Democratic Confederalism

“The homogenic national society is the most artificial society to have ever been created and is the result of the social engineering project.” — Abdullah Öcalan[1] One of the defining characteristics of contemporary humanity is undoubtedly that of homogeneity. It is a phenomenon with global proportions that has affected, in varying degrees, almost all corners […]

The death of the Kurdish woman Jina Amini in September 2022 sparked an inferno of protests throughout Iran, under the banner of “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi.” This Kurdish language slogan, which translates to “Women, Life, Freedom,” soon showed up on banners carried throughout the cities of Eastern Kurdistan (northwest Iran), and quickly became the official slogan […]

Authorities in the de facto autonomous region of North and East Syria (NES) this week made an announcement many years in the making. For several years now, representatives of the region known by the Kurdish metonym ‘Rojava’ have promised a new, updated version of the ‘Social Contract’ which codifies the principles through which the region […]

The following is an exclusive KCS interview with Berivan Amuda, from the YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) Information and Documentation Office, which was conducted on December 8th, 2023. The YPJ was established in 2012 and emerged from the bloody outcome of the Syrian Civil War. Since then, the YPJ has gained global renown as a women’s […]

As we approach the first anniversary of the “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (Woman, Life, Freedom) revolutionary movement in Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhilat) and Iran, it is beneficial to investigate its global impact. I have examined the implication of this movement in global terms at two levels: its impact on state-centric politics and its impact on grassroots feminist […]

As suggested by the title of ‘Self-Determination Struggles: In Pursuit of the Democratic Confederalist Ideal’, the vaunted right to self-determination is worthy of deeper critical scrutiny. Rather than uncritically surveying historical and international struggles for self-determination, in his new collection of essays and papers then Cambridge University’s Thomas Jeffrey Miley scrutinises struggles about and within movements claiming […]

We live in a technological age, in which computer chips are made out of rare minerals, and in which AI (Artificial Intelligence) is advancing at breakneck speed. State and transnational apparatuses of surveillance and marketing render the dream of decentralized workers’ control and people power perhaps hopelessly nostalgic, reminiscent of the aspirations of a bygone […]

Achieving freedom in Iran raises more questions than it answers. Is it possible to have self-determination without every ethnicity having a separate nation state? How serious are we about the liberation of national minorities and women? Could we overcome centralized domination by implementing the liberal notion of freedom understood as non-interference? Or does national and […]

The Kurdish Center for Studies (KCS) recently conducted an interview with Dr. Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Lecturer in Political Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. In the interview, Miley shares his expertise on defining “nation” and “nationalism” and elaborates on Abdullah Öcalan’s democratic nation and his reinterpretation of the concept of […]