In contrast to all of the negative things we hear about Syria, I want to present something positive; from the ashes of the nation state, a new kind of society is in its infancy.
This story starts off a little unexpectedly. It begins with a university student in Turkey named Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan is part of the Kurdish minority in Turkey that is systemically oppressed by the Turkish state. He’s very much inspired by Marxist-Leninist ideas and founds a political party: the Kurdistan Workers Party, or the PKK.
Within a few years of their founding, the PKK felt like violence directed toward Turkish politicians was the right way to achieve their goals, so that’s what they did. The Turkish government responded by collectively punishing the Kurds, leveling entire villages and killing many.
In 1999, after years of activity, Ocalan was captured and imprisoned. The Turkish state, very much wanting to execute him, simply weren’t allowed. Capital punishment would get them kicked out of NATO. So they put him in a prison on an island where he would be the only prisoner for over a decade.
By now, Ocalan has a huge following in Kurdistan. He’s seen as a living martyr and is revered for having invested his life in Kurdish liberation.
On this island prison, he does some reading and comes across the work of an ecologist and political philosopher from Vermont named Murray Bookchin. Bookchin was at one point Marxist-Leninist, but over the course of many years moved toward Libertarian Socialism. Bookchin described Libertarian Socialism (or anarchism) as a way of freeing men from all forms of domination. Not limited to domination in the workplace, but also domination by the family, by the state and all other forms of domination.
In prison, Ocalan reached out to Bookchin and they started working together on a model for a decentralized society tailored to different villages in autocratic parts of the Middle East. Parts of this society were already brewing beneath the surface of the autocratic Turkish and Syrian states, but Ocalan’s philosophy offered them more structure and more theoretical grounding.
Ocalan began disseminating texts on anarchism, ecology and feminism.
The Kurdish people, disillusioned by the nation state, were receptive to his ideas.
In 2011, the Syrian civil war broke out and Assad had to withdraw his forces. All of a sudden, Kurds went from not being allowed to teach their own language in schools to having absolute freedom. What Ocalan called Democratic Confederalism took root, and the society that existed just below the surface of the Syrian State broke through.
Which is where we find ourselves today.
The pillars of this society are direct democracy and the rejection of statehood.
Decision-making now happens at the level of neighborhoods. Power flows from the people upward; not from the military, police and bureaucrats downward. Even amidst a bloody civil war, surrounded by enemies, nobody needs to worry about homelessness or hunger. Most positions of power are dually occupied by both a man and a woman, and these women and men are recallable as the people see fit. Women organize their own forces. Many of the workplaces are horizontally structured as cooperatives and not as hierarchically structured corporations. And there’s a really neat twist too: There is a massive emphasis put on ecology.
Since its inception, Rojava has defended itself from ISIS as well as other threats. They have also been extremely successful in their offenses against ISIS.
Villages of different religions and ethnicities have joined the democratic project and created their own bottom up governmental and economic structures, and have joined the confederation.
People from all over the world have gone to Rojava to support this radical experiment.
The last time a revolution like this happened, George Orwell picked up a gun and went to Spain.
Hassan is a programmer interested in geopolitics and blockchains. He spends his free time tinkering, playing DOTA, gardening and playing his guitar. His portfolio is online at hassanshaikley.github.io.