turning the region into a barren wasteland. In the short term, the strategy was an undeniable
success. An insurgency cannot survive without logistical support, and with the annihilation of
village society the PKK was cut off from its primary source of supplies and recruits. During
this period, the PKK guerrillas suffered a severe reversal of fortunes. Field commanders
complained to Öcalan about the emptied villages and recent defeats, but he refused to listen.
Öcalan accused his commanders of not knowing how to fight and even pushed them to
further concentrate their forces and “hold their ground like a regular army.” Under his
leadership, the PKK’s military doctrine remained unchanged even as the Turkish military
inflicted defeat after defeat upon its forces. Nevertheless, “Ankara could not finish off the
PKK. The number of rebels declined precipitously between 1994 and 1996, but then
stabilized to around 5,000-6,000 fighters, of which half were based inside Turkey.”38

The PKK and the Turkish state were in an impasse. Neither could defeat the other, even
though the PKK’s guerrilla forces were substantially weakened. The PKK retained its cross-
border havens in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq, which Turkey could harrass but

35
Jongerden. The Settlement Issue in Turkey and the Kurds. pp. 44-48.
36
Ibid. pp. xxi, 67-71, 78-81.
37
See: Alexander Downes. “Draining the Sea by Filling the Graves: Investigating the Effectiveness of
Indiscriminate Violence as a Counterinsurgency Strategy,” Civil Wars, Vol. 9, No. 4. (2007) pp. 420-444.
38
Marcus. Blood and Belief. pp. 240-249.
never fully destroy. Kurdish legal activism in Turkey continued to demonstrate popular
support for the PKK’s struggle. A string of rapidly-banned parties – HEP, DEP, and HADEP
– gained increasing support in local elections. As the guerrilla war continued to go against the
PKK, internal dissenters cautiously challenged Öcalan’s authority. These challengers were
invariably crushed.

By 1998, the organization was visibly weakened and Turkey and its allies perceived an
opportunity to finish the PKK off. That summer, Syria ordered Öcalan to close the PKK’s
training camps in the country. In September, Turkey moved thousands of troops to the Syrian
border, threatening to invade unless it expelled the PKK. Syria had no realistic chance of
prevailing in a war with Turkey, so it complied. Öcalan left the country in October. He
sought asylum in a string of countries – Greece, Russia, Italy, Russia again, and Greece
again. In February of 1999 he finally landed in the Greek ambassador’s villa in Kenya. After
being informed of Öcalan’s presence in the country by U.S. intelligence officers, Kenya
demanded that the Greek embassy get rid of him. On February 15, Öcalan got in a car on the
presumption that the Netherlands was prepared to grant him asylum. The car never made it to
the airport. Instead, Öcalan was bound, gagged, and transported to Turkey aboard a private
plane.39 The unquestioned leader of the PKK was now in the hands of the enemy.

A Fateful Shift

Öcalan’s capture set an inevitable, long-needed reckoning in motion. This reckoning created
a significant shift in the PKK’s discourse and strategy. There were some rhetorical motions
toward political and civic activism and an accommodation with existing state borders in
1993, but these never came to fruition. After Öcalan’s imprisonment, the PKK discursively
shifted its emphasis away from the creation of a new nation-state toward appeals for
“democratic autonomy” within existing state borders. This discourse eventually developed
into a relatively radical anti-nationalism. At the same time, it proposed to transform Kurdish
society through the creation of a network of councils and civil society organizations aimed at
realizing this vision of autonomy. Ultimately, the PKK would become only one organization
– while retaining a large degree of authority – in a much broader complex of organizations
and projects working for the Kurdish freedom movement. Many of these changes were
initiated by Öcalan himself – the very man who had been most responsible for the PKK’s
strategic stagnation prior to 1999.

Many critics suggest that the PKK’s rhetorical shift in the early 2000s was merely a result of
Öcalan’s desire to save himself from execution. This is certainly a partial explanation, but it
is not the whole picture. It had been clear to many in the PKK’s upper ranks, if not Öcalan
himself, that the movement had stalled and even gone into decline in the second half of the
1990s. By the early ‘90s the PKK had gained mass support in Turkey’s Kurdish regions, as
evidenced by the uprisings in many cities in Bakur. But it proved fatefully unable to
capitalize on this popular upheaval and, in doing so, missed the best chance for a resolution
of the ‘Kurdish question’ in the movement’s history. As Ali Özcan cuttingly summarized:
“Neither the enormous growth of the party nor the vast number of recruits to the militant and
guerrilla body of the PKK made any difference to a modest settlement of Turkey’s Kurdish
question…”40 At the time of Öcalan’s capture, the PKK’s guerrilla strategy was clearly
failing.

39
Ibid. pp. 269-279.
40
Özcan. Turkey’s Kurds. p. 203.
In moments like this, insurgent social movements must either adapt or die. Many movements
perish even as they attempt to pivot to new forms action. Loosely-linked participants stop
actively contributing to the movement and splits over tactics and strategy divide activists,
throttling activity. At this delicate moment, clever states may offer limited concessions to
drive wedges into insurgent coalitions, and effectively bury the insurgency by doing so. This
is what happened to the Black Panther Party during its meteoric rise and fall in the late 60s
and early 70s.41 U.S. government concessions – like ending the Vietnam War draft and
opening public sector jobs and Democratic Party offices to the black middle class – divided
the Panthers from their less radical allies. Though the Black Liberation Army waged a heroic
struggle through the 1970s, the Panthers stopped growing by the early 1970s and were
effectively destroyed by repression shortly afterward.

The Turkish state did not seize such an opportunity. A relatively modest package of
concessions to Kurdish demands, including some mixture of cultural recognition and social
development in the southeast, probably would have killed off the PKK and ended the war.
But the continuation of the war was simply too valuable to key actors in the Turkish military
and bureaucracy. The Turkish military controlled much of the country’s political sphere until
recently – the failed 2016 coup possibly marked the end of this leverage – and exercised veto
power over ‘national security’ issues. The vast majority of the military’s combat missions had
taken place against domestic Kurdish opponents rather than foreign antagonists.42 As a result,
the suppression of Kurdish nationalism was not only at the center of the military’s self-image
and ethos, but was also its principle means of justifying its consumption of state expenditures
and central role in the Turkish state system. This created massive disincentives for the
security forces to allow for a negotiated peace with the PKK. At the same time, the chaos of
war opened up a fertile space for organized crime, drug dealing, human trafficking, and
smuggling. The extensive links between Turkish military, police, and bureaucratic officials
and organized crime syndicates have proven immensely profitable for both.43

[Not an extended discussion of the ideology – this has been done better in previously-written
works like: Ahmed Akkaya and Joost Jongerden. “Confederalism and Autonomy in Turkey:
The Kurdistan Workers Party and the Reinvention of Democracy,” in The Kurdish Question
in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation and Reconciliation, ed. Cengiz
Gunes and Welat Zeydanlioglu. (2013) pp. 186-204.]

Enduring Kurdish discontent gave the PKK room to conduct its strategic and theoretical
transformation. Öcalan’s writings – submitted as “defenses” in Turkish and European courts
– served as theoretical outlines for a new project. In his earliest defense in 1999, Öcalan
deemphasized a traditional Marxist-Leninist interpretation of national liberation, arguing
instead for a form of “democratic union” within the Turkish state system. Adopting a
conciliatory attitude, Öcalan argued that a solution to the Kurdish question could only be
41
See: Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire. (2014)
42
“The army, deployed in strength for the first time since Lausanne, now found control of Kurdistan to be its
prime function and raison d’etre. Only one out of 18 Turkish military engagements during the years 1924-38
occurred outside Kurdistan. After 1945, apart from the Korean war, 1949-52 and the invasion of Cyprus, 1974,
the only Turkish army operations continued to be against the Kurds.” David McDowall. A Modern History of
the Kurds. (1996) p. 198.
43
The Susurluk scandal revealed extensive links between the Turkish deep state and criminal networks. See:
Stephen Kinzer. “In Turkey, New Accusations of Links Between Police, Politicians and Criminals,” New York
Times. December 31, 1996. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/31/world/in-turkey-new-accusations-of-links-
between-police-politicians-and-criminals.html?mcubz=0; Francis Patrick O’Connor. “Armed Social Movements
and Insurgency: The PKK and its Communities of Support,” Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Social and Political
Sciences, European University Institute. (2014) “Chapter V: Insurgency and the City”
found within the existing borders of Turkey. These positions represented an almost total
abandonment of the PKK’s earlier commitments – indeed, it previously branded Kurdish
parties who pushed for cultural autonomy, rather than independence, as reactionaries. The
opportunistic valences of this shift are impossible to ignore: First, the discourse of
“democratization” would obviously be more appealing to Western observers than a Marxist-
Leninist critique of colonialism. Second, the rhetorical commitment to work within existing
Turkish borders steered around the Turkish constitution’s firm prohibition on alterations to
the country’s “fundamental characteristics.” Öcalan also ordered the PKK to withdraw its
forces from Turkish territory. The retreat that cost the lives of many guerrillas.44

The ideology of democratic confederalism took shape from 2004 to 2011, after Öcalan’s
death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Turkey abolished the death penalty
in 2004 as part of a package of reforms aimed at allowing it to join the European Union.)
Öcalan was reportedly influenced by the writings of thinkers like Murray Bookchin and
Antonio Gramsci while imprisoned on Imrali Island. From these sources, he attempted to
develop a comprehensive critique of modernity, patriarchy, and capitalism. In The Roots of
Civilization, Öcalan argued that patriarchy and gerontocracy were the root forms of
oppression that allowed early societies to develop state systems. Nationalism emerged as the
bourgeoisie’s strategy for overturning feudalism and tribalism, and the logical outcome of
nationalism’s will-to-homogenize was fascism. Capitalism led to the contradictory
development of productive forces alongside massive disparities in material wellbeing, while
Soviet ‘socialism’ was merely a perverted form of capitalist modernity.45 These arguments
were not substantially different from Bookchin’s work, particularly in The Ecology of
Freedom, albeit with some added mythology about the egalitarian roots of Kurdish society.46

Practically, what emerged from Öcalan’s encounter with new theoreticians was an adapted
version of Bookchin’s “libertarian municipalism.” In Bookchin’s account, a confederation of
grassroots, direct democratic assemblies needed to be constructed separate from the state
system, with the eventual goal of rendering the state obsolete. These assemblies would allow
ordinary people to govern themselves without the need for appealing to state authority.
Against some of his anarchist contemporaries, Bookchin argued for an organized group of
activists or militants dedicated to the task of constructing this system. At the same time,
activists might use local electoral politics instrumentally to hand more power over to the
grassroots assemblies and councils. The above is almost exactly what the strategy of
democratic confederalism looked like in practice. Öcalan simply added an additional
emphasis on autonomous councils for oppressed groups, particularly women, and stressed the
importance of collective self-defense, derived from the PKK’s experience with guerrilla
warfare.47

Political realities and rhetorical maneuvering unfortunately caused Öcalan to introduce a

number of contradictory elements into the theory of democratic confederalism. On the one
hand, Öcalan argues that the project of democratic autonomy does not seek to disturb existing
44
See: Abdullah Öcalan. “Declaration on the Democratic Solution of the Kurdish Question,” trans. (1999)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071020183517/http://www.geocities.com/kurdifi/ocelan.html.
45
See: Abdullah Öcalan. Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation, trans. Klaus Happel. (2007)
46
See: Murray Bookchin. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. (1982)
47
See: Murray Bookchin. “Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview,” in Social Ecology Project’s Readings in
Libertarian Municipalism. (1991) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-libertarian-
municipalism-an-overview; Abdullah Öcalan. “Democratic Confederalism,” in The Political Thought of
Abdullah Öcalan, trans. Havin Guneser and International Initiative ‘Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan – Peace In
Kurdistan.’ (2017) pp. 30-56.
state borders. On the other, he articulates a radical anti-nationalism that culminates in the call
for a transnational confederation of democratic councils. This anti-nationalism is further
complicated by Öcalan’s continued insistence on the particular importance of Kurdish
liberation and the special role that the Kurdish people are to play in this project. Finally,
Öcalan largely overlooks the inconsistency of an unquestionable leader of an extremely-
hierarchical vanguard party calling for horizontalist direct democracy. Alongside the clunky
jargon that Öcalan invented for the new project, these contradictions confused both ordinary
Kurds and PKK activists, obscuring the simple principles at the heart of the project.

Democratic Confederalism in Practice: Building Counter-Power

At the Kurdish Newroz celebrations in 2005, activists read out Öcalan’s “Declaration of
Democratic Confederalism” to announce the new project. These celebrations had been sites
of political mobilization, including clashes with the authorities, since at least the early 1990s.
The assembled masses of Kurds listened to a new, if hazily-defined, vision for their struggle,
as youth activists unfurled hundreds of movement flags that had been smuggled in
underneath the noses of the police. Over the next two years, activists affiliated with the
movement would conduct discussions under the auspices of the DTK (Demokratik Toplum
Kongresi – Democratic Society Congress) as they determined how to actually go about
implementing democratic confederalism in practice.48

The transition to democratic confederalism clearly required significant organizational

restructuring. In the 1992 and 1995, the PKK attempted to introduce some degree of
democracy into the movement by conducting elections for a ‘National Assembly’ among
émigré Kurds in Europe. Due to the movement’s almost total lack of experience with internal
democracy, these elections were a failure. In 2000, an attempt to create ‘People’s
Assemblies’ with the power to dismiss local party cadres also floundered.49 If the movement
was to attempt to democratize society, it needed to begin by creating some semblance of a
democratic culture within its own institutions.

In 2005, the PKK’s Party Congress in Qandil voted to reorganize the movement under the
umbrella of the KCK (Koma Civakên Kurdistanê – Kurdistan Communities Union). The
PKK continues to exist, but as the sub-branch of the KCK responsible for the ideological
guidance of the movement. The main body of the KCK is a Legislative Council (Kongra Gel)
of around 300 members elected by movement activists. These members elected an Executive
Council of around 40 members from their ranks. Underneath these bodies are a wide range of
committees and sub-organizations responsible for varying avenues of struggle. Nevertheless,
the KCK retains a seven-member Leadership Council headed by Öcalan himself, who
remains in prison.50

48
TATORT Kurdistan. Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan. (2013) p. 21; Interview with a Kurdish
activist. (2017); Interview with a Kurdish activist. (2016)
49
Özcan. Turkey’s Kurds. pp. 159-165.
50
Seevan Saeed. Kurdish Politics in Turkey: From the PKK to the KCK. (2016) pp. 64-72.
 Figure 3: Organizational diagram of the KCK, from Seevan Saeed's Kurdish Politics in Turkey.51

This model has clear holdovers from the pre-KCK period. Öcalan still heads the movement,
though he obviously lacks the ability to direct day-to-day affairs. The movement’s
professional armed forces, such as the HPG (the guerrilla army based in Turkey), remain
under the control of a relatively small number of high-ranking cadre. But many of the
organizations under the KCK’s umbrella, including the DTK and the HDP (Halkların
Demokratik Partisi – Peoples’ Democratic Party, a left-wing Turkish parliamentary party), do
practice internal democracy. Other civil society organizations, like the Human Rights
Association and Kurd-Der, likely have informal links to the KCK but retain a wide degree of
independence that allows them to operate in the civil sphere.52

The most significant changes to the movement’s practice occurred at the base level. At the
beginning of the democratic confederalism period, PKK cadre were interspersed throughout
the towns and cities of Turkish Kurdistan. Each town would have a central committee
responsible for directing activity and communicating with the PKK leadership. Underneath
this committee, each neighborhood would have a neighborhood commission, responsible for
organizing protests, agitating, spreading the word about meetings, and so on. A city like
Nusaybin (pop. 80,000) had no more than 100 official party cadre working for the movement,
with 20–25 cadre in each of its five neighborhoods.53 An estimated 90–95% of the population
of Nusaybin supported the PKK, so it stands to reason that the cadre-to-population ratio in
other cities was even lower.

Alongside activists from the DTP (later BDP [2009], then HDP [2014]), these cadre took on
the task of building the confederal system. First, the core activists were educated about the
51
Ibid. p. 71.
52
Ibid. pp. 64-72.
53
Interview with a Kurdish activist. (2017)
details of the system with monthly or even weekly meetings and lectures. This was an
extremely important step, since the initial push for the transformation came from the top
down. Next, the neighborhood commissions formed a main committee to lead meetings with
the neighborhood’s inhabitants explaining how and why they intended to form local councils.
The neighborhood cadre then split into teams of two, who would go to each street in the
neighborhood to speak with people, address their questions and concerns, and ask them to
come to the meetings. Every street would have at least two or three meetings. After the
discussions in the meetings, the cadre leading them would ask if anyone wanted to get
involved. In Nusaybin, between two and four people who initially volunteered would act as
representatives of their street, as long as no one opposed them taking on that responsibility.
These street representatives would gather to form the neighborhood assembly, and that
assembly would select its own representatives to send to the city council.54 The city council
would then be formed, with 60% of its representatives coming from the neighborhood
councils and the other 40% coming from political parties, NGOs, unions, women’s and youth
organizations, and so on.55

Figure 4: A diagram of the democratic confederalist system in Rojava, which is structurally identical to the
system used in Bakur. In Turkish Kurdistan, the role of the Autonomous Administration is replaced by pro-
Kurdish politicians in the Turkish municipal governments.

Street representatives were also responsible for getting more people involved in the system.
The representatives received two to three days of political education teaching them how to do
their jobs and how to approach other people in the neighborhood. The street representatives
would be asked to think about people on their streets who they thought would be responsible
and capable of doing a good job in the assembly. The movement activists would then focus
54
Ibid.
55
This pattern is also followed by the DTK’s pan-Turkish general assembly. See: TATORT Kurdistan.
Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan. pp. 27-40.
on getting these people to meetings. If necessary, they would try to convince them in one-on-
one conversations about the importance of getting involved.56

These assemblies and councils took on a number of responsibilities. Street and neighborhood
councils dealt with everyday concerns like securing water and electricity provision, repairing
infrastructure, and conflict resolution. Alongside the main councils, separate women’s and
youth committees were responsible for their own spheres of influence. Women’s committees,
for instance, had the autonomous authority to deal with domestic violence. The neighborhood
assemblies also played a crucial role in mobilizing people for campaigns, protests, and
elections, where their efforts supported the pro-Kurdish DTP. The DTP’s successful showing
in the 2009 local elections owed a great deal to these new mobilization structures. Where they
occupied official municipal positions, DTP/BDP/HDP politicians were tasked with
implementing the decisions of the councils, acting essentially as the executive arm of an
unofficial legislature.57 This arrangement required some negotiation. In Amed, for instance,
the neighborhood councils selected a list of candidates for the DTP’s slate in the 2009
elections. But for whatever reason, the DTP ended up changing the candidates. In 2014, when
the BDP again asked the councils to choose its candidates, the councils protested that they
were not taken seriously the last time. Perhaps realizing that it was undermining its
relationship with its base, the BDP accepted the councils’ candidates without alterations. 58

Quick Guide: The Succession of Kurdish Legal Parties

HEP DEP HADEP DEHAP DTP BDP HDP
(1990–93) (1993–94) (1994–03) (2003–05) (2005–09) (2009–14) (2014–pr.)
From 1990 onward, a succession of legal (though repressed) parliamentary parties
attempted to represent Kurdish interests in Turkey. The Constitutional Court’s 2014
decision to ban the BDP was the eighth time it closed a political party for alleged
promotion of Kurdish separatism. Each of these parties forwarded a secular, pro-Kurdish,
left-wing platform, and many were almost structurally identical to their predecessors. The
HDP was different from its forebears in that it attempted to appeal to voters outside of
Kurdish-majority regions. In the June 2015 elections, it became the first pro-Kurdish party
to breach the 10% national election threshold that allows parties to win seats in parliament,
with over 13% of the Turkish vote.

The strength of the councils throughout Turkish Kurdistan was rather uneven. This was
reflected quite clearly by the impressions Kurdish activists from different cities had of the
council system. Generally speaking, the council system was most developed in the same
places where the movement had always been strongest – in border regions like Nusaybin,
Cezire, Gewer, Hakkari, Sirnak, and Batman. An activist from Nusaybin described relatively
robust grassroots participation.59 In Gewer, the women’s council actually predated the
democratic confederalism period. A nearby village established itself as a model commune
with a more developed and radically democratic system.60 By contrast, an activist from Amed
(Diyarbakir) – where 2/3rd of the population supports the movement and 1/3rd of the
population supports the ruling AKP – said that participation in many of the neighborhoods
was not very strong. This was a subject of concern among activists, who would later follow
56
Ibid.
57
Interviews with Kurdish activists. (2016-2017); TATORT Kurdistan. Democratic Autonomy in North
Kurdistan. pp. 25-40, 59-61; Nazan Üstündağ. “Democratic Autonomy in Kurdistan,” ROAR Magazine, No. 6.
(2017) p. 93.
58
Interview with a Kurdish activist. (2017)
59
Ibid.
60
TATORT Kurdistan. Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan. pp. 84-86.
Rojava’s lead by attempting to deepen democratic practice and participation at the street
level.61

Mobilizing ordinary people in a political project is difficult even the under best of
circumstances. It is even more difficult when that mobilization requires a significant
commitment of time and energy. Urban capitalist societies foster an intense atmosphere of
social alienation and apathy. Somewhat paradoxically, these feelings were both the main
obstacle to and the main motivation for popular participation in the confederalist project.
Kurdish activists reported that people were primarily attracted to the system due to their
belief that their voice and opinions would finally matter. But KCK cadre also had the difficult
task of convincing people that it was both their right and duty to control their political
destiny, even if that control began with modest street-level concerns like water, electricity,
and potholes.62

Across Bakur, participation in the council system could be predicted by two main factors:
class and a shared experience of oppression. The PKK and KCK found their strongest bases
of support in poor neighborhoods.63 More specifically, the neighborhoods formed by
displaced villagers whose homes had been razed by the Turkish military were the
movement’s most reliable supporters. Neighborhoods like Yenişehir and Abdulkadir Pasa in
Nusaybin – made up “99%” of expelled villagers – were local strongholds of KCK activism.64
This trend also held true in studies of Kurdish political activity in western cities like Istanbul
even before the democratic confederalism period. In effect, the Turkish military’s expulsion
campaign succeeded in suppressing the PKK’s guerrilla campaign only at the price of moving
its constituency to the far more dangerous realm of the cities.65

At the same time, the expansion of pro-Kurdish legal and political activism, led primarily by
middle class and educated Kurds, continued. The PKK always had something of a cross-class
constituency – it never shied away from using the resources of wealthy sympathizers or
attempting to win over certain tribal leaders. But working-class Kurds and students always
did the heavy lifting of the guerrilla campaign. Throughout the 1990s, middle-class Kurds in
both Turkey and the diaspora increasingly sought to further Kurdish interests through legal
means. The discourse of democratic confederalism lent further ‘official sanction’ to these
activities, allowing for the creation of a range of human rights organizations, media outlets,
political parties, and cultural associations which opened new avenues of resistance. These
forms of activism were more appealing to Kurds with “something to lose,” who were less
likely to get involved in violent confrontations with the state.66 The alliance between the

61
External observers should think of this observation in context – the same interviewee related that 20 out of the
24 neighborhoods in Amed (pop. 900,000) had neighborhood councils, a number that dwarfs contemporary
direct democratic experiments outside of Kurdistan. - Interview with a Kurdish activist. (2016)
62
Interviews with Kurdish activists. (2016-2017)
63
There are certain complexities involved in using class as an analytical category in Turkish Kurdistan. The
majority of the urban population is loosely connected to the labor market, informally employed, or unemployed.
This lumpenproletarian stratum actually forms a majority of the Kurdish ‘working class.’ Formal employment is
provided, by-and-large, by the civil service and state sector. Having a job with a reliable income, according to
my interviewees, is enough to place one in the “middle class.”
64
Interview with a Kurdish activist. (2017)
65
See: Francis Patrick O’Connor. “Radical political participation and the internal Kurdish diaspora in Turkey,”
Kurdish Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2. (2015) pp. 151-171.
66
In comparison with their counterparts in much of the developed world, Kurdish legal or NGO-based activists
do often face steep penalties and repression for their activities. It is thus unfair to view them in the same light as
members of the NGO-industrial complex in the U.S. and Europe. The quoted characterization here is from
interviewed Kurdish activists, not the author. See: Nicole Watts. Activists in Office: Kurdish Politics and
unofficial councils and the municipal governments created a link between the more radical
working-class base of the movement and the middle-class activists who were predominant in
electoral politics. The democratic confederalism period thus saw the movement both deepen
its support among its traditional working-class base and broaden its activities to include new
ranks of middle-class professional activists.

From 2005 to 2009, the council movement developed from a mere idea into a growing
counter-power to the Turkish state in Bakur. By 2009, the councils in cities like Nusaybin,
where organizing began earliest, were taken seriously by almost everyone. Even the few
wealthy people in the town would have to go to the councils if they wanted something done.
Significantly, many political decisions were being made by the local councils rather than the
PKK’s central leadership in Qandil. Nusyabin’s main assembly had around 400 participants,
and each of its five neighborhood assemblies counted between 60 and 100 people involved.
The Kurdish activist I spoke with estimated that around 1,000 people in Nusaybin were active
participants in the movement by 2009 – an order of magnitude greater than the number of
PKK cadre in 2004.67 In other cities, like Amed, neighborhood councils took longer to
establish, but they still played a vital role in the DTP’s 2009 electoral victories.

These victories unfortunately also won the attention of the Turkish state.68 The 2009 elections
were held on March 29th. By April 14th, a massive wave of arrests started sweeping up KCK
activists. During the infamous “KCK trials,” Turkish prosecutors accused KCK activists of
attempting to construct a “parallel state.” Between 2009 and 2011, 7,748 people were arrested
for participating in KCK-related activism, about half of whom were placed in pre-trial
detention.69 These mass arrests were a severe blow to the council movement, which needed to
operate at least semi-openly. Many of the movement’s main activists were arrested or forced
to flee the country. In some places, the Turkish state simply tried to arrest every single person
who had participated in the councils, a clear attempt to destroy the system root-and-branch. 70
For those two years, the councils were largely unable to operate.

But this form of mass repression only presented a temporary setback. In 2011, the DTK
issued a “Call for Democratic Autonomy in Kurdistan,” including a document elaborating the
movement’s vision and demands slightly more clearly.71 From 2011 to 2015, the level of state
repression subsided. Movement activists immediately set about rebuilding the councils and
even expanding them to areas that had never had them previously. The dissatisfaction with
movement’s progress up to 2009 in cities like Amed led activists to refocus their efforts on
developing strong participation at the street/commune level. This was part of a clear trend of
learning that the council system could only function well with a consistent focus on
solidifying the practice of radical base-level democracy. At the same time, activists in Bakur

Protest in Turkey. (2010); Interviews with Kurdish activists. (2016-2017)

67
Interview with a Kurdish activist. (2017)
68
Since 1990, the Kurdish insurgency and the Turkish establishment have been both electoral and military
competitors. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), the governing party since 2002, was and is the primary
electoral competitor for Kurdish loyalties. Indeed, the AKP even presented itself as an alternative ‘pro-Kurdish’
party using a much-touted “Kurdish opening” in the early 2000s. However, most of the party’s reform proposals
simply floundered in the wake of the increasing successes of the pro-Kurdish legal parties.
69
DTF. Backgrounder on the Union of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK). (2012)
http://www.tuerkeiforum.net/enw/index.php/Backgrounder_on_the_Union_of_Communities_in_Kurdistan,_KC
K.
70
Interviews with Kurdish activists. (2016-2017)
71
Democratic Society Congress (DTK). Draft Submission for a Democratic Autonomous Kurdistan. (2011)
http://demokratischeautonomie.blogsport.eu/files/2012/10/DTK.engl_.pdf.
benefited from the unexpected rise of a new laboratory for the system in northern Syria: the
autonomous region of Rojava.

The onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011 provided a window of opportunity for the PYD
(Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat – Democratic Union Party), the Syrian political party affiliated
with the KCK. By 2011, none of the many Syrian Kurdish parties had significant support
from the Syrian Kurdish population, and certainly nothing approaching a mass base. In spite
of rising mass politicization and youth activism throughout the 2000s, these parties faced a
“crisis of legitimacy” due to their lack of engagement with the populace and totally
ineffective politics.72 The PYD too had been tarred by the PKK’s previous cooperation with
the Syrian government. But unlike the PKK before 1999, the PYD had engaged in
confrontational politics with the Syrian government and attempted to mobilize Kurds for
activism in Syria. Even more crucially, the PYD had a new model of mass mobilization
drawn from the experience of the council movement in Bakur.

PYD activists and ordinary Kurds began organizing clandestine councils and self-defense
units across northern Syria in the spring of 2011. By August, enough Kurds had been
organized that 300 delegates met to establish the People’s Council of West Kurdistan
(MGRK). The MGRK elected a body of 30 people to lead TEV-DEM, an organization tasked
with coordinating the further development of people’s councils. Other small leftist parties
joined the MGRK. As the war deepened and the state’s ability to provide services declined,
the neighborhood councils took up the task of providing their own security, infrastructure,
and justice systems. By the spring of 2012, more people were coming to neighborhood
council meetings than the venues could accommodate. Activists responded by creating a new
level of assembly – the commune – drawn from less than 200 households on a single city
street.73

The increasing territorial control of FSA-affiliated forces provided the final push for de facto
autonomy.74 In what may have been a semi-negotiated transfer of power, YPG units took over
the roads leading into Kobanî in the early morning of July 19th, 2012. Large numbers of
civilians occupied state buildings that day, forcing government troops to surrender. The
soldiers had little choice in the matter, as the Syrian government had no substantial military
forces remaining in the region. Aside from some scattered fighting, cities and towns like
Dêrîk and Afrîn were taken over with relative ease. Over the coming years, the now-
autonomous region of Rojava would first defend itself from the assaults of ISIS and then go
on to enlarge its territory in a military campaign that continues until the present.

As previously stated, wartime conditions and the lack of state competition pushed the council
system in Rojava to develop into a much more sophisticated version of its counterpart in
Bakur. Rojava’s base-level communes have more significant political responsibilities, their
own autonomous self-defense units (the HPC, Hêzên Parastina Cewherî – Civil Defense
Forces), and an active participation rate of between a fifth and half of the population. 75 The
council system’s development acted as inspiration for movement activists in Turkey. At the
72
Out of a population of around 2 million Syrian Kurds, no party had more than 5,000 members and some had
as few as 50. Harriet Allsopp. The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East. (2014) pp.
2, 28-30.
73
Michael Knapp, Anja Flag, and Ercan Ayboga. Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s
Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. (2016) pp. 51, 85-87.
74
There was no chance for a strategic alliance between the PYD and the main FSA-affiliated rebel groups, given
the FSA’s reliance on Turkish funding and weapons. Turkish pressure was one of the primary reasons that the
armed Syrian opposition rejected early overtures for Kurdish autonomy within a post-Assad Syrian state. See:
same time, widespread perceptions that the Turkish state was aiding ISIS during the defense
of Kobanî infuriated Kurds in Turkey, spurring a new wave of riots and radicalization.76

From 2013 to the summer of 2015, the revitalized councils in Bakur became stronger than
ever. The councils and their associated civil movements developed overlapping programs
addressing economic development, women’s rights, ecological preservation, and cultural
education.77 Somewhat outside of the institutions of democratic confederalism, the urban
youth developed their own self-defense formations to combat the drug trade, prostitution, and
the police – all of which, of course, are closely linked in Turkish Kurdistan.78 Yet again, the
councils proved their worth as mobilizing structures in the June 2015 general elections. The
AKP called the elections hoping to win a parliamentary majority that would allow it to alter
Turkey’s constitution, creating a highly-centralized and authoritarian presidential system.
This aim was thwarted by the gains of the pro-Kurdish HDP, which became the first such
party to surpass the 10% vote threshold required to enter the national parliament. The HDP
more than doubled its vote share from the local elections of 2014 to 13% of the national
vote.79

Again, the legal successes of the movement prompted the Turkish state to move back to the
realm of repression and militarization. Having given up on winning over the Kurdish
electorate, the AKP would now deliberately spark a war so as to win over the Turkish
nationalist electorate with racist discourses about security and terrorism. On July 20, 2015, a
bombing in Suruç targeted Turkish socialist youth organizations who were planning to cross
the border to aid in the reconstruction of Kobanî. Despite the bomber’s links to ISIS, the
Turkish state used the attack as an excuse to arrest PKK supporters and members of other
left-wing groups. (Less than 300 people were arrested due to alleged links to ISIS, while over
1,300 were arrested for links to the PKK.)80 A KCK spokesman denied involvement in
revenge attacks on Turkish soldiers and policemen just days after the bombing.81
Nevertheless, the Turkish government ended the ongoing peace process by conducting
airstrikes against PKK camps in the Qandil mountains and YPG forces in Rojava. At the
same time, hundreds of alleged sympathizers, including many HDP leaders, were arrested
throughout Turkey. The PKK responded by declaring war on the Turkish government.

75
The active participation of even a fifth of the population of a region in direct democratic assemblies dwarfs
the political participation rate of any other relatively large contemporary society of which I am aware. See: Joost
Jongerden and Michael Knapp. “Communal Democracy: The Social Contract and Confederalism in Rojava,”
Comparative Islamic Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1. (2016) pp. 98-99.
76
As if to confirm its tacit cooperation, Turkey allowed ISIS units to cross the Turkish border in 2014 and attack
Kobanî from the rear. Most of ISIS’s finances came from smuggling its oil into Turkey, to which the Turkish
government turned a blind eye. See: “Isis launches attack on Kobani from inside Turkey for first time,” The
Guardian. November 29, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/29/isis-attack-kobani-inside-
turkey-first-time; David Phillips. “Research Paper: Turkey-ISIS Oil Trade,” The World Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-turkey-isi_b_8808024.html.
77
TATORT Kurdistan. Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan. pp. 99-108, 128-141, 152-164, 186-206.
78
Üstündağ. “Democratic Autonomy in Kurdistan.” p. 96.
79
Constanze Letch and Ian Traynor. “Turkey election: ruling party loses majority as pro-Kurdish HDP gains
seats,” The Guardian. June 7, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/07/turkey-election-
preliminary-results-erdogan-akp-party.
80
“Turkey arrests some 1300 PKK-linked suspects, less than 300 ISIL-linked suspects since late July,” Hurriyet
Daily News. October 20, 2015. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-arrests-some-1300-pkk-linked-
suspects-less-than-300-isil-linked-suspects-since-late-july.aspx?pageID=238&nID=90118&NewsCatID=509.
81
“KCK official says PKK not responsible for murders of 2 Turkish policemen,” Todays Zaman. July 29, 2015.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150729143815/http:/www.todayszaman.com/national_kck-official-says-pkk-not-
responsible-for-murders-of-2-turkish-policemen_394957.html.
In the cities of Bakur, radicalized youth under the banner of the YDG-H, an urban militia
formation, engaged in armed clashes with the police. As the councils in areas like Cezire and
Nusaybin declared “democractic autonomy” from the Turkish government, these youths dug
trenches to defend their towns from state attacks.82 The Turkish military responded in
characteristic fashion by besieging the rebelling cities and ruthlessly bombarding residential
areas. Turkish soldiers committed heinous atrocities even after the cities fell under military
control, including the killings of over 100 civilians sheltering in basements in Cezire.83
Despite the fall of liberated areas, organized resistance and a state of civil war have continued
up until the present day in Turkish Kurdistan, costing the lives of thousands and displacing
around 500,000 others.84 Under such conditions, the council system simply cannot operate.85

Figure 5: Satellite photos of the center of Nusaybin. Left, Nusaybin at the beginning of 2015. Right, Nusaybin at
the end of 2016, after the Turkish siege and bombardment.86

The PKK’s new strategy ran up against limitations that face any urban insurgency. As Paul
Staniland argues, urban insurgency can only occur when the state adversary is constrained in
its ability to use large-scale violence. Unlike remote rural areas, state forces almost always
have access to urban centers, and are thus able to use as much force as they are politically
able to crush insurrection.87 Even an insurgent social movement like the Kurdish council
system, which never sought out violent confrontations with the state, cannot survive if the
state is willing to level entire cities and neighborhoods to destroy that movement. And this,

82
Haydar Dancı. “Of Kurdish youth and ditches,” Theory and Event, Vol. 19, No. 1. (2016)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/610226.
83
Jeremy Brown. “Inside Cizre: Where Turkish forces stand accused of Kurdish killings,” BBC News. May 23,
2016. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36354742.
84
“Recent Turkey-PKK conflict has killed over 2,400, group finds,” Rudaw. January 2, 2017.
http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/02012017.
85
Interviews with Kurdish activists. (2016-2017)
86
“Satellite images show extent of destruction in Kurdish cities,” ANF News. August 31, 2017.
https://anfenglish.com/kurdistan/satellite-images-show-extent-of-destruction-in-kurdish-cities-21842.
87
Paul Staniland. “Cities on Fire: Social Mobilization, State Policy, and Urban Insurgency,” Comparative
Political Studies, Vol. 43, No. 12. (2010) pp. 1623-1649.
tragically, is what the Turkish state is willing and politically able to do to crush Kurdish
resistance in the southeast.

Bakur’s marginality presents an incredible barrier to the Kurdish insurgency. No matter the
depth of the movement’s hold over the region, the movement gains little leverage that might
be of use in establishing a just peace. Bakur is not economically vital to the Turkish state, and
its inhabitants are socially segregated enough from the rest of Turkey that their continuous
brutal suppression provokes little protest other than that of fellow Kurds and members of
Turkey’s still-disorganized left. Absent international backing, or alliances with powerful
movements in the rest of Turkey, the Kurds of Bakur must yet again settle into a conflict with
a fascistic regime with no end in sight.

Beneath or Beyond the State?

Democratic confederalism ultimately promises the creation of a society ‘beyond the state.’
This commitment relies on two foundational premises: 1. The creation of a ‘new person’
capable of self-government in a society without capitalism, nationalism, patriarchy, and
bureaucracy, and 2. The direct democratic system overcoming the state. In practice, the
theory of democratic confederalism created impressive practices of grassroots direct
democracy in both Bakur and Rojava. However, there are undeniable contradictions and
limitations in the practice of democratic confederalism up to the present day.

Did the movement succeed in creating a new political subject, capable of both new forms of
struggle and life in a radically democratic society? In some senses, yes. The transition to a
new strategy of political action allowed for a range of actors from varying social classes to
actively involve themselves in the Kurdish freedom struggle. In both Rojava and the
movement’s strongholds in Turkey’s border areas, the council movement raised the average
level of participation in political life by possibly as much as an order of magnitude. These
new participants began to take on some of the early tasks that would be required of members
of a new, radically democratic polity.

However, popular politicization faced numerous hurdles. To begin with, activists had to
confront the immense alienation produced by life in modern capitalist society, a challenge
that was by no means overcome even at the 2015 height of Bakur’s council movement. As
Nazan Üstündağ argues, the cumbersome jargon of Öcalan theories acted as a barrier to
common understanding of the principles of the movement, empowering “movement elites” at
the expense of common people. A Kurdish activist confirmed that, even in 2015, the 40% of
the higher-level councils drawn from political organizations, NGOs, and the like were far
more active (and like influential) in meetings than the 60% drawn from ordinary people. The
radical organizations comprised of the marginalized urban youth also “could not be
successfully incorporated into the institutions of democratic autonomy and remained isolated
in their own organizations.”88 The youth viewed the councils as liberal and conciliatory, and
were simply not interested in them.

Did the movement succeed in laying the foundations for a society without a state? In Bakur,
not yet. The council movement was unable to settle on a strategy of either cooperating with,
ignoring, or actively combatting the Turkish state. In Bakur, the movement-controlled
municipal governments were the primary executive arm of the councils. This allowed better-
resourced actors to start implementing council policies, but it also left the councils reliant on
88
Üstündağ. “Democratic Autonomy in Kurdistan.” p. 94; Interview with a Kurdish activist. (2016)
institutions whose resources came directly from the Turkish state. Municipal politicians were
easy targets for arrest and repression. At the same time, the leaders of Kurdish legal parties
sometimes overrode council decisions, even if this tendency decreased with time. An ‘inside-
outside’ strategy gave the movement vital strategic flexibility. But it may have also weakened
the councils by increasing their dependency on state institutions that simply could not be
relied upon when open conflict arose.

The idea that the council system could ignore the state was clearly little more than a
rhetorical pose. The half-hearted embrace of parliamentary democracy was an attempt by
Öcalan to provide a veneer of liberal legitimacy for the movement. A direct democratic
council system and a hierarchical state cannot indefinitely compete for power without
breaking into open conflict. One must ultimately be preeminent, the other must be
subordinated and eventually disappear. Either the state’s functions and authority will be
superseded by those of the councils, or the councils will be reduced – at best – to an
appendage of the state system. The theory of democratic confederalism offered little guidance
for how the inevitable struggle between state and popular power was to be conducted. There
was simply no chance that the Turkish state would allow for a permanent counter-power to be
established within its borders. When this conflict exploded in 2015, the urban insurgency was
ill-positioned for battle and lacked the revolutionary alliances that would have been necessary
to bring down Turkish state power.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore the distinct contradiction between the rhetoric of stateless
democracy and the messy reality of the movement’s internal dynamics. In both Rojava and
Bakur, the movement’s most powerful coercive arms – the YPG and HPG respectively –
remain under the control of high-ranking cadre, not the grassroots democracy. It is obvious
that operational military decisions cannot be subordinated to civilian councils in wartime. But
any form of sovereignty relies upon the control of political and strategic decision-making in
defense and foreign policy. Many of the Kurds in Bakur and Rojava likely support the actions
of the movement’s armed wings. Nevertheless, popular sovereignty cannot fully exist without
democratic control over the use of force. Military independence represents a grave danger to
any movement, no matter how strongly democratic its official ideology. Indeed, one of the
primary motives for the formation of Rojava’s civil militias (the HPC) is an awareness of the
tragic history of previous revolutionary projects.89

If democratic confederalism is to become capable of overturning state power, and thus

emerging as a revolutionary project, it must confront and overcome these limitations. First, it
must find a way to politicize and educate a broad swathe of the population with the skills and
self-confidence necessary for self-government, absent the guiding hand of movement leaders.
Second, it must fully subordinate the remaining hierarchical structures within the KCK to the
control of grassroots democratic institutions. Third, it must create a viable strategic roadmap
for defeating state power in Turkey and elsewhere. Compromise with imperialist states and
local adversaries can only postpone an inevitable reckoning. The movement must thus find a
way to cultivate alliances with sympathetic Turks, Arabs, and fellow minority groups that
will allow it to transform from a durable insurgency into a genuine revolution.

Conclusion: Prospects for Emulation

89
El Errante. “Rojava Dispatch Six: Innovations, the Formation of the Hêza Parastina Cewherî (HPC),” Modern
Slavery. October 31, 2015. http://modernslavery.calpress.org/?p=949.
 “There are really a lot of things to be done in places like [Europe and the North America].
Because tomorrow it may be too late… We are more individuals now, and we are lost really…
When you are a part of society, you are awake. Individuals are asleep… We need to wake these
people up.”
- KCK activist, 2017

The PKK’s guerrilla war “woke people up.” It was no longer possible for Turks or Kurds to
ignore the suppression of Kurdish culture or the social and economic underdevelopment of
the southeast. The failings of the guerrilla strategy led the movement to conduct a painful
transformation, emerging in the 2000s with a powerful new strategy for mass mobilization.
Despite the movement’s successes in Turkey and Syria, the tragic strategic position of
Kurdish-majority regions means that autonomy will be impossible to defend without strong
trans-ethnic alliances. History demonstrates that international allies are no substitute for these
ties over the long run.

Activists and revolutionaries outside of Kurdistan often occupy radically different structural
positions and seem to have different strategic concerns. But the fundamental issue that faced
the Kurdish movement in the early 2000s – ‘how can activists create durable organizations
that engage large numbers of people in political activity?’ – is the same that faces today’s
activists in Europe and North America. The answers that have thus far emerged in the
Western radical milieu are demonstrably unsatisfactory. Adopting democratic
confederalism’s focus on council-based organization, mass participation, and tactical
flexibility may offer a way to advance ongoing struggles in the developed world.90

When the PKK approached Kurds with a new strategic vision in the 2000s, its history of
guerrilla struggle gave it enough credibility to make people pay attention. There are few, if
any, radical leftist organizations in Europe or North America with that level of legitimacy.
Historically, movements like the Black Panthers were able to build a base of support by
identifying resistance practices that made ‘business as usual’ impossible to carry on, captured
popular attention, and inspired emulation. Activists outside of Kurdistan will need to find
their own arsenal of practices that are appropriate to local conditions and concerns. As much
as possible, ordinary people should be able to adopt these practices with little to no training
or centralized direction.91 Activists will also need to address the particular concerns that face
working-class and marginalized communities in their own contexts. Social service provision,
for instance, may not be as effective a mobilizing tool in states that retain robust welfare
systems. The continued prevalence of austerity politics, however, will mean that the need for
social solidarity is only likely to rise.

The most powerful aspect of the confederalist strategy is that it offers an answer to the
widespread dissatisfaction with the social alienation and ‘representative’ institutions of
contemporary capitalism. Instead of redirecting this alienation into recuperative projects,
democratic confederalism suggests that we build a new kind of political system that gives the
oppressed some semblance of control over their own destinies. Activists outside Kurdistan
will need to take up this thread if they hope to move beyond repetitive, reactive cycles of
mobilization that leave little behind when they subside. This would require overcoming
apathy, social isolation, an increasingly fractured class base, and the time pressures of life in
90
There is no need to adopt the name “democratic confederalism,” its associated jargon, or the conciliatory
political commitments that are a product of the Turkish context. Activists should create a simpler and more
direct means of explaining their vision to audiences outside of Kurdistan.
91
For example, think of the occupation of central squares during the Occupy movement or the blockading of
streets and highways during the Black Lives Matter movement as patterns of insurgent practice.
capitalist society. There is no guarantee that these challenges can be surmounted. But any
revolutionary project demands sacrifice, patience, and a small leap of faith.