The Ambiguities of Democratic Autonomy: The Kurdish movement in Turkey and Rojava

This paper traces the ideology of democratic autonomy, as developed by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan from the libertarian and anarchist writings of Murray Bookchin, as an alternative to the authoritarian and centralist nation state, not only in the Kurdish-inhabited provinces, but in Turkey at large. It explores, first, the ideological underpinnings and second, the practical implementation of democratic autonomy both in Southeastern Turkey and in Northeastern Syria or Rojava. Divergences between the two, I will argue, are not merely the result of contradictions between ideology and practice, or of the PKK’s enduring Leninist vanguardism, but also arise because the ideology itself remains ambiguous or implicit on the question of party organization and the legitimacy of armed resistance. These ambiguities help to account for the apparent tension between grassroots anarchism and Leninist centralism in democratic autonomy, not only in practice but also in theory.