Perhaps the most important point, however, where the movement is inspired by Marx, and which already resonates in its description as a “struggling movement”, is the conception of Marxian thought as a “philosophy of practice”. The movement’s theoretical debates are not for the sake of being opinionated or filling magazine pages, but for gaining knowledge…
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…
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…
“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….
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…
On 19 July 2012, the Rojava revolution began. How did it all begin? What stages were taken on the way to the tenth anniversary? And what danger does Turkey pose to the revolution? The Academy of Democratic Modernity spoke about these and other questions with Berivan Khaled, the co-chair of the Autonomous Administration of Northern…
19 July marks the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Rojava revolution. To mark the occasion, the Academy of Democratic Modernity spoke with Asya Abdullah, coordinator of the women’s movement in northern and eastern Syria, about the women’s revolution and its prehistory. We want to talk to you today about the women’s revolution in…
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…
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…
Democratic Confederalism, as defined by Abdullah Öcalan is the ethical, political, and administrative expression of society – as a historical and sociological structure – in which different identities, factions and groups coexist in dialectical harmony. By this we are not referring to a classical confederal structure consisting of states, but the confederal unity of societal…
