Speech by Mahmut Şakar, lawyer of Abdullah Öcalan, from the Association for International Law and Democracy (MAF-DAD) in the panel “Perspectives of (national) Self-determination and autonomy on the 21st century”. In his presentation he elaborates on the proposals made by Öcalan, focusing on the Democratic Nation solution.
The struggle for the liberation of Kurdistan, a classical colony in terms of its basic character, has passed through very important stages in the historical process. The last fifty years of the nearly 200 years of rebellion/resistance have been marked by Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK, which he leads. The struggle waged by the PKK, on the other hand, has undergone changes in this fifty-year period and has come to this day by making itself resistant to global developments.
Without a very brief summary of Kurdistan’s political history, it would be difficult to understand the modern line of freedom and the current stance of the PKK. While looking at the political history of Kurdistan in general, we will follow the line and perspective of Abdullah Öcalan in his defenses.
(I) 16-20 century – Short political history of Kurdistan
The social and political organization of Kurdistan was the Mirlik/beylik model until the 16th century. These administrative units, consisting of a combination or confederation of tribes, have a long tradition. Through a policy of balance based on relations and conflicts between larger powers, they were able to keep their autonomous status for a long time.
In this century, during the ongoing conflicts between the Ottoman and Safavid (Iranian) Empires, they sided with the Ottomans, and after 1514, an agreement/alliance was concluded between the Ottoman Sultan Selim and more than twenty Kurdish Emirs. “The vast majority of the principalities of Kurdistan agreed with the Ottoman Dynasty on a power-sharing arrangement equivalent to an alliance of equal powers.” In exchange for supporting the Ottoman army in times of war and accepting the Ottoman will, these Mirs maintained their autonomous administrative structure and even had jurisdiction over the judiciary. “Until the beginning of the 19th century, the status of the Kurds as a people did not lag behind that of the Turks or Turkmens and Arabs, but was even higher.” (Öcalan, vol. 5) Ottoman sources refer to this autonomous structure as the Kurdistan Government. This agreement lasted for nearly 3 centuries.
The real break, collapse or status differentiation in the political history of Kurdistan develops in the 19th century.“Feeling the necessity to modernize, the Ottoman Empire embarked on reform movements, especially with Sultan Mahmut II (1839). The reform was about reorganizing the state. The reorganization of the central bureaucracy, the tax and military system were at the forefront of the move towards a nation-state. The traditional Kurdish beylik system could not be sustained in the face of reforms. Accepting the tax and military systems meant the end of existence for the Kurdish principalities.” (Öcalan, ibid.) This led to the first wave of rebellion led by the Mirs.
A. The first beylik revolt centered in Sulaymaniyah (1806-Babanzade Dynasty) marks the beginning of this process. B. The biggest rebellion of this process was led by Mir Bedirxan, the Bohtan Bey of Cizre, between June 1841 and July 1847. The support of Britain and Russia, the global powers of the period, to the Ottoman Empire was instrumental in the defeat of the rebellion. After this rebellion, which was an early national movement, the Mirlik system was liquidated. This process is referred to as the “conquest of Kurdistan” in many Ottoman works. C. In place of the politically dissolved Kurdistan Autonomous structure, between 1847-1867, the Kurdistan Province was established as an administrative structure under the Ottoman Empire with Diyarbakır as its center. The official Ottoman declaration states that this province was established as a result of the successful reconquest of Kurdistan. Mosul Governor Esat Pasha is appointed as the first administrator. In 1864, when the entire Ottoman province system was abolished, the Kurdistan Province was also abolished.
Despite the dissolution of the Mirlik/Beylik system in Kurdistan, the Ottoman Empire could not establish a new order in Kurdistan. In this process, it also needed a new intermediary. “The collapse of the Beylik system brought the religious hierarchy to the fore. The defeats of Bedirxan Bey and Ezdanşer led to the institution of the sheikhdom, which grew stronger and stronger in the second half of the 19th century, gaining the initiative and assuming a leadership role in society. Especially the Naqshi and Qadiri sheikhs gained great importance.” (Öcalan, ibid.)
The Sheikh Ubeydullah Movement, the first example of this new leadership model, emerged in a period of relative weakening of the Ottoman Empire in connection with the Ottoman-Russian War (1877-1878). “It was influential in large parts of both Ottoman and Iranian Kurdistan and acquired a military form…it failed to receive support from the hegemonic powers of the time and became ineffective.” (Öcalan ibid.)
The most important consequence of the collapse of Kurdistan’s autonomous system was that Kurdistan experienced a backward fragmentation and downsizing, down to the tribe and family. This not only strengthened internal conflicts but also led to the influence of the hegemonic structures of the period. The Kurdish policy during the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II period further deepened this. Inspired by the Russian Cossack Regiments that inflicted great casualties on them during the Ottoman-Russian War, he developed the Hamidiye Regiments (1891), consisting of Kurdish tribes. Although these regiments were used against the Armenian and Assyrian people, by disabling the possible Kurdish national movement before it was born their main destructive impact (together with the Tribal Schools (1892)) was on the Kurds.
The Committee of Union and Progress , the founding power of Turkish nationalism (even white fascism), deepened the Kurdish policy that found expression in the Hamidiye Regiments and reinforced it with multifaceted institutions. In this process, the Kurdish movement was divided into two. There was a split between those in favor of acting together with the Turkish bourgeoisie but on the basis of the same rights, and those in favor of separation.
“The Koçgiri revolt (1919-1920) of the separatist tendency was important. The rebellion movement, which the belatedly formed Azadi Society (1924) wanted to lead as a reaction, was given an early verdict with the Diyarbakır Dicle provocation on February 12, 1925.” (Öcalan ibid.) With the suppression of the Ağrı rebellion of 1926-30 and the Dersim rebellion of 1937-38, the process ended with the domination of Turkish colonialism.
1940-70 is a period of silence in terms of Kurdistan’s political history. The concepts of Kurd and Kurdistan disappeared. A political discourse dominated by purely economic discourses such as the “Eastern problem”, “poverty”, “backwardness” became dominant. This was the picture the PKK found when it appeared on the stage of history.
(II) PKK Sruggle -1972-99
The main point that characterizes the PKK movement is that it profoundly changed the mentality about how the Kurdistan issue is understood and how it can be solved. It is not a continuation of the waves of rebellion that preceded it, but a new departure, the construction of a new political tradition.
A. Öcalan expressed the new understanding years later as follows: “The first and last time was when the concept of’ “colonialized Kurdistan” caused a tremor in my brain and heart and then I fainted. I found it really strange, but later developments would show why a concept has such an impact. But it is still difficult for me to explain the initial impact. Deciding on a conceptual resurrection in Ankara at a time when the death warrant for Kurdistan and Kurdishness was being issued and was being experienced in its darkest form requires a serious analysis that could be the subject of a novel.” (Öcalan ibid.)
B. The process of representation and rebellion based on Mirs and religious authority, which marked Kurdistan’s last 400 years of rebellion, brought Kurdistan to a point of fragmentation and near extinction. In the 1970s, a new class took over the struggle. The young people who founded the PKK came from the poor, laboring, peasant and oppressed classes of Kurdistan.
C. The real socialist struggle, youth movements and national liberation struggles of the 1970s were the backgrounds from which the PKK drew inspiration. Öcalan says, “If it were not for real socialism, perhaps an organization like the PKK would not have been formed.” Nevertheless, he adds that although the PKK is influenced by real socialism, “the entire reality of the PKK cannot be explained by real socialism.”
The fact that the reality of the PKK could not be fully explained by real socialism was due to the mixed and eclectic coexistence of nation-state ideology and democratic socialist ideology. “We lacked the capacity to fight the revisionism of real socialism. We could only successfully fight primitive nationalist and social chauvinist ideologies.”
Öcalan also describes the main problem in the formation of the PKK at its “ambiguity about the ideology of the nation-state“. “J. Stalin’s theses on the national question were influential in this regard. Stalin basically treated the national question as a problem of state-building. This approach influenced the whole socialist system and national liberation movements.” “The fact that most of the national liberation movements that peaked in that period (1950-1970s) ended in separate states made this model almost unique.”
Abdullah Öcalan leading the training of the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army of Kurdistan (ARGK) in Bekaa Valley – Lebanon, 1984
Here, it is impossible to give a full account of what the PKK created during this period. However, we can state that it was the creator of a great democratic vein that penetrated deep into the geography of Kurdistan and made the oppressed and women who had been pushed out of history the subjects of its struggle. Öcalan, when describing themselves, says, “We are the creators and representatives of the democratic line in the history and politics of Kurdistan”.
Despite all the changes he created, Öcalan was subjected to a heavy attack by global powers in 1998 and was captured as a result of a conspiracy. This process had the effect of accelerating the interrogation process that had been going on since 1995. In the dilemma of either change or defeat, the commitment to change opened the door to major developments.
Öcalan tries to analyze the facts that brought them to the brink of the conspiracy despite the global onslaught. With a comprehensive self-criticism towards the state, power, the phenomenon of violence and the understanding of the party, he makes an accounting of the past and puts forward the results with a new paradigm, virtually recreating the PKK and the Kurdish people’s line of freedom under conditions of isolation. This would also pave the way for the struggle to acquire a global character.
The main focus of his discussion is the 500-year hegemonic process he describes as Capitalist Modernity and the reckoning with the effects of this process on our thoughts and actions. Stating that one of the three pillars of capitalist modernity is the nation-state, he tries to reach a new model of nation and solution.
It is important to emphasize that the main body of this process of change is not the definition of the problem but the reconsideration of the solution. In the 1970s, Öcalan had defined the Turkish system as colonialist; this time, even in captivity, he defines the system as both colonialist and genocidal force, and this is the title of his last defense. The unchanging phenomenon in the PKK and Öcalan is to define the domination over Kurdistan as colonialism. In all his writings over time, he has gone much deeper into the character of the colonial Turkish regime. The diagnosis was correct but the solution was problematic. A new solution was needed.
(III)-Öcalan and the Democratic Nation Strategy
This solution is at the heart of Öcalan’s entire paradigm. With his Democratic Nation approach, he proposes a solution against the nation-state mentality and its religion, nationalism, and proposes Democratic Confederalism as an alternative to the nation-state model. This was such an important phenomenon that Öcalan would say, “One of the most important results of the revolutionary people’s war experience led by the PKK is that it led to the reality of the democratic nation.”
Öcalan reveals that the right of nations to self-determination is not the only way to establish a nation-state, and that the democratic confederal approach can also be a new way of exercising this right. “The KCK, which expresses the non-statist democratic interpretation of the right of nations to self-determination in the Kurdish question, should be considered as a radical transformation in the solution of the national question. “ he says. The KCK rejects nation-state-oriented approaches in the solution of the Kurdish national question and takes the model inspired by democratic-nation paradigm, the Kurds’ right to be a nation or the transformation of Kurds into a national society, as a basis for realization through democratic autonomy.
Once again, we can briefly summarize its criticism of the nation-state as follows: “Linking the solution of national and social problems to the nation-state constitutes the most tyrannical aspect of modernity. Expecting a solution from an instrument that is itself the source of the problems leads to an avalanche of problems and social chaos…the nation-state is the most developed organization of violence throughout the history of society. It is the encirclement of the whole society by the violence of power; it is the means of holding together by force the society and the environment that capitalism has dissolved with maximum profit and industrialism… For societies, the nation-state model is a trap and network of oppression and exploitation.”
The democratic nation , on the other hand, is “the common society formed by free individuals and communities of their own free will. The unifying force in the democratic nation is the free will of the individuals and groups of society who decide to belong to the same nation. The definition of a democratic nation, which is not bound by rigid political borders, a single language, culture, religion and interpretation of history, is a pluralistic, free and equal community of citizens and communities living together in solidarity.” Only with this kind of nation model can a democratic society be realized.
Minute of silence for the martyrs of the revolution during the inauguration of the space called “new world summit” – Rojava on April 9, 2018
When he applies this approach to the Kurds, he emphasizes two dimensions. “The first is the mental dimension. It is the creation of a common mental world. It is to mentally share the dream and project of an equal and free world based on differences without neglecting their own language, culture, history, economy and population concentrations. The second dimension is the reorganization of physical existence. The bodily dimension is based on democratic autonomy. We can define democratic autonomy both in a broad sense as the equivalent of a democratic nation and in a narrow sense as democratic governance…For Kurds, the acceptance of democratic autonomy lies at the basis of reconciliation with nation-states.”
With this background, we can express the basic propositions of the Öcalan Paradigm for the solution of national problems and the exercise of the Right to Self-Determination as follows:
FIRST THESIS: The Democratic Nation model is a strategy for decolonization through the creation of a free individual and society.
I. All the main thinkers and actors of the anti-colonial struggle tradition address colonialism on two main grounds. They argue that colonialism is a two-dimensional relationship and that the shape that the colonized take during their captivity is as important a factor in the continuation of the colonial system as the colonizers. Kwame Nkrumah, for example, says that “a people who have been subjected to foreign domination for a long time can become accustomed to dependence”. Franz Fanon states that “Decolonization is really the creation of a new people” and that “The colonized ‘thing’ becomes human in the process of liberating itself”. Aime Cesaire writes that “colonialism not only exploits the colonized subject, but also dehumanizes and objectifies it”. Öcalan, too, after stating that Kurdistan is a colony, makes the second strategic sentence as follows: “The Kurdish people have been degraded.” Colonialism has degraded the Kurdish people to a level that they should never consent to or accept. From this point of view, it is clear that breaking away from colonialism cannot happen with the people created by the colonizer. The process of struggle against colonialism is also the process of creating a new human being. Only an individual who confronts the traces of colonialism in himself and creates a free mind can become the subject of the solution of the national problem.
II. Since a society cannot be formed from colonized individuals, which Fanon describes as ‘things’, the reconstruction of society, like the individual, has been made a central part of the anti-colonial struggle. In the case of Kurdistan, it is clear that a fragmented, dead society that is fragmented in cities, villages, neighborhoods and families, let alone linguistic, religious, sectarian and sexual distinctions, and that takes its anger out on itself, cannot be liberated without gaining all its own power.
III. The Democratic Autonomy model fulfills the task of becoming a force against colonialism by creating a new person and society against the individual and society created by colonialism in two dimensions:
1) It organizes in depth, starting from the smallest unit of society, at the commune, village and neighborhood level. This organizing process will also function as a place of confrontation, encounter, self-repair, mutual education and deepening of the individual with other members. The democratic nation will be created step by step, ring by ring, starting from the bottom. 2) The democratic autonomous model also develops a model of direct democracy by overcoming all the handicaps and limitations of liberal democracy and its representative character. It is based on the flow of decisions and authority from the bottom up. It establishes the individual’s right to have a say in his/her own life and in all social decisions, which colonialism has rendered involuntary and passive.
Depending on these two facts, in contrast to the line of struggle focused only on the nation-state, the overcoming of sexism, the creation of a new form of social relations centered on women’s freedom, the cultural and practical creation of a social and economic relationship in harmony with nature will also become part of the solution model based on democratic autonomous life. The free women’s struggle is already at the basis of both the democratic autonomous society and the nation. It is clear that there is no greater power than a society that is organized and has established democratic relations within itself.
SECOND THESIS: The democratic nation solution is an anti-colonial strategy capable of transforming the colonial relationship into a democratic one or of liquidating it.
It has the capacity to reconstruct the bond with the dominant nation and transform it according to multiple alternatives. This would also provide the means to preserve the democratic autonomous social model. In this respect, we can emphasize three approaches:
a) One of the ways Öcalan has presented in his defense and discussions is based on finding a solution through compromise. This approach, which Öcalan formulated as democracy + state, is based on reconciliation with the dominant nation-state and has the ability to be realized according to the attitude of the dominant state. “It expresses democratic autonomy as the minimum condition for living under a common political roof with the dominant ethnic nation-states. The basic condition for this solution is that the sovereign nation-state renounces all policies of denial and annihilation, and the oppressed nation abandons the idea of establishing its own nation-state.” Unless both nations give up these statist tendencies, it is difficult to realize the democratic autonomy project.
b) However, if the dominant nation-state does not accept it, it builds the democratic autonomous system with its own means/strength despite them, without completely denying the grounds for compromise. One of the most important phenomena within this model is to create a self-defense mechanism. It will not be possible to build this model without creating a resistance/defense force to protect its own model. The Rojava Model can be given as an example of this situation. “Until a possible reconciliation or independence is achieved in the war, they will not hesitate to develop and realize being a democratic nation on the basis of their self-defense in all its dimensions and with their own forces.”
c) The democratic transformation of the dominant nation is one of the unique and fundamental aspects of the Democratic Nation strategy.
Being in contact with the social fabric and democratic structure of the dominant nation and striving for the democratization of the dominant nation is one of the main pillars of this strategy. Being a part of the democratic revolution of the dominant nation, giving power to it will first of all mean transforming the colonialist character of the dominant nation-state. It is known that colonialism is not only a form of relationship based on military force, but also means disrupting, dispersing and completely transferring the internal development process and natural flow of the colonized society to the metropolitan country. The colonial metropolis exploits all the economic resources of the colonized society, making them part of its own economic system. It assimilates culturally and linguistically, and creates its own military, administrative and economic agents within the colonized social fabric.
It is also possible to overcome colonial relations by contributing to the change of the metropolitan center, state and administrative structure through a democratic struggle, by making this a part of one’s own strategy. Not only will a new relationship be established with the dominant nation outside of a colonial relationship, but also a democratic autonomous space will be created that can repair the damages caused by colonialist life over time.
In this respect, within the KCK model, the solution strategy has always been expressed in a dual dimension. For example, “Democratic Turkey, Free Kurdistan”. Forming assemblies and parties for both parts of this slogan was realized as a necessity of the paradigm. The HDK-HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) has shown the way to democratize Turkey and has become the main opposition force. With DTK (Democratic Society Congress) and DBP (Peace and Democracy Party), the geography of Kurdistan was organized and represented.
Flag of the antifascist alliance between Marxists, Maoists and Apoci in Turkey (United Revolutionary Movement of the Peoples – HBDH in it’s turkish initials)
In this way, it is possible to create a democratic relationship in place of colonial relations, thus overcoming colonialism, which the PKK has been expressing since its inception. In order to win Kurdistan, it is necessary to win Turkey. When I say this, I am not denying that the principle of common struggle and coexistence with the peoples, brought about by the PKK and Öcalan’s socialist identities and experience of struggle, already exists. I am only stating that this experience and character can only reach such a paradigm and make it an indispensable part of a new approach to the Kurdistan Liberation Movement.
Today, in the case of Kurdistan, all three paths I have mentioned are in operation.
THIRD THESIS: The democratic nation solution is the founding strategy of a new internationalism.
At the center of the entire strategy is the overcoming of Capitalist Modernity and the construction of Democratic Modernity.
When the 1960s National Liberation Movements were successful, the leaders and political movements of the time were well aware that they could not preserve their new nation-states by their own means alone. “They felt the necessity of building a new world to transcend the international hierarchy.” In this endeavor, described as ” anti-colonialist world-building“, they put forward several strategies.
“First, through the right to self-determination, anti-colonialist nationalists strengthened <u>legal barriers </u> against foreign intervention and encroachment…they sought to contain and limit domination through legal instruments. Second, in the establishment of <u>regional federations</u> in the West Indies and Africa, anti-colonialist nationalists sought to break free from the economic dependencies inherent in the global economy by organizing egalitarian and redistributive regional institutions. Finally, through the <u>New International Economic Order</u> , anti-colonialist nationalists directly challenged the economic hierarchy of the international sphere.”(A.Getachew)
As a legal barrier, UN General Assembly resolutions(such as Declaration 1514 of December 14, 1960, “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Countries and Peoples Under Colonial Administration”) or the creation of temporary federations(such as the Union of African States, the West Indian Federation 1958-1962, or the Ghana-Guinea Union 1958) soon proved to be no solution. At their height, National Liberation Struggles tried to protect themselves within the global system by **creating **a kind of internationalism of the nation-state. However, in the name of self-preservation, these new nation-states soon began to establish authoritarian rule over the societies they had “liberated” or to use violence against other differences within their own states. These anti-colonial movements accepted the colonial borders they inherited and insisted on territorial integrity. This led to many conflicts, such as the 1960 Congo-Catania Province crisis and the 1967-70 Biafra-Nigerja war. The right of nations to self-determination fizzled out after this great historical dynamic could not be sustained. This historical legacy has shown us that a solution based on the nation-state cannot determine the destiny of peoples and save them from being integrated into the global system.
The paradigm of the democratic nation has also been able to draw the path for building a new world and for all nations to live freely in this world. The paradigm also emphasizes that World Confederalism can be put on the agenda and put into practice as a new international project. We believe that such a project will empower us to overcome the colonial relations and oppression processes that each of us as a nation experiences, and will narrow the field of action of the colonial centers and the global hegemony that feeds them. This new internationalism envisioned by the Öcalan Paradigm is also a factor that facilitates the resolution of national problems in the context of the right to self-determination.
One of the most important criticisms of Marxism from the early period was that it did not include national issues or took a tactical, case-by-case approach. The solution of real socialism also became obsolete with socialism. In this respect, the democratic nation solution can also be considered as the construction of a socialist theory of the nation that strengthens socialist theory.
In conclusion, we say that only with the Öcalan paradigm is it possible to realize a true determination of destiny within a three-stage and complementary framework: 1) Creating an autonomous democratic organization of its own social structure. 2) Becoming the main dynamic for the democratic transformation of colonial-regional forces. 3) To narrow the space of capitalist modernity by building a strong international unity and solidarity with all the forces of democratic modernity.
If these three lines of struggle are implemented simultaneously and simultaneously, the problem of the freedom of our peoples will be solved.
