The Kurdish Movement and the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria: An alternative to the (nation-)state model?

Summary, in English

Is the Rojava model really deconstructing the model of a state or is it potentially a new state form? Does the ‘democratic confederalism’ model that the Kurdish movement claims to be implementing in Northern Syria draw on/reproduce different modes of identity/belonging than that of the nation and the state? This paper argues that the shift from a nationalist movement towards a project that offers a stateless solution seems to be incomplete and needs to be further questioned. The first section begins with a brief discussion of the notion of statelessness and the historical background and ideological transformation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its ‘paradigm-shift’. The second section shows that despite positive aspects towards a post-national stateless model, the narratives of the representatives of the Kurdish political movement in Rojava display nationalist elements by prioritizing the Kurds and their cultural identity and a political power at the top of which Öcalan’s personality cult stands; and engages with the concept of the multitude, proposed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri whose work on radical democracy is theoretically relevant to the Rojava model.

• Author: Pinar Dinc
• Department/s: MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World; Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
• Publishing year: 2020
• Language: English
• Pages: 47-67
• Publication/Series: Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 1
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2020.1715669
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Topic: Political Science
• Keywords: Kurdish politics; Rojava; Democratic confedaralism; nation making; State formation; Middle East
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1944-8953