User:Adam-Krok/Democratic confederalism

FIRST DRAFT OF 5 PARAGRAPHS:

History

According to Ocalan, Democratic Confederalism is the outcome of thirty years of evolving ideology within the PKK (Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party) attempt to form a state for Kurds. In the 1970s the PKK was ideological sympathetic to the socialist decolonization movements of the Cold War era, and accepted the necessity of the state for social change. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the PKK veered away from the discredited centralized political models of socialism, and focused on models of creating a nation without a state. Democratic Confederalism is a blueprint for solving the Kurdish Question without the reliance on a nation-state structure.

Öcalan, Abdullah."Democratic Confederalism. Transmedia Publishing Ltd., 2011. p. 7.

(sources cited: Öcalan, Abdullah."Democratic Confederalism. Transmedia Publishing Ltd., 2011.)

Intro

Democratic Confederalism is the political ideology of creating a “non-state political administration or a democracy without a state.” Within the theory, democracy is defined as a decision-making process founded on collective consensus, and direct rule more in line with Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s conceptions of direct democracy than with James Madison’s conceptions of representative democracy . In contrast, the state is defined as administration founded on power.

(sources cited: Öcalan, Abdullah."Democratic Confederalism. Transmedia Publishing Ltd., 2011. p 21) (will need to hyperlink Rousseau and Madison)

Platform:

Democratic confederalism is defined by five principles. First, the right to self-determination of a people to govern themselves. Second, the necessity of a non-state paradigm to effect self-determination. Third, grass-roots participation. Four, self-government as a form of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist resistance to the global world order. Fifth, the anti-nationalist and non-exclusive nature of the future ‘Kurdish” state which recognizes the need for a federal structure so as not to question the existing political borders.

(sources cited: Öcalan, Abdullah."Democratic Confederalism. Transmedia Publishing Ltd., 2011.)

Implementation in Rojava:

The Rojava polity in Syria has actively realized the objective structures of self-organization elaborated by Ocalan since forcing the Assad regime to retreat from the territory in 2011. The revolutionary Rojava party (PYD) has instituted bottom-up political units of popular assemblies, composed of a “careful ethnic balance” (the top three offices have to be a Kurd, an Arab and an Assyrian or Armenian Christian). The PYD has also created youth and women’s councils as well as a feminist militia called the “YPJ star”.

(sources cited: Graeber's guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring-revolutionary-kurds-syria-isis)

The Rojava experiment, as it has become popularly known in the West, has been lauded for its emphasis on the liberation of women through integration in every sector of society, as well as leadership. While forming an implicit part of the democratic-confederalist doctrine, the full equality of women comes from a related theory written by Ocalan, known as Jineology. Jineology’s core premise is that society can only be free through the freedom of women.

( will hyperlink Jineology, and provide link to the pdf of Jineology on the free Ocalan website http://www.freeocalan.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/liberating-Lifefinal.pdf)