Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State

Abstract

This intervention concerns the ways in which law and violence are being reorganized in Rojava. Based on observations and interviews I conducted in the Jazira canton of Rojava, I argue that, through democratic autonomy, the Rojava revolution poses a challenge to the politics of sovereignty and biopolitics. While democratic autonomy involves the institutionalization of radical democracy, radical democracy needs to be defended against attacks of capital, state, and patriarchy. The question of how such defense can be organized without reproducing the “magic” of the state and law at an everyday level is crucial for the revolution. I address the debates and practices in Rojava developing around this question and conclude that, rather than speaking about a model in Rojava, we should speak of a movement residing in the dialectic between state-ness and society.

Commoning the Komal: The Toronto Kurdish Community Centre

“…For example, Cizire canton representatives are currently a Kurdish woman and an Arab tribal leader, thereby taking into account other societal issues and differences as they organize. These all were made possible by a power vacuum created in the region vacated by the Assad regime, transforming the space into a war economy when ISIS with their patriarchy-driven forms of violence of enslavement and rape invaded Rojava in 2015 (Dirik, 2015;Genç, 2017;Üstündağ, 2016) We see similar examples of feminist and socialist continuities from the Kurdish regions of Turkey in the main urban centres in the form of autonomous municipalities. Recently, in 2015 to 2016, these latter autonomous neighbourhoods --in Bakur, in the cities of Cizre, Nusaybin, Sirnak, and Sur in Diyarbakir --were consistently and brutally crushed by the Turkish state so that very little remains of them today 4 .…”

“…Its most fully realized form to date is what has become known as the cultural revolution of Rojava --its recent official title: Democratic Federation of Northern Syria 3 . Rojava claims to have overcome the reproduction of statist patriarchal relations altogether (Knapp & Jongerden, 2014;Öcalan, 2011;Üstündağ, 2016). Inspired by these principles, the Rojava cantons enforce co-presidencies and quotas, and create women's defense units, women's communes, academies, tribunals, and cooperatives in the midst of war and under the weight of an embargo.…”

The bifurcated trajectory of nation formation in Kurdistan: Democratic confederalism, nationalism, and the crisis of capitalist modernity

“…As a result, the project has a very strong gender perspective. Finally, unlike the nationalist project which is part of the semantics of capitalist modernity, democratic confederalism is defined in terms of radical politics and based on radical democracy (Akkaya & Jongerden, 2010, 2014; Jongerden, 2013; Küçük & Özselçuk, 2016; Üstündağ, 2016).…”

Nation-Building in Rojava: Participatory Democracy Amidst the Syrian Civl War

“…The Rojavans' long-term dream is for every single citizen to receive six weeks of police training, so that the formal police body can be dissolved after the war. 35 Rojava's attitude towards crime is amazingly forgiving. Reconciliation between perpetrators and wronged parties is prioritized over punishment.…”