Abdullah Öcalan poses the question of what role culture plays in social transformation. In particular, in Volumes I, II, III and V of “Manifesto of Democratic Civilization”, he explores the question of how cultural resistance to the homogenization of the nation-state expresses itself: “Traditions and cultures are acts of resistance in and of themselves. They will either be destroyed or will survive, because their character is such that they do not know how to capitulate. At the next opportunity, their very nature requires that they resist even more vigorously. Nation-state fascism failed to take this reality into account. Suppressing them, even assimilating them, does not necessarily mean that they will cease to exist.”

Mustafa Karasu, is a founding member of the PKK and a member of the Executive Council of the KCK. In this extensive interview, he analyses the current situation of the world capitalist system and the impact of the Third World War on the Middle East. In addition to the war in Ukraine, he discusses the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on capitalist modernity and societies. He further formulates important perspectives on the forces of democratic modernity and its current challenges. The interview was conducted in May 2023.

In the following, we will present the alternative system of democratic modernity and elaborate its significance as a new school of social science. With a definition of “World Democratic Confederalism”, the principles for a new internationalism will be illustrated and the concrete tasks for the construction of democratic modernity will be described.

We attempt to present the basic motivations and conflicts of the forces of capitalist modernity in the third world war and define its specific characteristics and distinction from the previous world wars.