Kurds in Syria

Kurdish leaders mull cooperation with Damascus & Moscow as US pulls troops from northern Syria
Worried for Kurds in Syria, abandoned by US? Here’s an obvious solution but it will make Washington hawks MAD
Juan cole’s view
Portraits of Kurdish struggle at Jaconin gives a quick overview of Ocalan’s view of democratic federalism and its influence on Syrian Kurds. This experiment may now be now reaching an end. “The authors Öcalan encountered would greatly influence the future role of the PKK, in particular the work of the American social theorist Murray Bookchin. Bookchin advocated ecologically sensitive, decentralized power-sharing in local communities as the basis of all decision-making, suggesting general assemblies at the local level were the true path to democracy.

Öcalan critiqued the Marxist-Leninist roots of the organization and introduced the theory of democratic confederalism as a new way forward in 2005. “Democratic confederalism” advocates for self-administration in Kurdish areas, which could operate in duality with the Turkish state, as well as the other parts of Kurdistan. Democratic confederalism was described as not just for Kurds, but as a system that could be replicated by any population in the Middle East. This collective mass of small units could confederate with one another to form a new kind of local power that challenged the authority of centralized states.”