With the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, the restructuring process in the Middle East has picked up speed. The current events and developments in Syria cannot be understood in isolation from the dynamics in the region as a whole, but are part of what the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan called the ‘Third World War’: “If we shatter the Orientalist paradigm, we see that the end of the Cold War for the Middle East is tantamount to the leap of the hot war to a higher level. The fact that the Gulf War took place in 1991, one year after the end of the Cold War, confirms this view.”1
For Öcalan, the global crisis of civilisation is most evident today in the prevailing conditions in the Middle East. He expressed his views on the current situation in the Middle East and the likely developments as well as the Kurdish question in the midst of this chaos comprehensively in his hand-written submissions to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which was later published in five volumes under the title “Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization”.
In the fourth volume of his Manifesto of Democratic Civilisation, entitled “Democratic Civilization: Ways Out of the Civilization Crisis in the Middle East”, Öcalan devotes himself to a detailed analysis of the Middle East and emphasises the hopelessness of the nation-state as a solution model: “We cannot talk enough about the imposition of the nation state, which is carving up Middle Eastern culture as if with a knife. For the most incurable of the traumas suffered was triggered by this knife. (…) The wound continues to bleed. Let’s look at the everyday conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India, the slaughter in Kashmir, in the Uighur region of China, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the bloody struggle of Chechens and others in Russia, the fighting in Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and all Arab countries, the conflicts of Kurds with Turks, Arabs and Persians, the sectarian struggles in Iran, the ethnic slaughter in the Balkans, the extermination of Armenians and Greeks and Suryoye in Anatolia – can it be denied that the countless ongoing and completely unregulated conflicts and wars like these are a product of the capitalist quest for hegemony?”2
The validity of Öcalan’s theses about the region are being confirmed by the latest developments in Syria and Kurdistan. Against this background, the Academy of Democratic Modernity (ADM) is publishing a section from the fifth volume of the Manifesto of Democratic Civilisation, which was published in Turkish in 2007 and will be made available in other languages in the future. In this last volume, Öcalan places the Kurdish issues in the historical context of the Middle East and analyses the crisis in the Middle East and the solution perspective of democratic modernity.
The excerpt from Öcalan’s fifth volume of the Manifesto of Democratic Civlization follows:
The dissolution of the nation-state in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the structural failure of capitalist modernity
The September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York, with a high probability of conspiracy, was, in reality, an attempt by the capitalist system to initiate “World War III.” Radical Islam, which had already been declared as the new enemy by NATO and thus by the world’s hegemonic system after the dissolution of Soviet Russia in the 1990s, was actually being used as an ideological mask. In essence, it was about ensuring the full establishment of the capitalist hegemony left unfinished in the Muslim cultural countries of the Middle East after World War I. In particular, it was about properly integrating the Muslim countries of the Middle East. In particular, it was a matter of properly integrating the so-called rogue and bandit states, such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., into the system and, generally, reinforcing US world hegemony. “World War III” fought under US hegemony was to fill the hegemonic vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet system. In addition, the rise of China, a potential new competitor, had to be prevented. The first move into Afghanistan aimed to act urgently and take the initiative to prevent Russia and China from filling the hegemonic vacuum in Central Asia. Al Qaeda and the Taliban were the fronts to this end. If desired, they could have been eliminated in twenty-four hours. But to legitimize the war, their existence had to occupy the agenda continuously. According to the preparations, the war’s first movement was a success. The offensive in Iraq achieved its objective as quickly as technological superiority. The objective was to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. This objective was achieved, but the real difficulty arose in the political sphere. After the overthrow of a rogue regime like the Iraqi one (it can also be called the rogue government of the system), all the evils accumulated throughout the history of civilizations began to spill out one by one as if Pandora’s Box had been opened.
Iraq was not just any country. It was the region where the central civilization system was first established, and it was its cradle for thousands of years. It was the region where all ethnicities, religions and sects were concentrated. Politically, it required either a strict despotic regime or the most radical democratic system. Western liberal political regimes had no chance of being implemented. Nor was it a field that could be analyzed by Western sociology. In short, it was not a culture that Western ideological and political paradigms could easily overcome. The situation that arose was similar to that of Great Britain after World War I. Military victory could not play the same role in the political arena. On the contrary, with the overthrow of the traditional despotic regimes, the real social problems were exposed and were no longer the problems that capitalist modernity could confront. The same cycle had been repeating itself since the Sumerians. Every step taken to find a solution only aggravated the problems. Above all, the cultures of the Iraqi region revealed the extent to which the practices of the nation-state were a source of insolvency and magnification of the problems. Western modernity had no other tool than the nation-state. What would follow after its collapse would be a typical situation of chaos and anarchy.
The situation in Afghanistan was no different from that in Iraq. There, too, was no ready substitute for the nation-state. In fact, the situation that emerged after the breakdown of the shell of the nation-state throughout the region was similar. The veneer of the nation-state had only allowed modernity to be perceived on the surface. When this veneer was scraped away, the reality that emerged was the cultural problems accumulated over thousands of years. Traditional despotic regimes had only suppressed cultures through oppression. It was not possible for them to destroy these cultures. The veneer of modernity was too superficial. At the slightest movement, it would spill over, and the real picture would emerge. While the US hegemony went to Damietta for rice, it lost the bulgur at home.3 This was exactly the dead end of the hegemons of modernity. For Middle Eastern nation-statism, the process of Iraq with the execution of Saddam Hussein was similar to the end of monarchical regimes with the execution of Louis XVI in the French Revolution. Just as with the execution of Louis XVI, the monarchical regimes never recovered and entered the era of extinction; with the execution of Saddam Hussein, the fascist regimes of the nation-states would never recover and enter the era of extinction.
Despite the best efforts of the hegemonic system, the restoration of the nation-state in Iraq and Afghanistan is not working, just as the restoration of monarchical regimes in Europe in the period 1815-1830 did not work; it is not only Iraq and Afghanistan that are experiencing the disintegration of the nation-state. From the nation-state of Kyrgyzstan on the border with China to Morocco on the Atlantic coast, from the nation-states of Yemen and Sudan to the nation-states of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the South Caucasus (the North is similar), all nation-states are experiencing similar crises. Pakistan is no different from Afghanistan. Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan are in constant turmoil. Egypt faces regime collapse at the slightest democratic softening. Algeria has not yet fully emerged from civil war. Turkey, a self-proclaimed island of stability, is only kept afloat by Gladio’s4 special operations. There is not a single country in the Middle East without problems. The US and its allies are far from solving the crises, even if they are concentrating all their troops. Moreover, the problems cannot be solved militarily. What they label as Islamic terrorism are spies of their own creation. There is no military force to fight them. Perhaps there is Iran. Even if Iran is attacked, more and more conflicting forces will emerge.
All indicators regarding the Middle East crisis show that nation-states are unlikely to find a solution through restoration. In fact, the US hegemony wanted to restore the nation-state after the 1990s, similar to the restoration of the monarchical regimes of 1815-1830. However, just as the restoration of monarchical regimes failed, so did the restoration of nation-states, especially in the Middle East. Moreover, the recent deep crisis in the EU countries, which is the cradle of the nation-state, is also a crisis of the nation-state. If the EU wants to overcome the crisis, it has to undertake radical transformations in the nation-state. The crisis will worsen as long as the nation-states maintain their current state of sovereignty. However, for sixty years, the European Union has been trying to develop by limiting the sovereignty of the nation-state. Since even these efforts are not enough, the globalization of the nation-state crisis is clearly evident. The question is no longer whether or not the nation-states, and thus capitalist modernity, are going through a structural crisis; it is about what will happen after the crisis. With what and how will the crisis and chaos be overcome? If we compare the situation with the aftermath of the collapse of Rome or the Ottoman Empire, it will be necessary to discuss and find solutions as to what kind of regimes, political formations and common forms of social life will develop in place of nation-states.
We wanted to develop debates on democratic modernity to assess the nation-state crisis and its consequences. Many events in the Middle East, which have long since gone beyond the dimension of the tragedy and have led to major catastrophes, are no longer limited to the peoples concerned (Armenians, Assyrians, Hellenes, Jews, Palestinians, Kurds, Turks, Arabs, Afghans, etc.), but have engulfed the entire social life of the region. Capitalist modernity and the nation-state regimes, which caused these great tragedies and catastrophes, can no longer offer this system and its regimes as a solution. Therefore, it is of great importance to intensify the debates on modernity and evaluate the possibilities of democratic modernity as a way out of the crisis and as a solution.
The nation-state balance in the Middle East and the Kurdish Question
Just as the current fundamental problems of the Middle East are rooted in the construction of nation-states, the Kurdish Question is also rooted in this construction. The political map of the Middle East, drawn in World War I, was designed to create problems that would last at least a century. What the Treaty of Versailles was to Europe, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was to the Middle East. The Treaty of Versailles, known in Europe as “the peace that ended peace,” led to World War II. The Sykes-Picot Agreement played the same role. Instead of achieving Ottoman peace, it dragged the Middle East into a deep crisis and a dead end. All the nation-states that emerged at the end of the war were organizations at war internally against their own people and at war externally with each other. The liquidation of traditional society meant war against the peoples. The ruler-drawn maps were a call for wars between artificial states.
Only the foundation of Israel in its present form has overcome one hundred years of war. It is unpredictable how many more wars it can provoke. Little Lebanon is constantly at war. Syria is under permanent martial law and at war with Israel. The Iraqi state was already characterized by internal and external warfare throughout its existence. Iran’s position is no different. The logic behind the construction of all Middle Eastern nation-states is not based on solving existing social problems but on multiplying these problems and maintaining these nation-states as permanent regimes of internal and external war. The main reason is the construction of Israel as a core of hegemonic powers. Unless we understand Israel as a hegemonic core, we will not be able to understand how the balance or imbalance between the nation-states of the Middle East is constructed and established. The Kurdish Question and the disintegration of Kurdistan are the clearest proof of this determination.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement (a division of the Middle East between Great Britain and France) is the basis of the Treaty of Sèvres. The Treaty of Sèvres provided for the dismemberment of Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia. The National War of Independence did not completely abolish the Treaty of Sèvres, as intended, but partially neutralized it. The treaty was largely implemented. A minimal Republic was accepted as a requirement of Sèvres. Again, the cession of Mosul-Kirkuk to the British resulted from Sèvres. It is thus the second major fragmentation of Kurdistan in modern times (the first fragmentation dates back to the beginning of modern times, to the Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin of 1639). It is the main cause of the Kurdish Question. The two minimal nation-states established in Iraq and Anatolia are two acts of war that dismembered the bodies of Kurdistan and the Kurds. Unless we understand the nation-state in this way, we cannot understand either the partition of Kurdistan or the fact that the Kurdish Question has lasted so long and remains unresolved. Since 1920, since the foundations were laid, the regime that the Iraqi state has applied only to the Kurds has been a ninety-year war. Today’s events explain well that this state is also a war regime against its own society. Even from the point of view of the Kurds alone, it is a reality that everyone now admits that the “White Turk” nation-state has been applying a special war regime for eighty-five years that has led to genocide. Struggles within the regime have not been lacking from the beginning until now. The problems inflicted on the Kurds are not spontaneous; they are planned and perpetuated as the most important part of the administration of the Middle East, which consists of drowning it in problems.
It is necessary to analyze very well why the hegemonic powers of capitalist modernity have oppressed the Kurds for almost two hundred years, first against Iran and the Ottoman Empire, and after World War I against the nation-states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. There is not one purpose in this, but many. The first purpose is to deepen the discrepancies between the Kurds and the Arab, Turkish and Iranian peoples with whom they have coexisted throughout history and with whom they have a more or less legitimate status, to push them into turmoil by altering the existing status and to keep them in a state of permanent war with each other. The second objective is to gain large territories for the Armenian, Assyrian and Jewish nation-states, which they anticipate with the liquidation of the Kurds. In this way, they will not only get three nation-states that will play the role of buffers and intermediaries that will remain absolutely dependent on them, but they will also get all of them, and in a sense, the core of the Middle East, to remain dependent on them by keeping the Kurds in constant conflict and trouble with their Muslim, Christian and Jewish neighbors. Of course, the hegemonic powers of capitalist modernity will not refrain from presenting themselves from time to time as savior angels of this fragmented Kurdistan and the Kurds beset by problems that go as far as genocides. If we look at the evolution of events up to today, we can safely say that what was planned with these treaties of “peace that ends peace” has largely been put into practice.
We can point to events in Iraqi Kurdistan as evidence supporting these views. All the Kurdish leaders who initially attempted to lead the Kurds of present-day Iraqi Kurdistan were crushed first by the Ottomans and then by the Iraqi authorities. Britain itself resorted to force to do so. By keeping Arabs and Kurds in a permanent state of conflict, it tied both to itself. Meanwhile, with the promise of an independent homeland, the Assyrians were sent to the Kurdish principalities, to Bedirxan Bey5. The Ottomans crushed Bedirxan Bey, and all were tied to them. Israel, established after World War II as the hegemonic core, intervened. Israel, which was based on the Iraqi Kurdish Jews who were in the area long before its establishment, wanted to design and establish a similar proto-Israeli nation-state based on the Kurds (mainly the KDP) as a second strategic formation, just as it had been based on a “White Turk” nation-state (the CHP dictatorship) built based on the Sabbatean Turkish Jews called Dönmeh together with the Turkish bureaucrats in Anatolia long before its establishment. Of course, we cannot attribute the development of the Kurdish political formation solely to external hegemonic calculations. We want to point out that the balance of nation-states in the Middle East is designed and implemented by the hegemonic powers of capitalist modernity. The determining will is not, as has been claimed, that of internal elite forces. The leadership of the national bourgeoisie is a complete fallacy. The fact that some radical bourgeois or petty bourgeois elements play a leading role does not mean that they are the determining force in the system. For example, the emergence of leaders such as Mustafa Kemal, Cemal Abdülnasır and Saddam Hussein does not prove that they were the leaders who determined the nation-state system. After all, the system is adept at reversing the roles of these personalities in nation-state building. And it has reversed them. Even the role of socialist leaders like Lenin and Stalin, who wanted to build the Russian nation-state system based on socialism, was reversed seventy years later. The same can be said of Mao’s China. We want to underline that as long as the paradigm of capitalist modernity is not overcome in all its dimensions, it and its hegemonic forces will be the main determining force.
Although belated, the establishment of the Kurdish nation-state core can only be properly understood in the context of capitalist modernity. Kurdistan and the Kurdish nation-state core play an important role in Israel’s hegemonic regional calculations. Just as the Turkish Anatolian nation-state played a leading (proto-Israeli) role in the emergence of Israel, the Kurdish nation-state plays a very important role in Israel’s hegemonic calculations towards Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The fact that the powers that founded Israel supported the construction of the KDP as early as 1945 and have provided it with de facto support through Turkey since the 1960s is linked to their strategic and hegemonic calculations in the region. The formation of the Kurdish Federated State by the Kurds, linked with Gladio since the 1990s, on the basis of the liquidation of the PKK, cannot be considered apart from these hegemonic strategic calculations. The fact that they came against the PKK in a united movement explains this very well. One of the most important objectives of the Second Gulf War in the 2000s was the permanent establishment of the Kurdish nation-state core in Iraq. Those who made and implemented this decision are the same forces that dismembered Kurdistan in the last century and kept the Kurds on the brink of a massacre. Whatever the calculations of the system require is done. Today, the Kurdish nation-state core is as necessary to the capitalist system as Israel. The Middle East has an indispensable strategic role in balancing power and nation-states. For the security and oil needs of the system in general and the security and hegemony of Israel in particular, the Kurdish nation-state core cannot be renounced, and whatever is necessary to strengthen it will be done. Thus, another very important link designed in the 1920s is added to the system. The White Kurdish nation-state is as important to the culmination of the system as the “White Turk” nation-state was to its beginning.
To avoid any misunderstanding in this regard, we must emphasize the following points. The mere fact that nation-states are built according to the logic of the system should not lead to the conclusion that they are unimportant to the peoples or that they are absolute enemies. On the contrary, it is necessary to see the nation-states as very important institutions and to regulate their relations and contradictions with the program of the popular democratic society. The programs of democratic society do not seek to destroy the nation-states and become states themselves. They expect nation-states to respect their democratic society projects on the basis of a constitutional compromise. They demand that democratic society projects and practices are recognized as a fundamental constitutional right as a basic condition for peaceful coexistence. They are based on mutual recognition of each other’s existence and on making this a constitutional provision.
It is clear that Kurdistan and the Kurds have taken their place as an active and dynamic reality in the balance of both the nation-state and democratic society in the Middle East of the 2000s. The anti-Kurdish alliance with Iran and Syria, led by the Republic of Turkey, has little chance of success because it goes against the calculations of the capitalist system. The alliance’s effort in this regard lies in the collaborationism of a system without Kurds and Kurdistan. However, it is no longer possible for Israel and the USA to accept this approach. This collaborationism of imperialism without the Kurds and Kurdistan, applied between 1920 and 2000, is no longer a viable policy. There is a strong possibility that the Kurdish nation-state, already built in alliance with Iraq, will soon be recognized by Iran, Syria and Turkey. However, the difficulty lies in the fact that the liquidation of the PKK and the KCK is imposed in exchange for this recognition. This is also an empty demand. From now on, both the reality of the democratic society of the KCK and the reality of the nation-state of the Kurdish bourgeois alliance will attempt to determine the fate of Kurdistan and the Kurds based on a certain legal compromise. For the first time in the modern history of the Middle East, the power of the democratic society and the power of the nation-state play a joint role. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine and even Turkey, and the deep dead ends they have caused, contain important lessons for the Kurds. To avoid repeating the bloody past of nation-state politics with rigid borders, they will take as their basis a dual system, i.e., a system based on the reconciliation of the KCK based on democratic modernity and the Iraqi Kurdish nation-state based on capitalist modernity. In this way, the lessons of the nation-statism of real socialism will have been learned. The Kurds and Kurdistan will be neither a second Israel nor like other nation-states. They will be the leading forces and the space of a new synthesis of modernity that overcomes the fundamental problems they all face.
Footnotes:
1Abdullah Öcalan, Manifesto of Democratic Civilization (Fourth Volume), Democratic Civilization: Ways Out of the Civilization Crisis in the Middle East
2Abdullah Öcalan, Manifesto of Democratic Civilization (Fourth Volume), Democratic Civilization: Ways Out of the Civilization Crisis in the Middle East
3The idiom ‘to lose one’s home while going to Dimyat’a rice’ is used in the sense of losing what is in one’s hand as a result of an ambitious endeavour.
4Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine “stay-behind” operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and by the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War.
5Bedirxan Beg (1803–1869) was the last Kurdish Mîr of the Emirate of Botan.
