Abdullah Öcalan (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK) is an important figure in the Kurdish leftist movement, and considered to be an important influence on real political and military organizations in Rojava.

 

Öcalan’s prison writings consider the historical and ideological development of state power from an interesting perspective: Öcalan rejects a ‘state-oriented’ socialist programme (and in that sense some elements of traditional Marxist and democratic socialist strategy), but does embrace the idea of the ‘nation’ as a description of a political community.

 

‘Democratic confederalism’ is a theory of the political, economic and military organization of the nation without state institutions. Rojava, perhaps a living example of this form of democracy, has arisen from state collapse, conflict, and crisis. Is a catastrophic crisis of existing state and economic power a precondition for the creation of genuine participatory democracy? 

 

In this session, we consider this question in the light of a reading of Öcalan’s essay, ‘Democratic Nation’. There will be a short introduction to the author and his work before we move into a discussion of the essay. A copy of the text along with a helpful study guide will be made available to participants before the session.