The ‘Rojava Revolution’ in Syrian Kurdistan: A Model of Development for the Middle East?

Authoritarianism, populism, nationalism and resistance in the agrarian South

“…This has been particularly the case in post-socialist contexts where authoritarianism forecloses more confrontational forms of struggle over land and food sovereignty, such as in Russia (Visser et al 2015) and China (Zhang and Qi 2019;Zhang 2020). On the other hand, perhaps the most prominent and overt forms of resistance to the onslaughts of neoliberal globalisation and authoritarian populist reactions at present lies in Rojava, where an eclectic coalition of Kurds, Arabs, Turks, and various internationalist allies have joined under the banner of eco-socialism, food sovereignty, and feminism to defeat the emergence of the Islamic State to their south, while under constant attack from the increasingly authoritarian Turkish nationalists across the border to their north (Cemgil and Hoffmann 2016;Leyesa 2019). While both challengers to the success of the Rojava revolution may be described as varieties of authoritarian populism, the radical inclusivity of Rojava itself is the opposite of a populist movement of "the people" against an "Other".…”

From the October Revolution to Revolutionary Rojava: An Ecosocialist Reading

“…The list of major challenges to securing basic necessities is rather long and it is difficult to make them cohere with an ecological outlook. Such problems are also the fruits of decades worth of economic marginalisation and intentional underdevelopment of infrastructure under Ba'thist rule (Ababsa 2015;Cemgil and Hoffmann 2016;Court and Den Hond 2017). The end result is a revolution that, due especially to rampant warfare, has yet made little progress ecologically beyond good intentions and promising legislation.…”

“…There was an immediate improvement in many communities' political status (Cemgil and Hoffmann 2016). Political structuring must anyway occur differently because of contextual specificities.…”

“…Still, there are some worrying trends. There are internal contradictory pressures where militarisation potentially undermines egalitarian politics and economic incentives may erode ecological policies (Cemgil and Hoffmann 2016). The former is a fundamental challenge faced by arguably all revolutionaries (Leogrande 2017).…”

“…These kinds of longer-term processes, as well as imperialist interference from without, can somewhat explain why non-violent, more anarchistic options were precluded by a rapid descent into generalised armed conflict (see also Cemgil and Hoffmann 2016). Local Coordinating Committees were an example of such efforts across different parts of Syria.…”