The Kurdish Struggle – An Interview with Dilar Dirik

Dilar Dirik interviewed by George Souvlis

George Souvlis: By way of introduction, could you explain what personal

experiences strongly influenced you, politically and academically?

Dilar Dirik: As a Kurd, you can never run from your identity, because your identity is
essentially political and the level of your political consciousness acts as a self-defense
as the only way to secure your survival and existence. That is why insistence on the
free expression of your self-determined identity is portrayed as political controversy,
nationalism, or terrorism by the capitalist-statist system.
As an Alevi-Kurdish woman, who became a refugee as a child, and grew up as a
Middle Eastern person in Europe, my personal story is absolutely not special or
unique when put in the context of modern Kurdish history. Like many others, I come
from a very leftist, politically active family. Knowing former or current political
prisoners, militants, growing up around demonstrations and rallies was a normal part
of my childhood, which is the case for millions of Kurds. Growing up in such a
political environment, the militancy of elderly Kurdish women leading the forefront
of demonstrations in the heart of capitalist modernity, in cities like Frankfurt, London,
Paris, their wrinkled victory signs, their battle cry, determination, have a very
educational and radicalizing effect.
But if I would have to pinpoint a single most specific turning point personally, it
would be the murder of three Kurdish women activists, Sakine Cansiz (Sara), Fidan
Dogan (Rojbîn), and Leyla Saylemez (Ronahî) on January 9th, 2013 in the heart of
Paris. I knew these women personally and ever since their murder, like thousands of
Kurdish women, we demand an answer to this question: “What was so dangerous
about these women that the system had to eliminate them?” Sakine Cansiz was one of
the co-founders of the PKK and played a historic role in the prison uprisings in
Diyarbakir in the early 1980s. The Turkish secret services’ involvement in the murder
of these three free women is an open secret. But it is clear that such a targeted attack
on such revolutionary women is a sign of weakness of the system, it exposes its
biggest fear: the organized, struggling, liberated woman. That is why an autonomous,
radical women’s movement will be the pioneering force to build a more beautiful and
free life.
Especially for Kurdish women, the slogan “Resistance is Life” gains historic
meaning, considering the attacks of four fascist nation-states, western capitalist
colonialism, and most recently feminicidal groups such as ISIS, alongside violence in
the name of a perverse concept of honor.
Therefore, I believe that the only way to find meaningful and satisfying answers to
questions on the meaning of life, on justice, on freedom, to understand oneself in
relation to the world is through loving the community. And the best way to express
this love is in the struggle.
Let’s speak a bit about Rojava. How did it become a de facto autonomous
region? On the 17th March a Constituent Assembly, the “Rojava/ Northern
Syria Democratic Federal System”, took place. Could you talk a bit about these
political developments? Is it possible to have a democratic regime without a
state? What are the intellectual, organizational and political paradigms from
which the new federal system draws upon? Could this model to be exported to
the ‘Western’ world?

Rojava’s revolution has a long and rooted history in the Kurdish struggle. For a long
time, Rojava was merely seen as an extension of Bakur (northern Kurdistan/Turkey)
or Bashur (southern Kurdistan/Iraq). Many political leaders and organizations from
the other parts retreated to Rojava in order to re-gain their strength and to mobilize.
Rojava is the smallest and the only part of Kurdistan that never led an armed struggle
against the state. It is now one of the centers of attention in Kurdistan today but it was
actually the least active part until recently.
In the Ottoman times, as well as in the early decades of the Syrian nation-state under
and shortly after the French mandate in the first part of the 20th century, while always
being in conflict with the central administrations, the Kurdish regions of Syria
enjoyed relative autonomy and liberties from time to time. This was often due to the
instable political administration in the early state-building periods of Syria, marked by
military coups and unrests. This radically changed with the rise of the Baath party in
the 1960s. In order to prevent Kurdish uprisings, the state imposed racist demographic
policies especially on the Cizire region and the secret services actively incited conflict
between the Kurds and some Arab tribes. The state also understood the art of pitting
Kurdish political groups and tribes against each other to undermine Kurdish collective
rights. This method of creating a collaborator class against the resisting Kurds has
been the policy of all four states wherein Kurdistan lies.
However, the fundaments of the revolution that we see unfold today go back to 1979,
the arrival of the PKK and Abdullah Öcalan in Syria. The cadres of the PKK not only
organized for the struggle in Turkey, but organized the local Kurdish population as
well. Öcalan personally gave educations to hundreds of ordinary community
members. Most importantly, this era marked the beginning of women becoming
politically active for the first time in Rojava. At that time, hundreds of women joined
the guerrilla from Rojava. The experience with the revolutionary culture that the PKK
introduced in Rojava at that time laid the groundwork for the revolution in Rojava,
but also dialectically influenced the PKK itself towards more communalistic outlooks.
In 2004, a year after the PYD was founded, there was an attempt to launch an uprising
in Qamishlo, but it was brutally cracked down upon by the state. Countless activists
were subject to torture, disappearance, imprisonment, intimidation, and murder by the
Baath party.
The Arab Spring, starting in 2011, was a powerful and radical moment in the Middle
East, inspiring great hope for change and freedom of the people. However, soon, local
and international powers understood how to manipulate elements of this revolutionary
time for their own interests. One of the most devastating outcomes of these cruel
calculations is the ongoing war in Syria, which left millions of people displaced,
hundred thousands of people killed, and some of the most ancient sites and natural
habitats completely destroyed and lost forever. One must respect the willpower and
dedication of activists all across Syria, who defy the international community’s lack
of conscience through their work in the dust and ashes. But it is also important to note
that there was a general lack of a thought-out, far-sighted political plan of the
democratic sections of these movements, alongside mass-murderous attacks which
soon led to their dissolution or weakness and the rise of jihadist power.
On July 19th, 2012, the Kurds in Rojava seized the opportunity and drove the regime
forces out of their regions. There was no active war in the region at the time, as the
regime prioritized battles with rebels in other parts of Syria. Early underground
council organization had already begun in 2011, but after 2012, for the first time, the
Kurds of Rojava were able to be politically active freely. These photos were truly
historic – the Kurdish flags had been banned before, as was the Kurdish language in
official use. Women were among the first people to take down the regime signs and
take up arms to protect their region. Self-defense units in Rojava are as old as 2011.
But the YPG (People’s Defense Units) were officially formed in 2012, while the
women in the YPG later formed their autonomous structure, the YPJ (Women’s
Defense Units) in January 2013.
Soon, however, especially due to Turkey’s political interests, waves of Islamist
terrorism began to attack Rojava. There is plenty of evidence to suggest collaboration
between the Turkish state under Recep Tayyip Erdogan and groups like Jabhat al
Nusra and later ISIS. Serekaniye (Ras al Ayn) was the battlefield for immense clashes
with these jihadist forces especially in 2013.
During that time, the international community was preparing for the second Geneva
conference for a peaceful solution to the war. However, it was clear that the
handpicked Syrian “opposition”, patroned by the Turkish state was not representative
of the Syiran people. The conference excluded the Kurds, although they make up an
important section of the Syrian society. Thus, in the fall of 2013, the democratic
autonomy system was announced in Rojava, as an act of defiance to the statist
international order which deliberately silenced them. On the same week as the Geneva
II conference, in January 2014, the three cantons – Afrin, Kobane, and Cizire were
declared. The social contract of Rojava’s cantons was published then.
2014 also marked the year when ISIS entered the world stage, although the people in
Rojava had long been resisting against them. Especially the massacre in August on the
Ezidis in Sinjar (Shengal in Kurdish) exposed the cruel, disgusting rapist methods of
this murderous group. However, when ISIS attacked Kobane in September 2014, it
was met with a very different enemy. Here, the people of Kobane showed the world
that an organized, mobilized, political community is undefeatable. Kobane became
humanity’s first line of defense against fascism. Women liberated Kobane from ISIS
rapists. This resonated with struggling people around the world.
When trying to understand what is “revolutionary” about Rojava, it is first of all
important to emphasize the conditions in which the people are trying to build an
alternative – an oppressed, impoverished, colonized, and brutalized population of
millions is combating jihadist rapists, a blood-thirsty regime, hostile states like
Turkey, reactionary behaviors in the own community, all while suffering political and
economic embargoes, and being located in the heart of the third world war, in
between the claws of the same old imperialist forces. Within this context, the people
of Rojava decided to say no to the nation-state system and rejected the two options
that were given to the people in Syria by the system (the status quo embodied by
Assad’s dictatorship or a regime change with an increasingly foreign determined or
jihadist character) and decided to fight for the “third way”. All of Rojava’s proposals
for a solution, have been accented around this call to reject the irrational “lesser evil”
mentality and to rely on one’s own power instead. This is illustrated in the federalist
system and its social contract, as well as the multicultural defense forces that liberate
areas from ISIS and encourage the establishment of people’s councils in the free
areas.
People sometimes forget that before the war in Kobane, all the imperialist forces were
happy to see the Kurds in Syria being massacred. If today, strong armies are aiding
the Kurds on the ground, it is because the latter have shown their fighting ability in
action. Intervention in Kobane was an opportunity for Obama to show that his anti-
ISIS concept is working, after all its failures. But in reality, the community of
Kobane, including women in their 60s had pledged a life or death struggle to arm
themselves to protect their homes, months before the coalition was formed. Their
strength did not lie in their military equipment, but their political consciousness,
organization, and commitment to defend themselves and their community. Tactical
military cooperation with states during times of life or death with no other choice for
survival are something, strategic political collaboration based on common interests
are another. Many sections in the left have been very dogmatic regarding this issue.
After the historic legacy of western colonialism in Kurdistan, the Kurds would be
suicidal to trust the same powers with their future. There are not too many luxurious
choices available in the fight against ISIS. What is important is to protect the
revolution from corruption and co-optation by imperialism and capitalism. This is
when internationalist solidarity comes in.
The big socialist experiments have resulted in deeply hierarchical power-abusing
institutions of mass murder, censorship, and oppression. They betrayed the ideals of
socialism and its promising recovery of deeply human values such as solidarity,
justice and freedom. At the same time, the radical leftists, more precisely, anarchists
often like to avoid the question of power like a hot potato. In the name of opposing
authoritarianism and hierarchy, some refuse to coordinate power altogether, which
results in a highly individualistic, apolitical, anti-social mode of being.
In Rojava, we can see a clear attempt at addressing of the question of power, which
operates not by destroying it, but communalizing it, if you will. There is no point in
denying that power exists, just as it is no use to talk about for instance gender
equality, without acknowledging the 5000 year old legacy of patriarchy. Therefore,
the communes, councils, cooperatives, academies, defense units, municipalities, and
other new organizations and sites of resistance are methods of re-locating power, by
diffusing it, decentralizing it, and ultimately democratizing it. While the commune is
the direct democratic site of practicing your citizenship through active participation
on everyday life issues that concern your existence, the delegates to the councils on
the village, town, city, regional, cantonal, and now federal level, are there to come up
with action plans and coordinate the policies adopted in the direct democratic
structures. In the academies, the people, without age limit, learn about the new
system, discuss it, criticize it, change, and challenge it. In their cooperatives, they
exercise a communal form of economy, with increasing focus on ecological issues, by
creating their self-sufficient material worlds, based on solidarity, respect for labor,
and shared values. A vibrant civil society, a new art culture, a revival in cultural work
is now decorating life in Rojava.
If we think of political self-management of active, free, and rational citizens in
voluntary associations with liberationist shared values and commonly maintained
resources, as performances of “self-defese”, we could also help overcome leftists’
hesitance of dealing with power. To abolish the state by minimizing its relevance, to
decentralize power so much that it is no longer able to establish hierarchies, to
radicalize democracy so much that it moves away from classical politics of voting and
representation to being a social culture, these should be the premises on which our
understanding of revolution should be based in today’s global capitalist economic
order, legitimized by the nation-state and patroned by patriarchy.
But there is no copy-paste solution when we look at the possibility of implementing
democratic autonomy outside of Kurdistan and the Middle East. For instance,
democratic autonomy in Rojava operates differently from Bakur (north
Kurdistan/Turkey). Every canton in Rojava has different structures. No commune is
alike. The very point of democratic autonomy is that every context knows its
conditions, needs, desires, problems, and solutions the best. Therefore, there could not
possibly be any picture book way of going about affairs. Standardization of society is
a concept that arose with the nation-state. So the very idea that democratic autonomy
as implemented in Rojava could be applied in exactly the same way in a place like a
metropole in Europe is against the notion of democratic autonomy, as it would deny
the agency of the community concerned with all of its complex, unique, and particular
dimensions that require creative and flexible solutions.
The principles of democratic autonomy indeed have universal appeal, however, their
implementation requires local proposals, adaptations, and actions.
You’ve written about the exoticisation of Kurdish women before, could you talk
more about this? Is their participation in armed struggle a new phenomenon or
does it have a longer history? Is there any feminist analytic prism that can help
us to condense the lived experience of Kurdish women’s movement? How does it
differentiate itself from the western, liberal feminism?

The most crucial element of the Kurdish freedom struggle, in Rojava and beyond, is
the emphasis on the liberation of women, not as a positive side effect of the
revolution, but as its heart and soul, its condition, its very method indeed. Many
revolutionary struggles over the centuries have either completely erased women’s role
in social justice, or they portrayed women’s elevated situation as some kind of
outcome of the general shift towards freedom. However, as the Kurdish women’s
movement, we believe that the first systematic overthrow of social justice, communal
life, and freedom-based society was the rise of patriarchy and the fall of women. This
is basically the history of Mesopotamia, a region once patroned by goddesses, now
home of modern day sex slavery. The more one analyzes the mentality of capitalism,
beyond mere economic reductionism, the more the mask of the state system will fall.
The more the state is analyzed, not only as an institution, but as a mentality, the more
one realizes the role of patriarchy in institutionalizing it. When you look at the nuclear
family, you can see that it is modeled after the state and vice versa. And thus, there is
a fundamental link between the oppressive patriarchal family and society, the state,
and capitalism and their devastating effects on the environment, on communities, and
on women.
As I said earlier, a lot of the social dynamics in Rojava changed upon the arrival of
the PKK in Syria. But the section that experienced the most radical transformation are
the women. The arrival of the PKK marked the beginning of women’s political
activism in Rojava. They were doing underground illegal work for the organization,
but also thousands of women from Rojava joined the PKK at the time and many
assumed leadership positions in the PKK over the decades.
There is a tendency in the recent journalistic, academic, and even leftist-activist
engagement with Rojava to treat the YPJ as a phenomenon that has nothing to do with
the ideology of the PKK, which could not be further from the truth. The fact that
women have liberated so many areas from the rapist hands of ISIS is a direct result of
the legacy of the PKK.
Within the PKK, too an immense struggle for women’s liberation had to be led.
Within the women guerrillas there were also class struggles. But soon, especially with
Öcalan’s support, the women realized that in order to liberate their emancipation from
the male gaze, they need to organize autonomously and separately to strengthen their
internal solidarity first. Thus, the first women’s army, then a party, and soon, entire
political and social structures were formed. All of this was accompanied by immense
struggles of women in the prisons, on the streets, and in the mountains. Today, we see
these guerrilla ideals spreading from the mountains to the communities in the cities
and villages in Kurdistan.
Women are not mere participants in the Rojava revolution, they are in fact the
pioneers and guarantors of freedom. They set the tone of the policies, they veto ill-
measured decisions, they form their autonomous structures and create their own self-
defense and decision-making mechanisms. They have created a political environment
in Rojava that establishes that violence against women, misogyny, and patriarchal
attitudes will no longer be tolerated as the norm. This increasingly impacts the society
as a whole. No revolution can succeed without a fundamental shift in mentality away
from hierarchy and domination but in favor of freedom. The oldest, thus most rooted,
wired, and enshrined constitution of hierarchical civilization today is male
domination. Subverting this legacy requires not only immense mental effort and
necessary political and social institutions, but also self-defense.
Unlike western liberal feminisms, the Kurdish women’s movement does not merely
seek representation, recognition and rights. The struggle that we are engaged in is not
one of being satisfied with bureaucratic reforms, cosmetic changes to laws, and
illusions about equal opportunity. This model has been imposed by the nation-state
conforming international system and its institutions and does nothing but de-radicalize
struggles and resistance fronts. If the entire premises, pillars, frameworks, referents,
operations, and mechanisms of the global order rely on the enslavement of women,
the issue goes beyond any band-aid solutions that liberalism can at best offer. Liberal
feminism, as some call it “corporate feminism”, is a sneaky attempt to chain the rage
of women, who face an international culture of organized rape, violence, humiliation
and harassment. It is racist and classist in nature, and further reinforces different
structural violence systems. Our goal is not mere gender equality, but the destruction
of patriarchy.
At the same time, radical feminisms also often failed to connect to the community’s
problems and remained marginal. Despite their often honest and genuine intentions
and militant means, they either alienated society by acting through methods that
operate on a different frequency than the social realities, or by seeking very
individualized freedom options.
Many culturally rooted feminist movements have often had to compromise the
women’s struggle for the so-called “wider” cause, such as national liberation or anti-
colonialism. While being deeply rooted in the community, these movements were
often stripped off their radical elements for the sake of what is perceived to be
“general” liberation, under the banner “our society is not ready yet”.
The Kurdish women’s movement takes all of these experiences as lessons and regards
all women’s struggles as its heritage. It is radical, it is militant. But it is also full of
love and compassion. It is very realistic and attached to the community, from which it
derives its legitimacy. But it also implements its utopias in the here and now, rather
than projecting ideals into a future that may never come. The freedom movement has
shifted the women’s place from being the home to all spheres of life. We do not
believe in overthrowing the system by turning it upside down over night. Above all,
society must go through a fundamental mental revolution that sets the tone for the
social revolution. How can a worker, conditioned by the factory, be expected to break
with the mental walls that the excruciating workplace imposes on them? How can a
woman be expected to pioneer society, if her worth has been measured by her
sexuality and reproductive abilities and a perverted concept of honor all her life?
Education, political literacy, direct action are the remedies to establish a democratic,
empowering culture and social climate that will re-activate the stem cells of society
and its communalistic, ethical, freedom-loving, creative core.
This is why our movement is so colorful and attracts millions of women in Kurdistan
and beyond. From all over the world, women have gone to Kurdistan to seek
perspective and learn. Our movement, while having strong principles, has a place for
everyone and empowers a broad spectrum of the society without losing its radical
core. We do not believe in elitist abstract feminist theory if it cannot touch the life of a
rural woman. We also do not believe in approaches so apolitical and careful that they
end up achieving nothing. We do not want to fall into the traps of reinforcing male
concepts of liberation, but set our own terms. For that, we give everyone the tools to
amplify their own voices and thoughts. This happens best by women forming their
autonomous and separate structures in the form of communes, councils, cooperatives,
academies, centres, and if necessary defense units. We rely on our own power rather
than trusting the good heart of men or governments in a patriarchal-capitalist-statist
society.
As young Kurdish women, we are very lucky to inherit this legacy. The knowledge
that women in Kurdistan have led village uprisings, prison hunger strikes and
rebellions, founded guerrilla armies, and risked their lives for political causes of
course enriches our identity and breaks social chains and taboos. At the same time, it
sets the standards of the struggle very high. Rejecting the backward, patriarchal
notions of “honor”, our women’s movement redefined freedom as honor. Especially
being surrounded and nourished by independent, strong-willed and freedom-loving
women, who leave their private lives behind to struggle for revolution and freedom
shaped our self-perception and does not confine us to a one-dimensional view of
womanhood.

In Kurdistan there are refugee camps that follow a different logic regarding
their function compared to these that European Union constructed recently in
order host the flows of refugees from the middle-east. The Kurdish camps are
based on the ideas of autonomy and self-management Would like to explain why
these camps were built and in what ways these differ from those of European
Union’s authorities?

In Kurdistan, some refugee camps, especially over the last years, have modeled
themselves on the ideal of democratic autonomy. Particularly Makhmour refugee
camp in Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned as the picture book example of democratic
autonomy. The camp consists of tens of thousands of Kurds whose villages were
destroyed by the Turkish army in the 1990s and who had to settle in the Iraqi part of
Kurdistan. The camp was collectively constructed and the inhabitants turned the
hostile environment into a green paradise, despite attacks from all sides. A people’s
council and a woman’s council coordinate the everyday affairs through committees.
An autonomous educational system has been built up, as well as a health care system
and economic structures. When ISIS attacked Makhmour in 2014, the people were
able to defend themselves and evacuate the camp, due to their experience with self-
organization and their political culture. Before Rojava’s revolution, our first
experiences with our new system was this refugee camp. Similar experiences now
emerge in other refugee camps in Kurdistan that become touched by the ideas of
democratic autonomy. The Ezidi Kurds of Sinjar (Shengal in Kurdish), after
experiencing the most brutal massacre by ISIS in 2014, leading to the sexual
enslavement of thousands of women, today organize their society anew. They created
people’s councils and women’s councils and practice self-determination for the first
time in their history, after all the trauma, murder, and violence. This is the opposite to
the liberal, humanitarian, apolitical approach of European governmental models of
dealing with the refugee crisis.
The fundamental difference between the autonomous refugee camps in Kurdistan, that
organize themselves according to the principles of democratic autonomy, and camps
under the supervision of the international order are their attitude towards the nation-
state, power, and autonomy. To exist, to be aware of the reasons why one has become
a refugee requires political awareness and direct action. One cannot surrender one’s
will and life to the state, which is the root cause of displacement and war.
Empowerment of refugees does not work by pacifying them or trying to assimilate or
integrate them into dominant systems.
There is a concerted effort to de-politicize the refugee identity, which is charged with
politics. Refugees are expected to be nice, grateful, sweet, and ever submissive to the
host country’s expectations. But refugees are not apolitical, blank pages that come to
another country to start a new life, leaving everything behind. The refugee identity is
something that follows you forever, it is extremely charged, it is fundamentally
political. It is full of contradictions, ugly realities, and traumas.
It is completely useless to tell a refugee that they are welcome and to propagate that
the world would be a better place, if we all loved and hugged each other. The images
we see in the media about the “good refugees”, who are holding up signs “thanking”
Europe, etc are typical instances of the dominant narrative trying to appease racism at
home and depoliticizing the inherently political nature of the crisis. People who want
to support refugees need to accept the autonomy of refugees, their right to exist and
assert themselves and their sacred right to be political beings with their own agency.
This does not mean to expect refugees to assimilate into the dominant culture of
Europe with its pseudo-democratic, liberal pretentions, when it is European weapons
in the hands of European allies and military alliances that bomb the homelands of
people who become refugees. Supporting refugees means to be their comrade, to look
at the root causes that lead people into displacement. It means to accept western
responsibility for these people’s misery and to expose it. Nobody should have any
illusions about the fact that the same EU governments which produce heavy arms to
sell them to despotic regimes, and whose policies contributed to the chaos in places
like the Middle East, are directly responsible for thousands of refugees drowning in
the Mediterranean Sea.
As a person who became a refugee as a child, which is the case for the vast majority
of my community, it is frustrating to see the hypocrisy of people shouting “Refugees
Welcome” and trying to cut any political commitment out of that statement, as if the
causes of the refugee crisis were not political. In the 90s, German tanks and weapons
were destroying Kurdistan in the name of the Turkish nation-state. What is the
difference today? History is repeating itself, no matter how many blankets we hand
out, if we do not challenge the system that enables this circle of displacement.
Helping refugees is an internationalist, revolutionary task that begins by
fundamentally questioning the state, capitalism, global arms trade, and the systems of
power that enable all of these wars. It is important to make refugees feel welcome, but
abolishing the causes that led them to become refugees is the ultimate road to justice.
That is why we must ensure to mobilize the radical potential that lies in the identity of
the refugee. But this must happen organically. The democratic autonomy structures
that the Kurdish freedom movement has created in Europe for instance (social centres,
people’s councils, women’ councils, the youth movement, etc.) were pretty much set
up by former refugees, who establish structures parallel to the states they live in.

In the last Turkish general elections the People’s Democratic Party polled at
13.12%, becoming the third largest parliamentary group. Do you think that the
parliamentary means that it uses can advance substantially the interests of
Turkey’s Kurds? What do you think about its proposals for a radical
decentralization of Powers from Ankara to regional assemblies?

It needs to be well understood that the Kurds in Turkey never relied on parliaments
and party politics only. The approach of the Kurdish freedom movement towards
states is one of “negotiation and struggle”. This means that one needs to create and
express their own existence by building their autonomous structures without reliance
on the state, but cannot just pretend like the state does not exist.
Hence, the question is not whether parliamentary gains will bring about change. They
will not. Many cases illustrate that. The question is, as long as the state exists, what
kind of other resistance centers one can organize and what kind of self-defense
mechanisms ones has in place to protect oneself from attacks on one’s political
agency.
On one hand, parliamentary politics can serve a strong purpose. The very act of
bringing Alevi and Ezidi Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, leftist Muslim Turks, women
and men, into this parliament, which denies all of these identities, is a historical
political statement. In a parliament with a constitution that states that every citizen of
this country is a Turk, the HDP is representing the “others” of the country.
But on the other hand, the same Kurds who voted for the HDP have build barricades
and dug trenches against the state today. People voted in an atmosphere of
intimidation, harassment, and death by the state. Nobody had any illusions about the
intensions of the state, especially after the first elections in June. They rooted their
faith in their own power and organization.
Several things can be learned from the experiences of radical or leftist legal-official
politics over the last few years, especially with the rise of wars, austerity, and racism
in different parts of the world. Official or statist politics in the form of elections and
party politics certainly have mobilizing value and can pose limited threats to the
system by using its own means. However, we should think in terms of “centres of
resistance”, where every person has a role to play and embodies a different part in the
struggle – identity is part of this (women, workers, minorities, students, youth, etc.).
And every place and method is one area of struggle. For example, elections is one
(and obviously among the least radical) area, but the street, the university, the
trench/barricade, the family, the workplace, etc. are also areas of struggle, deriving
their legitimacy from different sources and requiring different methods and
approaches. Each area of struggle needs its self-defense not only against the system
but sometimes also against other struggle areas. So in that sense, methods of struggle
do not need to contradict each other. They go hand in hand. Contradictions and
conflicts within struggles can actually provide them with more democratic characters
internally. But what is damaging to a struggle is the reliance on only one area of
struggle (for example only elections, or only identity, or only violence, etc.). Thus, if
a movement can establish a dialectical relationship between many sites, it can be more
successful in finding solutions to social issues. At the heart of movements must be the
focus on creating solutions by building alternatives to the status quo. If one only
defines one’s political alternative in the form of “anti” something, it will always
remain in the passive and reactionary position. What one fights “for” must take the
centre of the stage.
As envisioned by the Kurdish freedom movement, the state cannot be abolished over
night. Therefore, the right method cannot be to completely ignore the state’s existence
by refusing to acknowledge it. This might work for individual life choices or small
autonomies. But this cannot liberate a population of millions of people. Because when
we talk about the state, we do not just refer to a specific state with a specific
government at a specific time and space. The state is a thousands of years old
institution, which has manifested its hegemony in economy, science, ideology,
religion, culture, arts, and media. It is a mentality. Overcoming such a mentality
means to create a system that can truly be an alternative to it. Relying on statist
politics without revolutionary alternatives means to fall into the tragic trap of
reformism. Rejecting the system without realizing a feasible alternative means to
become marginal and weak. So while the state is there, one needs to adapt to the
existing conditions and re-create oneself constantly in order to minimize the state’s
influence on everyday life on a daily basis, without losing the focus on the greater
goal of dismantling the state altogether.
And this is why decentralization is so crucial, even if hard to achieve under such
circumstances as under Erdogan’s authoritarian, fascist rule in Turkey. In the era
following the coup in July 2016, we have seen a brutal crackdown, not on the
coupists, but on whatever was left of Turkey’s civil society. Journalists, human rights
activists, lawyers, teachers, community organizers, artists, unions – nobody is spared
from the purge. This sort of raid would have been impossible without the year-long
war that preceded the coup, in which the Turkish army completely destroyed entire
towns in Kurdistan and murdered hundreds of civilians. The state attacks regions such
as Sur in Diyarbakir (Amed), Cizre, Silopi, Nusaybin, Yüksekova, etc. especially,
because these were areas where the HDP received more than 90% of the votes and
where the project of democratic autonomy had developed fruitful grassroots
institutions, such as communes, cooperatives, alternative academies, ecological
projects, schools, athletic and artistic work, people’s councils, and a immensely strong
autonomous women’s movement. Before Rojava’s revolution, the democratic
confederalism system was implemented in Bakur (north Kurdistan).
Note that the Turkish state is much more concerned with eradicating these sites of
people’s self-management than trying to rid itself of the coup mechanism that has
prevailed in the state structures for decades. The only true and powerful opposition to
the state currently is the left which gravitates around the Kurdish freedom movement.
That is why all three mainstream parties can ally against the HDP, even if some of
them are affected by the crackdowns themselves. What all of them hold in common is
the desire to preserve the establishment of the Turkish nation-state which is founded
on the denial and rejection of the “other” through massacre, genocide, and
assimilation. Therefore, it is clear that the real threat to the authorities is the
organized, politically aware and active community and its autonomous structures. One
ought not to expect that the state will give local autonomies and rights, as these would
merely be reforms that maintain the system ultimately. One needs to take it through
collective action through self-reliance and self-defense. And now that so many HDP
members, including the co-presidents and several MPs, are in jail, the people resort
back to alternative, more radical means of politics and action, beyond the ballot.

Do you believe that Abdullah Öcalan should be released?

Of course. Not only is Abdullah Öcalan’s capture a result of an international

conspiracy, led by a group of collaborating states and their secret services, his process
and current conditions also fundamentally violate international human rights
standards. He has been kept in solitary confinement for over 18 years and was the
only prisoner on the Imrali prison island, guided by 1000 soldiers, for more than a
decade. He has not met his lawyers for more than 5 years. For more than a year and a
half, until recently, no family member was allowed to see him. Millions of Kurds
have made it clear on several occasions that they consider Öcalan to be their
representative in the peace talks with the Turkish state. He announced several
ceasefires and came up with a comprehensive road map to peace in Turkey and north
Kurdistan, for a just solution in which the peoples of this geography can look each
other in the eye again after all the pain. By marginalizing Öcalan’s voice, not allowing
him to see his family, lawyers, and political delegations, the state is putting an
embargo on a peaceful solution. Öcalan’s intentions are clear, he has written
thousands of pages on his thoughts on peace and justice in this conflict, but it is the
state that keeps sabotaging a life in dignity. The system does not have a problem with
a Kurdish collaborator state-like entity, but a democratic free Kurdistan that is an
antidote to the nation-state is brutally attacked. In Öcalan’s personage, the identity of
the free Kurdish people and their democratic will is being held hostage.
But Öcalan is not only a political leader, he is also a thinker, who managed to
popularize radical and unusual causes such as ecology and feminism among millions
of oppressed people. Today, you can find Turks, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, and
people from around the world finding inspiration in his ideas and deeply appreciating
his leadership. Especially for Kurdish women, Öcalan has been the most reliable
comrade. The fact that the Kurdish women’s movement is one of the most organized
forces of women’s liberation in the world today owes much to Öcalan’s full support
for women’s rage, anger, and uprising. Kobane, the bastion of resistance against ISIS
fascism was liberated with the slogan “Bijî Serok Apo!” (Long live leader Apo –
nickname for Abdullah). His leadership, especially after the paradigm shift, created an
entire community of millions of leaders. That is why today, the Kurdish freedom
movement that organizes itself around his ideas makes up a radical, revolutionary
force in the Middle East and is willing to fight no matter what it takes for a region that
can give women their smile back.
To initiate the renaissance of the Middle East, to lay the fundaments of a free life
based on solidarity and friendship of all communities, to see the women of our region
regain their rightful place in history again, Abdullah Öcalan must be free!

Dilar Dirik is from northern Kurdistan (Turkey). She is an activist of the Kurdish
women's movement and writes on the Kurdish freedom struggle for an international
audience. She is currently working on her PhD at the Sociology Department of
Cambridge University