By: Sihanouk Dibo
It would be a mistake to consider the decision to dissolve the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on February 27 of last year as an improvised move. Anyone reading Leader Öcalan’s fifth defense (The Kurdish Issue and the Solution of the Democratic Nation – 2010) will find it within approximately ninety pages of the chapter: “Dimensions of the PKK’s transformation into the KCK”—that is, from Kurdistan-wide action to the Union of Communities in Kurdistan. In the very first line, he defines this clearly by stating (quote): “In the conflict between the PKK and the AKP, I choose the KCK.” This is an intellectual and cognitive stance regarding the approach to solving the Kurdish issue versus the establishment of a centralized nation-state, as occurred over a century ago in the region by France and Britain. It was imposed on the Middle East starting with the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov agreements, the Paris Peace Conference of 1920, the Treaty of London and the Cairo Conference of 1921, and ending with the Lausanne formula of 1923. These were the primary causes of conflicts and cultural genocide; the time has come to transcend this modeling through a paradigm of democratic solutions.
Following the developments in North and East Syria—from Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, and the withdrawals of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Deir Hafer, Maskana, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Tabqa toward Kurdish-majority areas, leading up to the agreement of January 29 last year—some individuals, from various positions and statuses, found a convenient opportunity to launch unjustified attacks on the ideology of the Democratic Nation and its embodiment in the Autonomous Administration. While the Administration has not ended, it has not remained as it was; rather, it has transformed according to the contents and spirit of the January 29 agreement, both administratively and militarily, shifting toward a formula of expanded administrative decentralization and local governance with established powers. This is not a justification for the many administrative, military, and political errors committed by the Autonomous Administration, but rather a responsible description of the current stage and a call for a more beneficial beginning. Simultaneously, it is an acknowledgment that the January 29 agreement and the steps preceding it are necessary but insufficient. If they are not further developed, they will stagnate and expire.
The Democratic Nation is not a rigid ideology or dogma, despite the stereotyping and lack of sufficient understanding it has received due to most practical approaches toward it. On the contrary, it is one of the most flexible ideas, capable of coexisting with other ideas that may seem to carry opposing contents on the surface, especially regarding the prevailing nationalist ideas in the region. In the fifth defense, nearly twenty-two times, the thinker Öcalan puts forward ideas under the banner: “it deserves to be paused upon and researched.” In fact, one of these was the reason I delved into authoring the book: The Kurdish Issue at the Cairo Conference 1921: Problematics and Dimensions (Cairo, February 1921). He is neither dogmatic nor urgently radical; rather, he constantly proposes and insists on beginnings of coexistence, as seen in the example: “The State plus Democracy.” As in all his defenses, after establishing the details of the problem, he moves to solutions after creating the groundwork for them. We will be very fair to ourselves before anyone else in interpreting what happened recently: our distance from institutionalization and our deviation from the reality of the “Confederation of Institutions” (institutions managed by themselves without interference) and community administrations made power peak at its pyramid. This created dozens of realities in Rojava / North and East Syria that besieged the idea, making democracy fragmented, formal, and incoherent.
However, our self-criticism here does not mean confirming what some launch against the Autonomous Administration project and the thought of Leader Öcalan, where the reasons and motives are well-known. Our choice of the Third Way (neither with the central Ba’athist authoritarian regime nor with the opposition implementing foreign agendas with expansionist projects) was a correct choice and a historical position that led to the creation of a viable path, despite being besieged and attempts to bury it by central authoritarian regimes that do not fundamentally recognize the existence of a Kurdish issue. The ideology of the Democratic Nation deserves the greatest credit for internationalizing the Kurdish cause in Syria globally for the first time in the history of the Kurdish people. Even the name “Rojava,” which has become recognized Syrianly, locally, and globally since the 2012 revolution, is considered an achievement of the Democratic Nation, not of those unfair attackers who try to undermine the “golden period” of the Kurds in Syria—the time of the Autonomous Administration. This is without even specializing in the core victories of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). One cannot say these are disconnected from the previous struggles and sacrifices made by the Kurdish movement in Syria, and what necessarily follows them now. The Autonomous Administration itself was a collective product, much like the establishment of the Supreme Kurdish Council in 2012, the ten points signed at the Democratic Union Party (PYD) headquarters in the Western Neighborhood regarding the establishment of the Transitional Administration in 2013 (signed by representatives of the Kurdish National Council), the Duhok Agreement of 2014, and the Conference for the Unity of the Kurdish Position on April 26 of last year.
Furthermore, the thought of the Democratic Nation does not intend to cancel any other ideas; rather, it provides a sound and cognitive demonstration that Kurdish society can accommodate two, or even three, currents/ideas. We do not mean the unjustified proliferation of Kurdish parties, but rather the idea/conviction itself. The author of the Democratic Nation has launched creative initiatives: in the early eighties with the late Idris Barzani regarding understanding and holding a Kurdistan Conference, up to 2013, which was repeated under the same formula with Leader Masoud Barzani (I had the honor of representing my party, the PYD, at that time in the preparatory committee’s work regarding economy and environment). Today, Leader/Thinker Öcalan emphasizes the extreme necessity of convening the Kurdistan National Congress and maintains correspondence with Kurdish parties to that end. This is not to mention the foundational relationship between Leader Öcalan and the late President Mam Jalal Talabani, which continues to this day with his son and the general leadership of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
The flexibility of the Democratic Nation is manifest in its ability to weave a balanced relationship with every patriotic and societal idea. Its balanced stance toward true Islam, with its inherent democracy, emphasizes the values of coexistence and the unity of destiny and brotherhood among peoples. Even now, we find at every moment that the ideology of the Democratic Nation and its embodiment represent one of the best vital outlets for enhancing the security and stability of the region, steering Syria and the area away from the specter of fighting based on sect, religion, nationality, ethnicity, gender, or color. The January 29 agreement, though we cannot describe it as ideal, is a realistic one suitable for launching toward the Syrian general public. Its strengthening and its guarantee must be fortified within the new Syrian Social Contract / Constitution and an actual transitional phase and its subsequent necessities. All steps that followed the fall of the authoritarian Ba’ath regime must be subject to national inclusivity and enjoy true, actual, and Syrian representation. Although current regional circumstances and the existential war between Israel and America on one side and Iran (and all the matrices/partners affiliated with both sides) on the other will lead to a zero-sum result, we can consider this an opportunity in itself. We can count what the Democratic Nation ideology has achieved, both Syrianly and Kurdishly, as a reliable building block and step.
The battle does not end until a radical change occurs that eliminates any possibility of regrowing the mechanism of the [old] idea. The current form is not the final one; it cannot be so within the current contexts of conflict. Öcalan’s thought is credited as one of the most important reasons for dismantling and obstructing the actual and cultural war of extermination against the Kurds, not only in Syria, alongside other reasons related to the foundations of local conflict as part of the regional and global conflicts occurring now. Most of those who attack Öcalan’s ideas have read nothing but the titles of his books and defenses. Some who have read fall into the trap of trying to gauge the effectiveness of his ideas by the behavior of those convinced by them; attempting to nullify the idea just because a follower deviated or took a path contrary to the conviction they display. This in itself is a dogma and an exercise in futile desire and emotion.
The Democratic Nation, as an Ocalanian thought, is a critique of existing ideas regarding ways to solve national and societal issues in the twentieth century and before. As long as it is a critical idea, it is subject to criticism, research, and expansion—he himself points this out in his writings. “Ocalanism” has a much higher chance of survival and continuity than other ideas because it starts from history as it actually happened, not to summon it back, but to explain and dissect it, thereby revealing the origin of the species and the essence of the matter: where we erred and where we succeeded.
Ocalanism realizes that the steps to reach the goal are difficult, the hardest of which is the first, because it is woven in difficult and complex atmospheres and taken within tough measurements and exceptional contexts that cannot be perceived by convex or concave eyes. As for the dominance of immediate significance and the invocation of the idea that the desired result has stumbled, it plunges its proponent—above all else—into the abyss of contradiction and the playground of whims, or at best, into a useless deception and stumbling.
I conclude with Mahmoud Darwish from the poem “Praise for the High Shadow” in favor of the sublimity of the idea:
How vast is the revolution
How narrow is the journey
How great is the idea
How small is the state.
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