In memory of Nagihan Akarsel

News of the killing of Nagihan Akarsel, a committed feminist activist and scholar, outside her home in Sulaymaniyah shocked the world on Tuesday morning, 4th of October 2022. In memory of Nagihan Akarsel we publish the following contribution by Zîlan Diyar, from the Jineolojî Committee Europe. I wanted to start with a poem. Then I…

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“A real revolution cannot be brought about by a change of power”

One of the achievements of the Rojava revolution is the establishment of a democratic and multilingual school system. While teaching the Kurdish language was forbidden before the revolution, children in northern and eastern Syria can now be taught in their own mother tongue. The Academy of Democratic Modernity spoke with Nisrîn Reşik, spokesperson for the…

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Alternatives to the Established Social Sciences

We publish Ann-Kristin Kowarsch’s contribution to the conference “Challenging Capitalist Modernity—Alternative Concepts and the Kurdish Quest” which took place in Hamburg, Germany, 3-5 February 2012. The paper raises critiques for the role, methodology and institutions of modern social science and presents the theory and practice of Jineolojî and Women’s academies in Kurdistan. Since the paper…

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Society’s Peace and Democracy Problem

“Only self-defense will make peace possible. A peace with no self-defense can only be an expression of submission and slavery. Liberalism today imposes on societies and peoples peace with no self-defense. The unilateral game of democratic stability and reconciliation is nothing but a fig leaf on the bourgeois class domination achieved by the armed forces….

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Society’s Militarism Problem

Defining militarism as the most advanced anti-society monopolism, Öcalan writes: “The military has always been the power that has penetrated, controlled, and subjugated society regardless of the form of the state, but it reached its apex in the era of the middle class (bourgeois) and under nation-state monopoly.” With “Sociology of Freedom”, the third volume…

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We Celebrate 10 Years of Rojava: A Visionary Social Experiment Under Threat

The people of Rojava pose a core threat to any existing government—especially those with imperialist ambitions—by showing the world a viable model of peaceful multi-ethnic coexistence, grounded in lived political, cultural, and ecological autonomy. Ten years ago, an auspicious experiment started alongside one of the most atrocious bloodsheds of this century. In July 2012, as…

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Ecology Discussions and Practices in the Kurdish Freedom Struggle

Ecology is one of the three pillars of the paradigm of Democratic Confederalism, the political-theoretical concept of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Besides democracy and gender liberation, ecology has been mentioned explicitly as a dimension in this concept since 2005. However to date, ecology is less discussed and practiced than the two other pillars. Ecological destruction…

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