Today's Topics:
1. Belarus, Pramen anarchist group: Tear Down The Bastille.
Hunger Strike as a Means or Struggle. Voices From Inside the
Walls (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Hunger Strike as a Means or Struggle. Voices From Inside the
Walls (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Bangladesh Anarcho Syndicalist Federation - Mckono: An
influential revolutionary with French journalists - Stephen Roger
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
influential revolutionary with French journalists - Stephen Roger
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Britain, London Anarchist Communists group: Save Our NHS?
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. anarkismo.net: Ecology in Democratic Confederalism by Ercan
Ayboga (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Voices From Inside the Walls. ‘ contains texts about the history of hunger strikes within
the prison walls and about the struggle of anarchists within prison. The texts were
written by anarchist prisoners themselves who are held in the dungeons of the Greek
prisons. ---- In April 2016 the texts were published in Greek by Solidarity Fund For
Imprisoned And Persecuted Fighters. The assembly of the Solidarity Fund has added texts
about the history of hunger strikes as a means of action within the walls. The texts were
distributed inside as well as outside the prison walls. ---- The Solidarity Fund writes
this about the texts: Through publishing the thoughts and experiences of prisoners,
through the spreading of their words, we seek to make them as present as possible in the
daily processes of the fighters outside the walls, we want to shake the barriers of
silence, fragmentation, the division among the oppressed, we chose to incarnate the
projects of struggle and solidarity in one more way.
This specific issue refers to hunger strike as a means of struggle, a matter that has
intensely concerned not only those directly involved but also those in solidarity, as well
as a large part of greek society. A hunger strike, as a means of struggle, was never a
desperate move, or simply a "peaceful" protest in order to project the victimization of
the hunger striker and extract sensitivity and charity. It is a conscious struggle, where
the coordination of those inside and outside is a necessary condition in order for there
to be a result, but also to maintain the strengths of those fighting. Despite all this, we
realize that the hunger strike is the ultimate means that a prisoner could
choose, we think it is of imperative need to cultivate a bidirectional struggle dynamic
inside and outside the walls, that will prevent the condition of someone placing their own
body as a mound. The struggle for revolution and the tearing down of every prison still
remains open.
Revolt Press now publishes the booklet in English on paper, in order to contribute to the
publication and dissemination of texts written by
anarchist prisoners.
‘Tear Down The Bastille. Hunger Strike as a Means or Struggle. " is for sale at Bookstore
Opstand in The Hague, Fort van Sjakoo in Amsterdam and online at Active Distributions.
If you want to buy the book as a distro or bookstore, please send an email to revoltpress
(at) riseup.net.
https://revoltpress.noblogs.org
------------------------------
Message: 2
Translation: AKM Shihab ---- France's army is one of the few who fought anti-anarchists or
anti-heroism in every revolutionary enemy in Ukraine. A fugitive has described Makhno and
his fighter forces. ---- It is always true that every person is active in destroying the
reputation of his other party, in this case and the attempt of the German colony Mennoni
is not an exception. They were trying to ruin the reputation of our comrade Makhanar.
Those who simply do not know our brigade commissioner Mckano well, they can believe these
misinterpreted messages. ---- As I have seen Makhono in my own eyes as a journalist in
France, I can summon him and his army in the right facts. How did one soldier follow his
commissioner? ---- On February 12, 1919, after joining the French army, I joined the
Communist Frontier (I published it in my other writing). On March 12 , 1919, after joining
the Bolshevik Vanguard, I went with the people who created a different army under Makhnor.
I myself also knew about my danger: I and my arms were coming from the direction from
where the white guard's fugitives had escaped. At that time the huge fury of war and
conquest of soldiers was spreading. Whenever a person gives a huge amount of comrade in
the fight to achieve the victory of the revolution, then how can any other unknown soldier
know about it?
Unexpectedly nothing happened. Those soldiers who did not shout like a lion before the
conquest , they tried to prove themselves as a lion soldier after the conquest of the
revolution.
In response to a question I said, I am a soldier fleeing France; They surrounded me
saullase , my embrace , hand milaya , I have to eat , and asked me what else I welcome
lagabe a word, deep in love, they took themselves.
After the issue of the entry of Ukraine's 9th Regent Commissioner Molenku, and Maulachak,
I surrender all the weapons and ammunitions left to me and they give me a message. Comrade
Maliranquo used to be with a strong team , everyone respected him. Identity card was given
after contact with me and all the details. I and I informed the details of my escape at
that time. He invited me to eat food with him, and after seeing my head, I saw the costume
of my dress and gave me the uniform costume costume. He said that I have my own house but
I do not like to live with my comrades from home.
I do not think I'm going to be separated. We all rejoice together in real life, they do
not think anything except victory , they say , " When we are with Makhna, no one is afraid
of the world. He always leads us towards the front - he is brave like a lion , we must
destroy bourgeois and capitalism . " The soldier also told me that he is not like my
previous commander , he unknowingly operates the war. Junk's field is one hundred miles
and Makhanu is ahead of everyone , he encourages the soldiers, His infinite courage is the
source of inspiration for all.
The next morning when I was drinking tea, my first opportunity was to meet Brigadier
Commissioner Makhno. He myalerenaku kamisara from the Department ' s Regiment visited and
all our warm congratulations jananah " Good PM! " He shook hands with everyone , at the
same time Malerchenko introduced me. He introduced me to say that I was a comrade from
France who escaped from Sivaspaul and joined me here. Manko smiled and smiled with me , he
told me that he was very happy to see me. He put me in the front seat , kept the tea till
he accepted the dinner , and till 2 o'clock till the day I took him.
Manko is a common man of middle height of chipchip, but he has not seen distinction in his
physical form. He was wearing blue , see, it looked as attractive and dignified person. He
looked very brave and meritorious in his glowing eyes and laughable excitement. At that
time the hair of his head was tucked backwards and he seemed to be more sensible.
We've talked for hours on various topics, thanks to Comrade Chernov who is Mccantor's
Edgundant. Chernov is a skilled revolutionary who was outside the country for many years
due to revolution. He lived in England and America for a long time. At that time, he
gained extensive knowledge of meeting with revolutionary groups and individuals of all the
countries of Europe and other countries. Which today has anointed him on the high seat of
revolutionary fight. He knew almost all languages of Uruguay. So he helped me and
Makhnor's work by doing two language work. I updated Comrade Makhno with the whole picture
of France and the actual image of the ongoing movement and struggle. Maakhan asked me
about the various aspects of the Paris revolution. Although he was already aware of these
things;He knew almost all the writers and thinkers in France and was well-informed about
their writings and ideological thoughts. I was really impressed by his knowledge and
awareness.
The next day, Mankhon announced the address of the people. All the people of Melchand
gathered in front of the church. His talent and popularity attracted the people, at that
time no one was equal to Makhno. When he came on the horse's back, I saw people from all
around bursting with joy. Makhan spent more than sleeping on horseback. He laughs at
everyone , the talent and knowledge for the proletariat leadership was more than all of us
, he is our beloved bandwala who is working for the oppressed , oppressed people and hated
the oppressors and the oppressed.
He stood up on the stage and started talking. He was talking about drag, but due to the
festivities of the people, he had to stop repeatedly. His eyes glisten was time to speak,
he insisted , signaling to the point was based on the statement. At that time he spoke
about one hour. I could not understand all his words because I was a different speaker.
However, with the fire of his fire, the people who were united with the spell could spell.
I was attracted to the great words and expressions of the face. During his speech, the
people present were slogans , " Revolutionary living beings! The bourgeoisie fall! Long
live the butter! " I understand clearly what the people of Ukraine want and what their
rights are.
A leader is of great dignity, his biggest identity is that he is a proletariat and
revolutionary , he is well-versed in the love of the soldier and the people. Like I have
seen Makhono , he is better than a thousand , he is a big dragon and revolutionary in our
fight.
Translators
say that this text was published on March 12, 1919 between March 12, 1919, on St Maestro's
master Maestro, in the Paris news paper La Late. The exact date of publication is unknown.
Because it was published by translating from Russian language. The Bolshevik leader is in
the Lenin archive.
At that time there was a great deal of Mankhawn forces with Bolsheviks. Both of them were
working to settle white army from southern Ukraine. The name of the place Malochang is a
huge village. This village occupied Makhnovistown in March 1919.
Makhnova was very interested in hearing, Russian editors wrote many articles on this
subject. A slogan was common among the people of his army , " one for everyone and for all
for one ". He was very fond of Alexander Dora.
If it was said that Makhan had got the chance to attend two years only, but he had heard a
great reading in his life. At the very young age, Dennis finished reading the book of
Cove. And he reads these books just as the Anarchist's suggestion. Geography , history ,
mathematics etc. were his favorite subjects.
He wrote in his autobiography:
" Whenever I'm in jail , then gave up reading books. I finished the book after the book;
Classical books I've read all of Russia , Samar from kabha Lev sestabha , byalinaski and
lermantabhera special attraction for me was to write them because I had everything. Thanks
to the politicians who have built a valuable library in prison. Here are some books that
can not be found in our provincial cities. I did the Kluvezcci course. I was involved in
the secret negotiations of the Communists. Later, I read CropThinke's mutual aid book. I
am heavily influenced by this book. As a result, I have discussed a lot with comrades in
various ways . "
http://www.bangladeshasf.org/
------------------------------
Message: 3
Healthcare in the UK is by no means ‘socialised', as critics in the US claim. Though
healthcare in the UK is undoubtedly better than healthcare in the US - just as other
countries have better healthcare than the UK - it is still subject to the pressures and
dynamics of capitalism, existing as it does in a capitalist society. It has also been
increasingly marketised over recent decades, with attacks on both social provision and NHS
workers coming under the cover of ‘privatisation'. The introduction of payment by results
has introduced a market in health services. Many non-frontline services have been
privatised or contracted to companies like DHL. The introduction of wholly privately owned
and operated ‘NHS treatment centres', the rollout of Private Finance Initiatives etc all
represent part of the same project of ‘rationalising' social provisions to the benefit of
the overall capitalist system. Even the NHS in its classic form, as the centrepiece of the
post-war welfare state, came as part of the attempt to stave off prewar-style class
conflict and integrate the working class more closely into the state following the end of
the war. Its aim was to provide a healthy working class that could fight and die for the
bosses in their wars (our masters struggled to find enough fit cannon fodder for their
First World War) and healthy enough to slave for their profits in paid jobs and in unpaid
childcare and housework. In addition, capitalism needed to stabilise itself after the
turbulence of the 1920s, in a change of tactic well-known as the ‘post-war settlement'.
We need to defend health services, but critically. The NHS was never ‘ours' and it is far
from perfect.
Since the inception of the NHS, consultants were allowed to use NHS time and resources for
their private gain, freeloading that the Daily Mail and their mates are happy to ignore.
Drugs and equipment were left in the hands of private corporations, burdening the NHS with
enormous costs as companies sought to make maximum profits from their monopoly. The Health
Service treats our illnesses as individual cases, but most of our illness is due to
economic and social conditions that we face collectively: unhealthy and dangerous
workplaces, overlong hours and night time working, pollution from factories and cars, poor
food, unhealthy housing, lack of trees and greenspaces, all exacerbated by racism and
sexism for large sectors of the population. In the 1960s and 1970s women highlighted how
unequally they were treated, particularly around childbirth. They won some improvements
through struggle, but we are still miles from a genuine community health service.
We know that the current Tory government is making massive cuts to health services with
closures of hospitals, casualty departments, rationing of services by age, cuts to
services for the elderly and people with disabilities, near frozen wages of overworked
staff etc. The whole idea of running healthcare as a business is contradictory (treatment
based on ability to pay rather than need), and only benefits the well-off who can always
pay for treatment, and the drug companies and other corporate vultures who are taking over
more and more of the health service. The whole idea of ‘choice' in this context is
similarly a nonsense. We don't want to choose which doctors or hospital service to use
(the one round the corner or the one 20 miles away?). We need local services, all of which
are accessible and good.
Who is to blame?
What is causing the ongoing and deepening crisis in the NHS (and) the ‘lack of money'? Is it:
· All those old people selfishly ‘bed blocking' hospital beds rather than going home
unwell and dying quickly so that they are no longer ‘a burden'.
· The obese smokers and drinkers: no not the rich ones, and as always, blame the
consumer, not the producer (the alcohol and tobacco industries have no responsibilities).
· Migrant workers and ‘health tourists' (the first pay taxes too, and the second cost
less than the NHS pencil budget).
None of the above!
Back in 2005 the now Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, co-wrote a pamphlet calling for the
replacement of the NHS with a market insurance system, with the heavy involvement of
private enterprise. A fox in charge of the hen coop! The policies pursued are obviously
part of a death by a thousand cuts and a ‘privatisation by stealth' strategy. The idea
that the slow death of the NHS is just down to the Tories is delusional however. The PFI
(Private Finance Initiative) was a Conservative idea they left on the shelf, with little
of it being implemented. It was Labour's Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who activated it when
in government: schools and hospitals were built with finance from the private sector
(banks etc) who then leased them to back to the government, who paid for them over the
long term on a mortgage basis at a much higher cost (40% more). Old hospitals were closed,
so overall there were fewer beds. Labour also introduced ‘the market' into the health
service, the equivalent of putting leeches into a blood bank, and introduced Foundation
Trusts. These Labour policies left the NHS with debts of £81.6 billion, and they together
with massive ongoing cuts are the cause of the crisis.
What Do We Want, And How Do We Get There?
We need to stop hospitals, casualty departments etc being closed, attacks on GPs, staff
cuts, freezing of the wages of health service staff (which are cuts as rents, food etc go
up). We need to stop the increasing marketisation of the NHS. We need to stop the NHS
being run as a business concern, with vastly overpaid administrators at the top, with at
least 800 of these on six figure salaries.
We need to end the rigid hierarchies in hospitals, where decisions cannot be questioned,
as witness the recent revelations about Gosport War Memorial Hospital where over 450
patients died after being prescribed dangerous painkillers and with according to a recent
report: "patients and relatives powerless in their relationship with professional staff".
We need to end the grip of drug companies on the NHS. In 2016 alone, the NHS payed these
companies £1 billion for drugs for arthritis, cancer, MS, etc. The research for these
drugs was funded by public money. "Big pharmaceutical companies are ripping us off by
taking over drugs developed primarily with public money and selling the drugs back to the
NHS at extortionate prices".
Heidi Chow, Global Justice Now.
How we do this is crucial however. If we use the same old tired methods of petitions,
relying on union bureaucrats, trusting in political parties (whoever they are) not only
will we probably lose, but we will remain powerless, divided, and with an illness service
that doesn't meet our needs or tackle the causes of our ill health. We need to methods and
organisation that empowers us: to organise ourselves, control our own struggles, without
leaders, and to use direct action methods: occupations, work-ins, strikes, work to rule
etc. We need to break down the barriers between staff and patients, carers and
service-users, workers and unemployed to link our struggles.
What do we want? - A free health service controlled and run by the staff and users. An
emphasis on empowering people through helping them to educating themselves in groups about
their bodies and health (e.g. books and pamphlets such as ‘Our Bodies Ourselves' and the
collective work in the last wave of feminism). Communities working together to tackle the
causes of ill health: dangerous and unhealthy workplaces, an unhealthy, car-based
transport system, poor food, widespread pollution, lack of green spaces for relaxation,
and exercise etc. Move away from processed and unhealthy food, and from the current
over-reliance on drugs. Again, self-organisation and direct action are key. But surely
this is pie-in-the-sky? No, we are drawing on what people have done, and are doing, both
here and abroad. In Greece, massive health cuts have resulted in health workers running
hospitals and clinics etc for free, with the support of their local communities.
https://londonacg.blogspot.com/2018/06/save-our-nhs.html
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Message: 4
Ecology is one of the three pillars of the paradigm of Democratic Confederalism, the
political-theoretical concept of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Besides democracy and
gender liberation, ecology has been mentioned explicitly as a dimension in this concept
since 2005. However to date, ecology is less discussed and practiced than the two other
pillars. ---- Ecological destruction and exploitation in Kurdistan ---- With the
widespread introduction of capitalism to Kurdistan in the 1950s came a systemic and
destructive exploitation of nature. The four colonialist states -Turkey, Iran, Iraq and
Syria - started to plan large energy, mining, agriculture, infrastructure and other
investment projects whose implementation led to exceedingly grave ecological destruction
and exploitation[1]. This is caused, amongst other factors, by the capitalist economic
model, respectively low ecological and social standards in the implementation of the many
projects as well as by the simple fact that Kurdistan has the de facto status of a
quartered colony. While keeping the colonial status, the hegemonial states introduced step
by step, using economic as well as military measures, capitalist relations into the
societies of Kurdistan. In the 1970s the construction of numerous large projects -
particularly dams, oil-drilling and mining - had been realized through the exercise of the
hegemonic power of the highly centralized states in the four parts of Kurdistan under the
pretext of progress. After the first preparation work in the 1960s, agriculture started to
be industrialized in the 1970s, particularly in West Kurdistan (Rojava) and North
Kurdistan (Bakur), later in South (Basur) and East Kurdistan (Rojhilat).
One result of these policies was that communal and solidarity-based relations became
weaker in the society of Kurdistan. The infrastructure projects and investments were
designed and implemented with absolutely no consultation of the local population and
through an authoritarian approach, were in the interest of the colonialist states and the
colonialist and collaborative Kurdish upper classes and aimed a profit maximization
through capitalist modernization, oppression and a deepening assimilation. While this
development was still slow in the 1950s and 1960s, it took on a accelerating character in
the 1970s. As a result of the implementation of large infrastructure projects in rural
areas and the consequent displacement of hundreds of thousands; the industrialization of
agriculture; the continuous economically-driven migration of rural people; rapid
urbanization; industrialisation; and the colonialist wars against the population as from
the 1980s; society has lost for a big part its characteristics of solidarity and
communality. The main characteristics of the pre-capitalist societies were communalist
approach and solidarity on decision-making, economy, sociality, culture and others issues,
but different intensity of feudal and conservative forms were also present. Since the
1990s, the number of implemented large projects, as well as the livelihoods of people and
economic relations, experienced grave changes. The surviving elements of the subsistence
economy and local circles of economy were marginalised and Kurdistan became fully part of
the "national market" of each state and entered the neoliberal global market.
The former times were certainly full of hierarchy, patriarchy and discrimination, but the
transition to capitalism was a brutal break in the social and historical development and
in a certain way it has even deepened societal sexism and patriarchy. To understand what
has been diminished in these decades, the following approaches and characteristics of
communalism and solidarity were eroded between the 1950s and 1990s. Typically:
Although usually not inclusive concerning sex and age, many villages had in practice a
kind of assembly of mostly older men and sometimes of some older women which gathered if
necessary and took decisions.
Solidarity on economical issues was common. For example, when a family or a household
wanted to build a new house, the whole (or most) of the village joined the construction
for at least several days which were crucial to building work proceeding significantly.
It was usual that the animals of all households have been grazed together in appropriate
locations. This was managed in turn by all households.
When a household had a bad year of harvest, the others in the village supported the
affected family by supplying them with the basic foods.
When a household lacked yeast for cooking bread or milk, the neighbors shared it without
hesitation or any discussion. In the following days the supported household put the same
amount in the front of the house whose family gave the support.
When a household had a a large harvest of a certain product (like walnut), it was often
the practice to share some of the surplus with others in and around the village.
Solidarity on social affairs was also common. For example, when one or two parents of a
family died or were forced to migrate in search of work, then the others in the village
took care of the children who could not support themselves.
There was cultural solidarity. In the evenings often people gathered in one of the houses
and shared stories, myths, poems and songs among each other.
Kurdistan belongs worldwide to the countries where until recently capitalist
modernity[2]was weak and solidarity and communal structures in the societies were still
existing in a significant way. Today the older generations of Kurdistan remember quite
well how life was until the 1960s or 1970s.
There is no objective to romanticize the life several decades ago, but nevertheless there
was a significant solidarity and sharing in the society and not everything was valued
monetarily; life and commodification[3]was not materialized as it is the case today.
Start of discussion on ecology
After two decades of freedom struggle in North Kurdistan, in the 1990s the Kurdish Freedom
Movement (KFM) started to discuss the ecological question on a Kurdish and global level.
The discussion took place against the background of the systematic destruction in Bakur
through the Turkish State's war on Kurds; more than 2,5 million displaced people were
confronted in a brutal way with the urban and capitalistic life while Turkish state forces
destroyed up to 4000 villages and torched huge forested areas in Bakur. The majority of
the displaced people had been living before in a mainly subsistence economy with regional
product circulation and limited ecological damage. Particularly between 1992 and 1995
large areas were depopulated and many cities in Bakur often doubled their population
without being prepared in any way and without support from the Turkish government or others.
In the 1990s especially the political leader Abdullah Öcalan of the Kurdish Freedom
Movement (KFM) questioned the emergence of neoliberal capitalism, with new analyses in
general and notably in relation to neoliberalism's impacts on nature. Particularly the
concept of growth, and the increasing disconnection of profit from production has been
criticized in Öcalan's writings and speeches. In this sense, he is speaking against the
growing number of large investment projects because of the huge and irreparable
destruction of nature they cause. Here he included also the climate change which, among
others, he considered as an acceleration of ecological destruction by capitalism. To
destroy nature for the interest of central governments and profit of companies means
usually to destroy the basis of life of millions. The massive ecological destruction
affects seriously human life. Often large projects displace a large number of people
and/or exploit the land and surrounding areas which they are forced to leave. Öcalan also
discussed the disconnection of people to nature and what kind of impacts this could have
on people's minds and the relation of people to each other. In a fundamental way the
alienation of people has been put in relation to the disconnection of people from nature.
At this point Öcalan connects the discussion on ecology with institutionalized hierarchy
which has its roots in patriarchy.
But ecology had not found a place at the core of the ongoing discussions in the 1990s. It
was new, not yet theoretically strongly developed and in the shadow of the ongoing brutal
war of the Turkish state. The central theoretical discussion at that time focused on
highly important topic of women´s liberation. At that time, it was most urgent for the
Kurds to discuss the liberation of women as it was the main tool for overcoming
conservative and hierarchical structures in society. However an important part of the
revolutionaries and political activists within the KFM took note of the discussion on
ecology of the 1990s. It influenced in the following years the minds of thousands of
politically engaged and interested people. Öcalan's discussion showed a strategic approach
as it was a discussion which was ahead of the times in comparison with all other
left(ist)-democratic groups and movements in Kurdistan and Turkey. Öcalan was rather at
the same level with some global discussions and movements which had started to discuss the
ecological contradiction.
Municipalities in Bakur - Challenge to develop an ecological practice
Shortly after Öcalan has been kidnapped through an international plot under the
coordination of the USA and delivered to the Turkish state in 1999, the armed struggle of
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) stopped, and a new and broad discussion on means and
perspectives of the freedom struggle started while giving priority to the political-civil
struggle. The aim to set up a "Kurdish state" has been given up finally. In the same year
in the local elections several important municipalities had been won by HADEP, the
People's Democracy Party, the legal party of the KFM at that time. The gained
municipalities - among them Amed (Diyarbakir), Batman and Wan (Van) - became essential
elements of the freedom struggle of the Kurds. This coincided with decreasing repressive
conditions mainly because of the stop of the armed struggle. This facilitated the space
for the municipalities, HADEP and other organizations of the KFM to spread their own
political ideas and to get better in contact with new and not politically organized parts
of the society. What has been claimed for years, namely that the KFM has better and much
more democratic concepts, could be implemented at local level through municipalities and
other political organizations. But at the same time the dynamic created by the armed
struggle did not exist anymore. A shift in the way of thinking and acting became necessary.
Between 1999 and 2004 HADEP administered 37 municipalities and has been challenged to
prove to the population that it is capable to govern better and more socially-responsibly
than all other authoritarian and corrupted political parties of the hegemonic system.
After taking over of the municipalities the state repression never ceased, but it was much
less than in the 1990s. Rather the State's approach was to give some space, but to bring
the HADEP (replaced in 2002 by DEHAP, 2004 DTP, 2009 BDP and 2014 HDP/DBP) municipalities
with certain imposed policies, including challenging frameworks like neoliberalism and
administrative centralism, to a point where they would fail, thus loose the following
local elections and finally lose their attractivity.
The HADEP municipalities, and in broader terms the Kurdish Freedom Movement, have the
declared political goal of creating a democratic-ecological society with the year 2000. It
was expressed publicly that the approach to the nature would be respectful; natural sites
would be conserved and developed within the cities and their surroundings would be more
clean and green; and the investments projects would not be implemented at the expense of
nature. The practice had to be significantly different from municipalities ruled by other
parties which in Kurdistan did not care in any way for ecological life.
These first years were the time when thousands of political activists and other
politically-interested people in Kurdistan and Turkey started to read articles and books
on ecology and particularly social ecology, including Murray Bookchin. This brought
forward the discussion how an ecological life should be developed and what that could mean
in long-term and short-term politics. It affected also some employees and politicians in
the municipalities. This was important as the difference can be observed sometimes in the
details. It should be considered that in the whole state of Turkey the discussions on a
more ecological or "sustainable" country were quite new, and political campaigns against
destructive and exploitative developments and projects were rarely carried out. But it was
also the time when in several regions struggles against large investment projects came up.
In Bakur two struggles became widely known. One was against the Ilisu Dam on the Tigris
which is planned to flood a large part of the Tigris Valley and the ancient town of
Hasankeyf. Another one was against several dams on the Munzur River in Dersim where live
mainly people of Alevi believe. Both struggles gained big support amongst the Kurds. The
Kurdish society started to discuss for the first time issues of rivers, dams, energy,
cultural and natural heritage and development in relation to each other on a broader scale
that contributed to an increase of a critical awareness on these issues.
However, in fact the gained municipalities in their first period (until 2004) showed a
practice which was by far better than the others from an ecological point of view. The
cities became cleaner and healthier with improvement of the waste system, also in the
poorest neighborhoods which had been neglected for decades. The drinking water supply and
sewage management was improved significantly in several cities within few years. The green
area per person increased too. The sites of cultural heritage got more attention and
accessibility for the public. More public spaces like squares or market places had been
build up. The public transport had been developed to all settled areas and for a
comparatively low price. Some designed large projects with problematic social and
ecological impacts had been canceled or changed by the municipalities or not followed up.
The life conditions in the poor quarters had been improved also by paving the streets,
building social infrastructure like social centers or washing centers for clothes and the
neglection of unpaid water bills. Efforts to include civil society groups in the
decision-making process on many projects and even city planning became day to day reality.
We can state that in the very beginning there were many urgent works in the field of basic
services that had to be undertaken. The living quality in most cities was under a big
threat - a stress that was exacerbated by the situation of those displaced by conflict in
the 1990s.
Although these positive developments occurred, there was lack of an overall consensus as
to how to develop a further and future ecological policy and the bigger ecological context
could not be explained well. Almost all mayors and policy decision makers of the
municipalities and other structures of the KFM did not consider the ecological perspective
as one of the main strategic approaches and it remained often secondary if other aspects
prevailed. The ecological consciousness of such people stayed limited with the pragmatism
of parliamentarism. This was not very surprising as the general political movement stayed
weak in the field of ecology and the discussion was quite new for the movement in general
and particularly for the broader society. There were no strong actors within society who
claimed a stronger ecological policy by the municipalities. In these years the
fore-mentioned ecologist movements against dam projects concentrated their efforts on the
dam projects; and the new "environmental" associations and civil organizations that were
emerging in the cities, including organisations of engineers, architects, lawyers and
medical doctors, did not yet demand strongly enough ecological criteria to be included in
urban development.
There were two other aspects of relevance. The first is that the society was only just
emerging from an extended period of intensive systematic state terror and was still in a
phase of basic recovery. The political focus of the KFM was mainly on the human right
violations of the 1990s and the demand for Kurdish identity in Bakur to be accepted with
basic autonomous rights within the Republic of Turkey. The second is that capitalism in
Kurdistan became very strong after the crisis of 2001. In 2003-2004, the official economic
growth rate achieved up to ten percent, the money in the economy accumulated significantly
and everywhere new and larger investments were done. Many more people started to earn big
amounts of money through trade and investments. This created an intense pressure also on
the cities in Bakur and approaches to open space for private investors affected almost all
municipalities which suffered from structural financial low income. These were the years
when neoliberalism entered Bakur.
In Bakur and also in Basur (with the US occupation in 2003) and Rojhilat, the development
of extractive industries (mining, oil and gas) became very dramatic in these years.
Investment projects in all fields had become widespread. In this sense the rural areas had
been confronted with the following projects: all rivers should be transformed by hundreds
of dams into artificial lakes or dried out by diversion dams; thousands of licenses had
been commissioned to companies for test mine drilling; all main roads started to be
broadened; mega coal plants had been constructed in several provinces; one of the world´s
largest cement factory had been constructed; Bakur had become a hot spot for fracking; and
finally the whole agricultural land - even the mountainous areas - faced fast change
according to capitalistic market rules. The state planners started to consider each square
meter in terms of financially exploitable land and prepared or approved thousands of
projects. The AKP government under Erdogan attracted with such policies the interest of
global capital. Only the cities administered by the KFM resisted for a big part this
development. That is why the government could not implement the most planned policies in
half of the cities of Bakur.
In a period when the society of Bakur started to develop quickly an ecological awareness,
the neoliberalized capitalism started to make the largest historical ecological (and thus
social) destruction and exploitation in Bakur. The destruction of nature and overcoming of
most of remaining social-traditional elements in the society was much more intensive than
during the war of the 1990s. Only the mountainous areas with difficult access for humans
could recover after 2000.
Ecology within Democratic Confederalism: the theoretical concept
On Newroz 2005, Abdullah Öcalan declared "Democratic Confederalism" as the new
political-theoretical concept of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Thereby the writings and
discussions of the prior years and the whole experience of 30 years of struggle could be
summarized and put into relation to each other in a systematic way. Without doubt
Democratic Confederalism cannot be considered disconnected from the discussions and
critics after the collapse of the "state/real socialism" around 1990 and the new leftist
and libertarian social and political movements all around the world. The outcome was a
critical, inclusive and radical thinking with new perspectives for the Kurds in relation
with other people in the Middle East. The new political concept is being expressed with a
paradigm based on three pillars. An ecological approach to the life was stressed as much
as radical democracy, which goes beyond parliamentarianism, and gender liberation with a
focus on women liberation. To repeat the obvious: The pillars and the whole concept are
expressed with the aim to achieve a liberated, emancipated, equal and solidarity-based
society in harmony with nature.
Radical democracy and women´s liberation had been stressed and developed strongly among
the Kurds already for many years before. But actually each of the three pillars of
Democratic Confederalism cannot be thoroughly developed without links to the other two.
However the initial starting point is women's liberation.
Prior to 5000 years of women's oppression and exclusion evolved the Neolithic period when
a complete communal social order was created around woman which can be also called
matricentric society. Öcalan emphasizes that this social order saw none of the enforcement
practices of the state order and existed for thousands of years. It is characterized by
equality and freedom, was viable because the social morality of the matriarchal order did
not allow ownership and it had a harmony with the nature. It is this long-lasting order
that shaped humanity's collective social consciousness; and it is our endless yearning to
regain and immortalise this social order of equality and freedom that led to our construct
of paradise.
Öcalan states that with the overcoming of matriacentric society by patriarchy
institutionalized hierarchical structures had emerged and spread among human societies and
characterized the upcoming states until nowadays. Long before explicit social classes came
into being, the first oppressed and exploited class are women. This has been followed in
the following centuries and millenia by the oppression of children and man. This
political-ideological formation led also to the domination and destruction of nature by
humans during the different periods of human history. The ecological exploitation and
destruction must be analyzed basically from such an approach.
Today the conservative and reactionary approaches of existing states is experienced in the
first instance by society through the oppression of women. Another important point is that
Women as oppressed gender have a stronger relation to the nature than men; in all
patriarchal societies men are usually more attached to power and thus are more alienated
from nature than. Thus, the struggle for an ecological and liberated society means in the
end also the struggle against patriarchy and liberation of women or, to put it another
way, without the liberation of women there cannot be an ecological society.
As the oppression of society starts with patriarchy, it is logical that the KFM has
started to focus more and more on the liberation of women which at the same is the
liberation of all kind of genders and the whole society. Within the KFM, this
consciousness came out to top in the beginning of the 1990s and thus an intensive and
widespread discussion on women's liberation started which became more deep and systematic
after the halt of the war in Bakur in 1999 and additionally more with the development of
Democratic Confederalism.
Discussing more in depth the approach of the KFM on nature, firstly it has to be stated
that the KFM views nature as the body of all living beings, including humans. Humans are
part of nature and do not stand over it or any species. Like in the Neolithic Period it is
regarded as alive and animated, no different from themselves. All living beings are part
of one common big ecosystem which offers enough opportunities to live for everybody.
Nature was omnipresent, there was for the significant majority of people always in the
daily life a strong connection with nature. Öcalan describes this as follows: "This past
awareness of nature fostered a mentality that recognized a multitude of sanctities and
divinities in nature. We may gain a better understanding of the essence of collective life
if we acknowledge that it was based on the metaphysics of sanctity and divinity, stemming
from reverence for the mother-woman." Today there are still some beliefs where in nature
are a multitude of sanctities and divinities, one of them is the Alevi belief.
Consequently for spirituality and inspiration among humans nature was and is the main source.
Based on through adherence to ecological principles nature should be treated respectfully
and not as a resource for profit. Nature was and is the source of food, housing and all
other material needs of life. Under capitalist modernity, humans living in urban centers
are usually weakly connected to nature and understand less the relation and connection to
nature. Nature had and has a multidimensional meaning in life and is essential for the
development of culture and identity as well as spirituality. Due to the alienation between
human beings which contributes significantly to the alienation between nature and human
beings, nowadays nature is overexploited. Despite everyone experiencing the impacts of
grave ecological destruction in the next decades, the destruction of nature seems to
continue. The current approach of human driven capitalist modernity is a state of betrayal
of humans to nature, to their body.
In this sense, if human beings would meet only their needs[4], nature would not experience
serious destruction and the ecosystems would have the capacity to recover itself. At this
point, the question what is the real need of people today is not easy to be responded and
should not be left only to biologists or economists, rather it relates to the question of
democracy, i.e. whether a society can take decisions under broadly democratic conditions
free from imposed exploitative-extractive economy policies. We assume that in a liberated,
solidarity-based, radical-democratic and ecological society there will be no pressure to
over-extract "elements"[5]from nature.
Do not forget that humans are not only physical or material organisms, they have strong
and deep immaterial feelings and metaphysical needs in their life. Although humans cannot
express them, they do not think and act only in a rational way. For thousands of years,
people have sought inspiration and motivation following different methods, including
retiring from their surroundings to nature. With the exponential increase of urbanization,
asphalt application, cultivation of landscape and investment projects all over the
territories, less areas are suitable in this sense and so it becomes always more difficult
for inspiration by nature, in capitalist modernity particularly for poorer people from
cities who have less financial capacities to experience directly nature. In connection
with that this affects also physical reproduction and recovery activities for people from
urban centers.
Communities far away from the urban centers, industry and industrial agricultural areas
are closer to nature and have more spiritual connection with environment. The less there
is capitalist modernity, the more natural and spiritual the life can be. If such
communities in non-urban areas belong to oppressed groups like the indigenous peoples of
Latin America, the Adivasi from India and Alevi Kurds, then the connection to nature may
have an additional importance because the oppressed peoples express themselves also
through nature. In this sense the nature is a very essential part of their oppressed
identity. Accordingly the destruction or misappropriation of nature by the colonialist
force is an elimination of their identity. This is often not much understood by people in
the capitalist and big urban centers where life no longer has has a strong relation to nature.
In the ideology of the KFM, the ecological perspective is considered of strategical
importance and as a tool to create awareness in the whole human society and all human
linked activities and processes from a nature conservation, anti-capitalist and holistic
perspective. In doing so, the approach is that the dimensions not covered by gender
liberation or radical democracy would be expressed with ecology. In this sense, the
emphasis on ecology within Democratic Confederalism can be understood also as the
completion of the two other pillars.
However, it should be underlined that nature conservation and even nature restoration by
humans is a strategic goal. From the very beginning on, the KFM stressed that each living
being has the right to exist due to its natural occurrence. The life of animals and plants
must be protected actively by humans. Regarding nature conservation, the goal to limit and
stop anthropogenic climate change is a crucial topic, as in the next decades it could
affect in a much more dramatic way everything on our planet - actually Kurdistan and
Middle East have already been affected for almost two decades due to decreasing
precipitation. Climate change is no less important than "nature conservation" (here it
meant projects/policies to conserve species, habitats and areas of high biodiversity) and
reverse, as some environmental organizations or politicians prioritize in their
discussions, they are mutually dependent and should not be treated independently from each
other. Climate change can not be limited without the conservation and restoration of
forests, vegetation, rivers, water cycle, soil, air etc. For the KFM, climate change is
part of nature conservation and a reason why in this paper climate change is not mentioned
specifically.
Thus it is concluded that each struggle against ecological destruction is very essential
and a necessary step to reestablish a relation to nature for many people; but in long-term
not enough to protect the contested natural area and related human society. Not enough
because the related investment project as well as all other destructive projects are
caused by the dominant political-economic system. This dominant system will never step
back to implement all designed and planned projects.
That is why being ecological means also to criticize all processes in the society,
particularly the way of producing and consuming, feeding, housing, mobilization,
organizing leisure etc. The KFM rejects categorically the way these models are implemented
by capitalist modernity and the direction they take today - KFM's insistence on communal
life is an expression of such a rejection. The current level of consumption is without
doubt too much for the earth. Going on like this would end in the dramatic destruction or
significant deterioration of all existing ecosystems and the loss of the most
biodiversity. If there is no deceleration in the short-term and significant conceptional
change in mid-term, nature's destruction and climate change will continue and the basis of
life will become much weaker with grave impacts for the ecosystems, biodiversity, animals,
plants and billions of humans. The worst affected people would be mainly people,
communities and states with weak socio-economic capacities.
To achieve a considerable change of these models, the basic approach must be to reduce
consumption of energy and material by at least 80 % in industrial states in mid-term and
to find a new balance where each human has the same amount of energy and material for use;
one important criteria should be to allow degraded ecosystems and biodiversity to recover.
At this point it should be emphasized that each destruction of nature or ecosystem has
serious impacts on humans and is thus a social destruction - several factors determine the
level. Each investment project like dams and mining has the high potential to destroy
nature as well as to violate the basic rights of affected people. So ecological
destruction must be understood also as the violation of political, social, cultural and
economic rights of people. This connection is still not made by many critical activists or
analysts in our world.
Going one step further the KFM is aware that with capitalism - even without neoliberalism
- the ecological destruction can never be stopped, not to mention the reversal, i.e. the
renaturation of nature and restoration of climate balance. If capitalism dominates the
global economy and capitalist modernity the political sphere, there will be an intense
pressure to have "growth" in the capitalist sense and (almost) no space to develop other
forms of living, for democratic decision-making processes and a communal and democratic
economy. Over centuries and decades, capitalist modernity has conquered the brains and
behaviors of billions of humans in a subtle way. It cannot be overcome with a concept
based only on new social and economic goals as "real/state socialism" intended to do.
Hierarchy, state and capitalism is firstly an ideological development.
Capitalist modernity has started to deepen at an accelerated tempo the alienation of
humans from humans and from nature; and this much more than the former hierarchical
political systems. Particularly in the last 200 years each area of the world and each
community has been affected by capitalist modernity. Nowadays all people - except the rich
- have been put under pressure with neoliberalism. Through displacing people from their
natural environments by physical or economic force to cities, humans lost their culture of
living in much more natural surroundings. And when territories are under threat by such
destructive investments in areas where people are oppressed on the basis of their
identity, the displacement of people by nation-states contributes to the assimilation of
cultures under threat and pressure. Small or marginalized oppressed cultures are
particularly affected by such policies. The Kurds are one important example for that.
People in cities do not only consum , they are also disconnected from their strong social
and cultural heritage and thus are lost fishes in the sea easily to catch. Disconnected
from their cultural past means, among others, to be open for extreme individualistic and
isolated ways of life where a healthy balance between individuals and society does not
exist. People alienated from nature and communal and solidarity-based relations are much
easier to become instruments of exploitation in industrial production, consumption,
reactionary thoughts and establishing of authoritarian political systems. Urban people do
not know usually any more the name of most plants and animals and how in practice
processes in nature function or how humans can benefit from them sustainably as our
ancestors have done it for thousands of years. So humans in cities do not live the nature
on a daily basis. In other words, humans do not feel soil, plants, water, sun and air and
start to lose a deep understanding for them and their context; they may know it usually in
theory like biologists. In cities, more now than ever before, everything is organized with
money while villagers still can produce some of their needs, exchange goods among
themselves and support each other with self produced goods. People in rural areas are
usually less affected by capitalist modernity and reproduce a thinking and lifestyle less
connected to capitalism and state hegemony. In cities, on average humans are faced with
more psychological and social traumas than in rural communities; and these traumas are
transferred to their children. The traumas of displaced people from rural areas are maybe
the worst. Actually, today the majority of our societies live under heavy psychological
conditions.
Capitalist modernity creates people offering their labor force to private companies or
public organizations without to produce any of their needs as their ancestors did in
villages. Thus from their salary they have to buy all their needs. These people are put
under hard and stressful working conditions. . Working people under permanent pressure did
not care much about the ongoing ecological destruction in the first period of
industrialization when working conditions and salaries were in the center of their
interest. Although strong trade unions did not developed an ecological approach until
recently. However after generations more and more people in almost all parts of the world
have started to think about ecology and alternatives to the capitalist way of living.
While in the older industrial states the most people start to learn facts on nature and an
ecological life from zero, in the newly or hardly industrialized states there are much
more characteristics and remnants of non-capitalistic relations, processes and thinking on
which critical people can build up. The recovery can be realized in an easier and faster
way as for example critical people can benefit from the experience of their grand parents
or even parents. Kurdistan is such a geography.
While above the connection between ecology and women´s liberation has been introduced,
there is still the connection between ecology and democracy to be described. In order to
defend nature and ecological relations, destructive and exploitative projects need to be
stopped and the models of housing, production, consumption, mobility etc have to be
altered radically. All this can be done only if democratic decision making structures are
dominant in the society, i.e. radical democracy is developed, and no more small circles in
the society can influence via lobbying the political decision. Only when there is an
economy based on solidarity and communality can the big ecological destruction be
prevented in long-term. Summing up it can be analyzed that the connection between ecology
and democracy is realized particularly via the sphere of economic relations.
The KFM has developed over the years some new terminology with the concept of Democratic
Confederalism which may be of interest. Many movements do this, but within Democratic
Confederalism some more words have been created. It starts with the name of the concept.
Some definitions are a combination of words like "democracy" and "autonomy" or
"democratic" and "nation" which are widely used . The theory of Democratic Confederalism
follows also the line to occupy existing crucial definitions like "nation" or "modernity"
and to give them also a positive content in a certain framework. From an ecological
perspective within Democratic Confederalism the terms "ecological industry" and "communal
life" is of higher relevance. Ecological industry may be controversial as industrial
activities have led to a big part to the destruction and pollution of the nature and
concentrate continuously economic and political power. But at the same time the human
societies have achieved a point of life and economical relation which can not be
maintained without industry. For the KFM "industry" is understood as the production of
goods in a systematic and concentrated, i.e. by mechanized processes, way. . It needs some
expert skills and higher technologies. Actually primitive forms of industry exists for a
long period in human history. The current level of industry with its negative impacts was
not inevitable; history could have taken a different turn. However, nowadays it is
extremely challenging (almost impossible) to de-industrialize societies which would have
incalculable risks. Thus the question is how to reorganize the industry in terms of
technology, capacity and management from an ecological perspective and breaking with the
existing concept of economic growth. Democratic Confederalism has on this topic yet no
well-developed concepts, but rather basic ideas.
Role of the Guerrilla in the growing ecological awareness
The increasing ecological awareness is related also to the guerrilla of the PKK, the
People's Defense Forces HPG, which never ceased to exist widespread in the mountains of
North and South Kurdistan since the 80ies. The HPG has thousands of guerrillas in huge
areas of Northern Kurdistan, and in a broad stretch of 250 km in South Kurdistan; thus
must be considered as a geographically and political highly important factor. When not
fighting with the Turkish Army, the guerrillas spend their time in a mix of military and
political education. In South Kurdistan, the focus is even more on political discussion
and education.
The guerrillas discuss the entire range of social and political issues in their political
educational program. Since the 1990s when Öcalan started to discuss the ecological crisis
, the guerrilla included ecology in their discussions. The manner in which it discusses
ecology and all the other topics differs from people and organizations in the broader
Kurdish society, which makes the discussion itself more independent. The guerrillas are
not part of the hegemonic political system and have no narrow individual expectations from
the state or others. In contrast, people and organizations from the "normal" society are
influenced continuously by concerns and personal limitations. Even if they struggle
intensively to get rid of influences by capitalism and statism, there is always a
remaining part.
The difference with the guerrilla is that since its emergence in the beginning of the
1990s, the life conditions are exceedingly difficult, but completely communal, based on
solidarity and far away from capitalist modernity. There is almost no private propriety
existing; money and material interests play no role in the relations among humans;
decisions are taken sometimes on a basis democratic way; and a system of criticsm and
self-criticism is implemented systematically.
Concerning ecology, it is also very crucial that the guerrilla lives in harmony with the
nature. There is almost no negative impact by the guerrilla on plants, animals and
ecosystems; rather in the last years they care more than ever on this issue. The life is
oriented strongly alongside ecological criteria. It comes along that the existence of the
guerrilla in many mountainous regions leads to the prevention of widespread hunting, and
to the preservation of many forests through calls or bans on the start or continuation of
numerous destructive infrastructure projects of the Turkish state or the Kurdish Regional
Government in South Kurdistan.
The discussions and proposals for overcoming the ecological crisis are often practiced in
the guerrilla areas on a small scale and as much as possible in the lives of individual
guerillas and as a community. So there are not solely theoretical outcomes, there is also
a dimension of practice. Through this practice in some cases the guerrilla can adjust
their first theoretical assumptions.
The ecological practice of the guerrilla can be explained with the following examples. It
is absolutely forbidden to throw away waste like plastic or metal in the environment;
trees are cut only under exceptional cases; animals are hunted not much and only in a way
so that no species would be endangered in a certain region - some species could recover; a
few dozen small diversion dams for electricity are built in South Kurdistan which divert
usually one third of the flowing water (most states divert between 2/3 and 90%); as much
as possible food is produced by the guerrilla's own means in the mountains.
The results and developed approaches of the guerrilla reflect the material conditions with
the strong characteristics of solidarity, communality and ecology; and they challenge the
other parts of the society - particularly the part of the population which is physically
and politically close to them. The reason is that criticsm is much more profound and
ideologically justified, the claims are higher and there are less "realistic" elements
which could limit thinking. Thus the guerrilla accept fewer compromises and thus fewer
spaces for capitalism. The approaches of the guerrilla are closer to harmony with nature
and request stronger and broader communal structures.
Developed approaches and proposals on ecology - like with the other fields - can be
connected and transferred quite easily to the broader society of Kurdistan as there is a
strong relation of the guerrilla with the Kurdish society. Consider that each year
hundreds of thousands of people meet and discuss with guerrillas. Coming from the
capitalist modernity and meeting revolutionaries who share communal life affects these
people and beyond, especially young ones.
However in all fields two basic approaches within the Kurdish Freedom Movement - one
represented mainly by the expressed ideas of the guerrilla - collide often in a strong
way. Not all proposals are approved one to one by political activists or politically
interested people in the broad society who live in different material conditions. There
are aspects which the guerrilla does not consider in their discussions as they live far
away and in different and extraordinary conditions. Generally, the approaches of the
guerrilla are closer to what is considered more democratic, communal, gender liberated and
ecological.
The synthesis must have been in majority of the cases the most correct way as the KFM
managed to survive and to get stronger in the last years. We can say that the
mountain-city relations of the Kurds have created over the years a specific dynamic which
is beneficial for the whole KFM.
How the contradiction creates a dynamic
The Kurdish Freedom Movement has been winning the local elections in an increasing number
of cities in North Kurdistan since 1999, and they have acquired some important knowledge
on how local governments can transform the society to be more social, gender liberated and
ecologically oriented. It is only since 2010/2011 that the reasons to transform life
ecologically were grasped substantially; previously, the approach and the discourse of
ecology were rather shallow as described above.
There are basically three reasons for that. First, capitalist relations continued to
advance quickly in North Kurdistan in the second part of the 2000's and the ecological
destruction reached seriously concerning levels. Second, the concept of Democratic
Confederalism has encouraged and strengthened ecologists in Bakur to deepen and broaden
their struggle. Third, the critic and resistance against the ecological destruction and
exploitation increased in an organized way, gathered some serious experience and even
small successes.
The book "In defense of a people" by Öcalan published in 2004 and the declaration of
Democratic Confederalism in March 2005 contributed definitively to the better
systematization of the ideas and discussion on an ecological society in Bakur and other
parts of Kurdistan. In the first months after the declaration of Democratic Confederalism,
there was a controversial discussion among many political activists within the KFM or
those close to it, about the pillar ecology. While for the activists who already
incorporating ecology in their activism and discussions this was very encouraging and
supportive, the others either did not take it into account seriously or raised concerned
and considered it premature to emphasize ecology or "not fitting to the reality of Kurdish
society". However, in general, the political structures of the KFM welcomed the pillar
ecology and started to discuss it - even it was still only superficially. At least it
opened the mind for ecological discussions, campaigns and requests.
Just in this time the Ilisu Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant, the largest dam project in
planning or construction in Bakur and Turkey, came again on the agenda after the Turkish
government started a new effort to build it - the first attempt had failed in 2001/2002.
Between 2006 and 2010 the struggle against this dam project, which would have huge grave
impacts on social structures, cultural heritage and the Tigris ecosystem and destructive
consequences for the local society, was continuously on the agenda of the Kurds and got
support by many Kurdish organizations, activists and media. Coordinated by the Initiative
to Keep Hasankeyf Alive this campaign was an expression of the increased ecological and
cultural awareness among the Kurds. It contributed at a new level to the questioning of
energy, water, agriculture and development policies of the Turkish state and exceeded
significantly the discussions during the first round of struggle on the Ilisu project
between 1999 and 2002.
In the following years there was a steady increase in the number of groups and people
working on issues concerning nature conservation, the impacts of big infrastructure and
energy projects, food production and social ecology theory. Associations and initiatives
opposing dams, mining, coal plants, environmental pollution, urban development,
commercialization of life etc. have been initiated or strengthened for example in Amed,
Dersim, Çolemerg (Hakkari), Batman, Qoser (Kiziltepe), Wan and Riha (Urfa). Although in
these years the diversity of contested project types broadened, dams were still the main
challenge for the ecology movements. These were the years when each square kilometer of
Bakur and the whole Turkish state territory have been considered by state planners and big
companies as a source of profit - internationally this approach started to be discussed as
"extractivism". Capitalism was spreading to all niches of the society of Bakur. The
capitalist modernity unfolded its maximum destructive forces, the AKP government did
everything to enable investments in the region. The need to form a coalition of groups and
activists with a strong ecological and critic awareness in Bakur has become important in
these years.
Considering these growing protests and the need to act in a comprehensive way against the
encroachment of neoliberal capitalism, the coordination of the Mesopotamian Social Forum,
which has been organized for the first time in 2009 in Amed, decided to organize an
Ecology Forum. At this forum in January 2011 with the contribution of activists by all
struggles of Bakur, researchers, representatives of different civil organizations and
movements and activists from Turkey and other countries, ecological struggles and
approaches were discussed in Kurdistan in a broad and organized way for the first time in
history. As consequence of the forum, "ecology activists" started a discussion to form a
network of groups in Bakur. It took more than one and half year to achieve the first
meetings of about ten groups and a decision to form the "Mesopotamia Ecology Movement" was
taken. The theoretical basis from the very beginning on was Social Ecology and Democratic
Confederalism. Although the name described it as a movement, rather in the first years it
was a network.
In these years capitalism has started to affect in a strong way also some political
structures and thinking of activists in the KFM, including municipalities and activists in
small towns. Due to the fact that there was still a lack of system and depth in the
discussion of ecology regarding all decisions and actions within the KFM, it is not
surprising that some people and structures acted contrarily. The impact in the practice
was that, among others, the behavior and approaches of political parties and organizations
of the existing hegemonic system did not change significantly for many activists of the
KFM decisions like city planning did not really brake with capitalist-statist prescriptive
practices; some mayors were co-opted by local entrepreneurs to get tenders; and
competition far away from solidarity relations between organizations and activists partly
increased. These challenges may always come up and become dominant in the case of a not
very well developed and accepted radical democratic structure with transparent and
inclusive decision-making processes. The KFM had only started in 2007 to set up a
completely new political structure which takes the paradigm of Democratic Confederalism as
basis. The Democratic Society Congress (in Kurdish: KCD; in Turkish: DTK) as the umbrella
structure of the KFM for the new people's councils from the neighborhoods, civil society
organizations, social movements, professional organizations, municipalities and political
parties was quite new and still in the process of finding a way to function properly given
the big diversity of above-mentioned structures.
In the initial stage, the Mesopotamia Ecology Movement (MEM) was challenged to find ways
to bring the member groups together around subjects, campaigns and discussions and set up
a permanent and reliable working structure. If this could be realized, the struggle
against the numerous destructive and exploitative projects and policies of the state could
be confronted better and within the KCD the struggle for ecological discussions, thinking
and approaches would get more political weight. In confronting the government`s projects
and objectives, a continuously rising number of people started to question the state
policies in other areas. Not only the policies on Kurdish identity, collective rights,
education, women's rights, militarization, but also those on economy, energy, agriculture
and related issues in Bakur became more and more a focus of the political struggle. Each
economic decision or investment project started to be perceived more critically.
At the same time, the municipalities governed by the legal party of the KFM came under a
critical focus by the MEM because municipalities acting against the political goals of the
general movement would harm the whole struggle, including the ecological dimension. The
demand was that municipal politics had to be changed comprehensively along ecological
principles, developed by the MEM, and the self-administration of people's councils. The
aim of the state is clear: it wants to dominate, oppress and exploit the society in close
cooperation with big companies, and in Bakur also with middle big companies. In this
struggle, the KFM municipalities had to make a clear stance against the state policies.
Although municipalities are according to Turkish law in the end an organ of the central
government, they have limited capacities and freedom with which they could challenge state
policies. While on the one hand they are forced to act in compliance with Turkish law, on
the other hand the municipalities should do everything in their powerto support radical
democratic structures in the society, i.e. particularly the people's councils, women's
self-organization and a communal economy, as well as taking as stance against the
gentrification of urban areas and bringing equitably services to the entire population.
But the reality in these years was often only in part like this. Capitalism has put the
municipalities of Bakur under the pressure to follow the neoliberal AKP municipalities as
development model through the domination of discussions about urban development. It was a
time - up until 2011 - when economic growth in Turkey was high, the social contradictions
in Turkey and Bakur were significantly less and the AKP government was still not very
repressive: hence, the criticsm by the KFM against capitalist modernity did not go down
well in Kurdish society. Another pressure was systematic financial discrimination by the
Turkish national government: since 1999, KFM municipalities could not benefit from many
governmental funds unlike other municipalities.Obstacles were also often created in the
approval of big projects (each big project needs usually approval by the governor who is
directly appointed by the Turkish government) and the KFM municipalities have not been
supported with experts and skills like the other municipalities. This latter
discrimination was not very surprising as the Kurds have been oppressed since the
foundation of the Republic of Turkey. It is a subject with which a struggle is needed.
However, what was more concerning for the MEM was the lacking stance of the municipalities
on capitalist development. In this respect,one case became important for the ecology
struggle in Kurdistan. It is about the hill "Kirklar Dagi" in the outskirts of the city of
Amed where a housing project was announced in 2009. As a historical and natural area at
the south edge of the city of Amed, Kirklar Dagi is very known among the population and
thus a sensitive location. When the physical preparation for the housing projects started
in 2011/2012, which actually was not in line with the master plan approved in 2006, the
MEM and some other civil organizations requested an immediate stop and cancellation: after
long discussions and negotiations, the two involved municipalities of Amed rejected this
demand. So, when the construction started fully in 2013 a demonstration by the MEM with
thousands of people was organized. Although the project did not stop, the demonstration
was a novum for the KFM: a civil organization criticized publicly in a sharp way a
municipality from the "own political movement" because of an urban project. However, this
had some long-term impacts. In the following years, the Democratic Regions Party (DBP; the
party of the KFM and member of the HDP) municipalities started to act more carefully when
they planned any housing or bigger project. This case showed that thinking and acting
ecologically needs activists to consider also their own side and not the other side, the
state and big capital. Apart from the case of Kirklar Dagi there are many other projects
in the cities, which are object of capitalist transformation and need to be regarded much
more critically.
Another criticsm of the MEM targets the big shopping malls which have been constructed in
the last years in each city. These are private projects and of course supported by the AKP
government, but there were some cases where the DBP municipalities have not intervened and
in few cases even welcomed them. Some of the shopping malls could have been prevented, or
at least delayed. The Turkish law allows the central government to take over city planning
whenever it considers necessary. So, the question is how to resist this legal unfairness;
even if it not possible to impede in the long-term the non-wanted projects, at least they
should be delayed and subject to public debate. After intensive criticsm by the MEM and
other movements like the women´s movement in 2014, a much more critical approach has been
implemented by the DBP municipalities.
These two cases show that the ecology struggle in Bakur has not only to focus only in
rural areas, but also in urban areas, because capitalism has started many years ago to
seek for profitable investment projects everywhere. 2013 was the year when an ecological
awareness and criticsm started to express itself much more openly, accompanied by public
actions and this not only through the MEM. The youth movement, women´s movement,
professional organizations (particularly architects, engineers, medical doctors), trade
unions achieved qualitatively a new level in their approach as to how society mightbe
conceived from an ecological perspective.
At this point, it needs to be stated that within the concept of Democratic Confederalism
one field - in Bakur society is organized by the Democratic Society Congress (DTK/KCD)
into 14 fields (also branch or sector), like women, justice, health, education, diplomacy,
beliefs, ecology, municipalities, youth, self-defence - is usually promoted by one
movement or organization, but it is not only limited to this organization. Actually, it is
favored that activists from other fields also discuss deeply ecology, women´s liberation
or communal-democratic economy. For this, the connections between the fields become
important. In parliamentarian systems, ecological/environmental NGOs and movements act
usually on their own for the objective to stop certain projects and/or to change the laws
or society in ecological sense. In the new system of Bakur - and Rojava - the social
movements struggle for their objectives, but do it within a democratic and inclusive
system. This comes from the perception that society is one whole and has been divided by
capitalist modernity so much that the different social and political groups and genders do
not act in balance with each other: one group tries always to dominate the other one. In
capitalist modernity, usually the groups with big financial capacities or weapons dominate
over the others. This is a significant difference which has been brought by Democratic
Confederalism.
An example how the different movements can work successfully together and how much the
different fields are interrelated, are the relations of the MEM with the economy movement.
The economy movement has been formed in 2013 after broad discussions by dozens of
activists from different struggles and critical economists from Bakur and Turkey. Among
these people were several activists from the MEM. Since then there is a good connection
and exchange between the two branches. The good relationship has brought together the two
branches into cooperation on certain projects; projects which are related to both fields
ecology and economy. One example is the long-discussed construction of a bank for local
organic seeds. A dynamic, cooperative and critical relation with the new upcoming economy
movement, which wants to develop a communal and democratic economy in Bakur, is crucial
for the aim to develop an ecological society. All that is discussed and developed among
the MEM is aimed to be implemented in cooperation with the economy field as well with as
the municipalities. Without considering communal economy, an ecological society is
impossible as described above.
The Mesopotamia Ecology Movement
In 2014, a new discussion among the activists of the MEM about its restructuring with the
aim to become a real and broad social movement started. After many discussions, it
resulted in the formation of councils in each province of Bakur which offered space for
political activists working on ecology and for newcomers. All previous and new initiatives
and associations and activists working on ecology, but also other civil society
organizations, professional organizations, unions, municipalities and the people's
councils of the KCD in the urban quarters and rural regions had been invited to
participate. This form of representation intends to include as much as possible of
societal playors and to establish something which in short and medium term should build a
society that is more ecological, and thus, more just and democratic.
The main work of the MEM is done in the different commissions which are established
according to the needs and emphasis defined by the provincial councils. Every activist in
the MEM joins at least one commission in its province. Apart from the commissions which
exist in nearly every province, there are some specific commissions. For example, in the
province Dersim, there is one commission for forests and, in the metropolitan area of
Amed, one for animal rights. There are also a few commissions at the Bakur level, like
those for diplomacy, law and organising. The coordination at provincial level consists of
the two co-spokespersons - one woman and one man. The co-chairs are elected periodically
(3 or 6 months) by the provincial assembly which gathers at least twice a year (sometimes
4 times each year). Each provincial assembly elects annually several (around 6) delegates
based on gender quota for the assembly at Bakur level which meets twice a year. The
coordinations at provincial level elect two delegates, one woman and one man, for the
Bakur coordination which meets more often than the Bakur assembly. As it can be determined
within the MEM each structure has a gender minimum quota of 40% for its delegates. The MEM
has a 50% quota.
Since this restructuring the MEM is now represented more strongly in the KCD through the
actions, projects and campaigns it is realizing. The MEM can bring better its content and
requests to the coordinations of the KCD on provincial and Bakur level and to the KCD
general assembly. The stronger the MEM is, the more it can have impacts on the KCD as a
whole, and on its activists. For example, it is crucial to work towards those
municipalities which have no good practice on ecology as well as on other issues.
The MEM is connected quite well with many ecological movements and NGO's outside of Bakur
within the Turkish state. Since 2015 for several times there were common actions,
delegations (like on forest fires) and discussions. In this sense it is part of the
ecology council of the People Democratic Council (HDK). The HDK is the turkey-wide
supra-structure of all structures of direct democracy, thus also including the HDP. In
other words, HDK is equivalent to KCD while not being comparatively strong like the KCD.
Since its start the MEM had to struggle with a low awareness for ecology in society which
has its impacts in the different organizations of the KCD. Although there is a meaningful
change in the last years, ecology is still considered by a big part of the society as
something elitist and far away from real life and is associated with focusing on the
conservation of some species or important natural areas or having healthy but expensive
organic food. Moreover the terminology used still does not make much understandable what
the activists are seeking. That is why practice has become so crucial in order to attract
more people for the movement. Considering that even a large number of people with an
academic background are interested less in theory and more in practice, projects on the
ground can motivate and activate many and can make better understandable what is aimed
with an ecological society. Projects like common gardening and traditional construction,
which all interested people can join, have also the impact that the MEM can validate and
develop its theoretical approach based on the outcomes of such projects. This should be
considered also in the light that the KFM starts with the general approach in the most
fields of society and substantiate its approach in a protracted process of practice and
discussion. Projects on the ground offer collective work and give back the feeling of
community and solidarity to people, particularly from cities. One successful project was
the collection of local and organic seeds from different areas Bakur in the winter
2015/2016 and their reproduction in 2016 in seven provinces. The reproduction has been
done mostly with the local people's neighborhood councils which is a good example how the
different fields of the KCD can work together. This campaign on seeds received interest by
many parts of the society. Considering that humans are rational as well as emotional
beings, touching soil, water, mud, plants and wood can create a big synergy. A further
result such a practical approach can have: in times of repression and war it can hold
people together and allows them to come through politically difficult periods like the one
started with the war in summer 2015 which worsened with the state of emergency in summer 2016.
In autumn 2015 the MEM conducted a half year discussion on the eight main political fields
(agriculture, energy, water, health, communal economy, forests/biodiversity, ecological
cities, eco-technology) for what working groups at Bakur level had been established. At
the end of these processes, papers have been prepared and later approved at the first MEM
conference in April 2016 in Wan. These policy papers have become the guidelines for the
future work which cover a broad span and are linked to other political fields like women's
liberation, economy and health. This challenging work may help to find initial answers on
the question as to which direction the MEM should take, strengthen without doubt the
commitment to the struggle and privide tools for successfully struggling against state and
companies as well as within the KFM.
Remarks
1) It needs to be stated that the heavy political repression in Bakur on all levels of
political engagement, which started in summer 2015 and achieved with the state of
emergency, declared in July 2016, an extreme level, has affected in a strong way also the
MEM. Since then the most activities of the MEM have been limited, halted or changed.
However the activities have undergone some important change. In this paper the period
after the state of emergency has not been considered. Rather it has been aimed to describe
the development of the consciousness and discussion on and the struggle for ecology in
Bakur before the current repression.
2) The discussions and practice of Rojava has not been included in this paper as there are
very different frameworks (no state any more, much less capitalism etc.) although the
political concept is the same.
[1]In recent discussions also described as "extractivism".
[2]The KFM uses the definition capitalist modernity in order to describe the current
hegemonic political-economic system. According to that capitalism is covers mainly
economical activities while capitalist modernity is a system which includes the political
and ideological (for example it is meant: mentality, human relations, social behavior)
dimension of the developed hegemonic system.
[3]Change from use value to exchange value
[4]Often "basic needs" is used in such discussions. But its quite difficult to differ
between "needs" and "basic needs", thus here it is foregone to use "basic".
[5]Instead of "resources", which is used widespread nowadays, here "elements" is
preferred. "Resources" assumes that they exist or wait to be extracted and exploited by
capitalist economy.
Related Link:
https://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/2018/04/11/ecology-in-democratic-confederalism/
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31051
------------------------------
Ayboga (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Voices From Inside the Walls. ‘ contains texts about the history of hunger strikes within
the prison walls and about the struggle of anarchists within prison. The texts were
written by anarchist prisoners themselves who are held in the dungeons of the Greek
prisons. ---- In April 2016 the texts were published in Greek by Solidarity Fund For
Imprisoned And Persecuted Fighters. The assembly of the Solidarity Fund has added texts
about the history of hunger strikes as a means of action within the walls. The texts were
distributed inside as well as outside the prison walls. ---- The Solidarity Fund writes
this about the texts: Through publishing the thoughts and experiences of prisoners,
through the spreading of their words, we seek to make them as present as possible in the
daily processes of the fighters outside the walls, we want to shake the barriers of
silence, fragmentation, the division among the oppressed, we chose to incarnate the
projects of struggle and solidarity in one more way.
This specific issue refers to hunger strike as a means of struggle, a matter that has
intensely concerned not only those directly involved but also those in solidarity, as well
as a large part of greek society. A hunger strike, as a means of struggle, was never a
desperate move, or simply a "peaceful" protest in order to project the victimization of
the hunger striker and extract sensitivity and charity. It is a conscious struggle, where
the coordination of those inside and outside is a necessary condition in order for there
to be a result, but also to maintain the strengths of those fighting. Despite all this, we
realize that the hunger strike is the ultimate means that a prisoner could
choose, we think it is of imperative need to cultivate a bidirectional struggle dynamic
inside and outside the walls, that will prevent the condition of someone placing their own
body as a mound. The struggle for revolution and the tearing down of every prison still
remains open.
Revolt Press now publishes the booklet in English on paper, in order to contribute to the
publication and dissemination of texts written by
anarchist prisoners.
‘Tear Down The Bastille. Hunger Strike as a Means or Struggle. " is for sale at Bookstore
Opstand in The Hague, Fort van Sjakoo in Amsterdam and online at Active Distributions.
If you want to buy the book as a distro or bookstore, please send an email to revoltpress
(at) riseup.net.
https://revoltpress.noblogs.org
------------------------------
Message: 2
Translation: AKM Shihab ---- France's army is one of the few who fought anti-anarchists or
anti-heroism in every revolutionary enemy in Ukraine. A fugitive has described Makhno and
his fighter forces. ---- It is always true that every person is active in destroying the
reputation of his other party, in this case and the attempt of the German colony Mennoni
is not an exception. They were trying to ruin the reputation of our comrade Makhanar.
Those who simply do not know our brigade commissioner Mckano well, they can believe these
misinterpreted messages. ---- As I have seen Makhono in my own eyes as a journalist in
France, I can summon him and his army in the right facts. How did one soldier follow his
commissioner? ---- On February 12, 1919, after joining the French army, I joined the
Communist Frontier (I published it in my other writing). On March 12 , 1919, after joining
the Bolshevik Vanguard, I went with the people who created a different army under Makhnor.
I myself also knew about my danger: I and my arms were coming from the direction from
where the white guard's fugitives had escaped. At that time the huge fury of war and
conquest of soldiers was spreading. Whenever a person gives a huge amount of comrade in
the fight to achieve the victory of the revolution, then how can any other unknown soldier
know about it?
Unexpectedly nothing happened. Those soldiers who did not shout like a lion before the
conquest , they tried to prove themselves as a lion soldier after the conquest of the
revolution.
In response to a question I said, I am a soldier fleeing France; They surrounded me
saullase , my embrace , hand milaya , I have to eat , and asked me what else I welcome
lagabe a word, deep in love, they took themselves.
After the issue of the entry of Ukraine's 9th Regent Commissioner Molenku, and Maulachak,
I surrender all the weapons and ammunitions left to me and they give me a message. Comrade
Maliranquo used to be with a strong team , everyone respected him. Identity card was given
after contact with me and all the details. I and I informed the details of my escape at
that time. He invited me to eat food with him, and after seeing my head, I saw the costume
of my dress and gave me the uniform costume costume. He said that I have my own house but
I do not like to live with my comrades from home.
I do not think I'm going to be separated. We all rejoice together in real life, they do
not think anything except victory , they say , " When we are with Makhna, no one is afraid
of the world. He always leads us towards the front - he is brave like a lion , we must
destroy bourgeois and capitalism . " The soldier also told me that he is not like my
previous commander , he unknowingly operates the war. Junk's field is one hundred miles
and Makhanu is ahead of everyone , he encourages the soldiers, His infinite courage is the
source of inspiration for all.
The next morning when I was drinking tea, my first opportunity was to meet Brigadier
Commissioner Makhno. He myalerenaku kamisara from the Department ' s Regiment visited and
all our warm congratulations jananah " Good PM! " He shook hands with everyone , at the
same time Malerchenko introduced me. He introduced me to say that I was a comrade from
France who escaped from Sivaspaul and joined me here. Manko smiled and smiled with me , he
told me that he was very happy to see me. He put me in the front seat , kept the tea till
he accepted the dinner , and till 2 o'clock till the day I took him.
Manko is a common man of middle height of chipchip, but he has not seen distinction in his
physical form. He was wearing blue , see, it looked as attractive and dignified person. He
looked very brave and meritorious in his glowing eyes and laughable excitement. At that
time the hair of his head was tucked backwards and he seemed to be more sensible.
We've talked for hours on various topics, thanks to Comrade Chernov who is Mccantor's
Edgundant. Chernov is a skilled revolutionary who was outside the country for many years
due to revolution. He lived in England and America for a long time. At that time, he
gained extensive knowledge of meeting with revolutionary groups and individuals of all the
countries of Europe and other countries. Which today has anointed him on the high seat of
revolutionary fight. He knew almost all languages of Uruguay. So he helped me and
Makhnor's work by doing two language work. I updated Comrade Makhno with the whole picture
of France and the actual image of the ongoing movement and struggle. Maakhan asked me
about the various aspects of the Paris revolution. Although he was already aware of these
things;He knew almost all the writers and thinkers in France and was well-informed about
their writings and ideological thoughts. I was really impressed by his knowledge and
awareness.
The next day, Mankhon announced the address of the people. All the people of Melchand
gathered in front of the church. His talent and popularity attracted the people, at that
time no one was equal to Makhno. When he came on the horse's back, I saw people from all
around bursting with joy. Makhan spent more than sleeping on horseback. He laughs at
everyone , the talent and knowledge for the proletariat leadership was more than all of us
, he is our beloved bandwala who is working for the oppressed , oppressed people and hated
the oppressors and the oppressed.
He stood up on the stage and started talking. He was talking about drag, but due to the
festivities of the people, he had to stop repeatedly. His eyes glisten was time to speak,
he insisted , signaling to the point was based on the statement. At that time he spoke
about one hour. I could not understand all his words because I was a different speaker.
However, with the fire of his fire, the people who were united with the spell could spell.
I was attracted to the great words and expressions of the face. During his speech, the
people present were slogans , " Revolutionary living beings! The bourgeoisie fall! Long
live the butter! " I understand clearly what the people of Ukraine want and what their
rights are.
A leader is of great dignity, his biggest identity is that he is a proletariat and
revolutionary , he is well-versed in the love of the soldier and the people. Like I have
seen Makhono , he is better than a thousand , he is a big dragon and revolutionary in our
fight.
Translators
say that this text was published on March 12, 1919 between March 12, 1919, on St Maestro's
master Maestro, in the Paris news paper La Late. The exact date of publication is unknown.
Because it was published by translating from Russian language. The Bolshevik leader is in
the Lenin archive.
At that time there was a great deal of Mankhawn forces with Bolsheviks. Both of them were
working to settle white army from southern Ukraine. The name of the place Malochang is a
huge village. This village occupied Makhnovistown in March 1919.
Makhnova was very interested in hearing, Russian editors wrote many articles on this
subject. A slogan was common among the people of his army , " one for everyone and for all
for one ". He was very fond of Alexander Dora.
If it was said that Makhan had got the chance to attend two years only, but he had heard a
great reading in his life. At the very young age, Dennis finished reading the book of
Cove. And he reads these books just as the Anarchist's suggestion. Geography , history ,
mathematics etc. were his favorite subjects.
He wrote in his autobiography:
" Whenever I'm in jail , then gave up reading books. I finished the book after the book;
Classical books I've read all of Russia , Samar from kabha Lev sestabha , byalinaski and
lermantabhera special attraction for me was to write them because I had everything. Thanks
to the politicians who have built a valuable library in prison. Here are some books that
can not be found in our provincial cities. I did the Kluvezcci course. I was involved in
the secret negotiations of the Communists. Later, I read CropThinke's mutual aid book. I
am heavily influenced by this book. As a result, I have discussed a lot with comrades in
various ways . "
http://www.bangladeshasf.org/
------------------------------
Message: 3
Healthcare in the UK is by no means ‘socialised', as critics in the US claim. Though
healthcare in the UK is undoubtedly better than healthcare in the US - just as other
countries have better healthcare than the UK - it is still subject to the pressures and
dynamics of capitalism, existing as it does in a capitalist society. It has also been
increasingly marketised over recent decades, with attacks on both social provision and NHS
workers coming under the cover of ‘privatisation'. The introduction of payment by results
has introduced a market in health services. Many non-frontline services have been
privatised or contracted to companies like DHL. The introduction of wholly privately owned
and operated ‘NHS treatment centres', the rollout of Private Finance Initiatives etc all
represent part of the same project of ‘rationalising' social provisions to the benefit of
the overall capitalist system. Even the NHS in its classic form, as the centrepiece of the
post-war welfare state, came as part of the attempt to stave off prewar-style class
conflict and integrate the working class more closely into the state following the end of
the war. Its aim was to provide a healthy working class that could fight and die for the
bosses in their wars (our masters struggled to find enough fit cannon fodder for their
First World War) and healthy enough to slave for their profits in paid jobs and in unpaid
childcare and housework. In addition, capitalism needed to stabilise itself after the
turbulence of the 1920s, in a change of tactic well-known as the ‘post-war settlement'.
We need to defend health services, but critically. The NHS was never ‘ours' and it is far
from perfect.
Since the inception of the NHS, consultants were allowed to use NHS time and resources for
their private gain, freeloading that the Daily Mail and their mates are happy to ignore.
Drugs and equipment were left in the hands of private corporations, burdening the NHS with
enormous costs as companies sought to make maximum profits from their monopoly. The Health
Service treats our illnesses as individual cases, but most of our illness is due to
economic and social conditions that we face collectively: unhealthy and dangerous
workplaces, overlong hours and night time working, pollution from factories and cars, poor
food, unhealthy housing, lack of trees and greenspaces, all exacerbated by racism and
sexism for large sectors of the population. In the 1960s and 1970s women highlighted how
unequally they were treated, particularly around childbirth. They won some improvements
through struggle, but we are still miles from a genuine community health service.
We know that the current Tory government is making massive cuts to health services with
closures of hospitals, casualty departments, rationing of services by age, cuts to
services for the elderly and people with disabilities, near frozen wages of overworked
staff etc. The whole idea of running healthcare as a business is contradictory (treatment
based on ability to pay rather than need), and only benefits the well-off who can always
pay for treatment, and the drug companies and other corporate vultures who are taking over
more and more of the health service. The whole idea of ‘choice' in this context is
similarly a nonsense. We don't want to choose which doctors or hospital service to use
(the one round the corner or the one 20 miles away?). We need local services, all of which
are accessible and good.
Who is to blame?
What is causing the ongoing and deepening crisis in the NHS (and) the ‘lack of money'? Is it:
· All those old people selfishly ‘bed blocking' hospital beds rather than going home
unwell and dying quickly so that they are no longer ‘a burden'.
· The obese smokers and drinkers: no not the rich ones, and as always, blame the
consumer, not the producer (the alcohol and tobacco industries have no responsibilities).
· Migrant workers and ‘health tourists' (the first pay taxes too, and the second cost
less than the NHS pencil budget).
None of the above!
Back in 2005 the now Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, co-wrote a pamphlet calling for the
replacement of the NHS with a market insurance system, with the heavy involvement of
private enterprise. A fox in charge of the hen coop! The policies pursued are obviously
part of a death by a thousand cuts and a ‘privatisation by stealth' strategy. The idea
that the slow death of the NHS is just down to the Tories is delusional however. The PFI
(Private Finance Initiative) was a Conservative idea they left on the shelf, with little
of it being implemented. It was Labour's Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who activated it when
in government: schools and hospitals were built with finance from the private sector
(banks etc) who then leased them to back to the government, who paid for them over the
long term on a mortgage basis at a much higher cost (40% more). Old hospitals were closed,
so overall there were fewer beds. Labour also introduced ‘the market' into the health
service, the equivalent of putting leeches into a blood bank, and introduced Foundation
Trusts. These Labour policies left the NHS with debts of £81.6 billion, and they together
with massive ongoing cuts are the cause of the crisis.
What Do We Want, And How Do We Get There?
We need to stop hospitals, casualty departments etc being closed, attacks on GPs, staff
cuts, freezing of the wages of health service staff (which are cuts as rents, food etc go
up). We need to stop the increasing marketisation of the NHS. We need to stop the NHS
being run as a business concern, with vastly overpaid administrators at the top, with at
least 800 of these on six figure salaries.
We need to end the rigid hierarchies in hospitals, where decisions cannot be questioned,
as witness the recent revelations about Gosport War Memorial Hospital where over 450
patients died after being prescribed dangerous painkillers and with according to a recent
report: "patients and relatives powerless in their relationship with professional staff".
We need to end the grip of drug companies on the NHS. In 2016 alone, the NHS payed these
companies £1 billion for drugs for arthritis, cancer, MS, etc. The research for these
drugs was funded by public money. "Big pharmaceutical companies are ripping us off by
taking over drugs developed primarily with public money and selling the drugs back to the
NHS at extortionate prices".
Heidi Chow, Global Justice Now.
How we do this is crucial however. If we use the same old tired methods of petitions,
relying on union bureaucrats, trusting in political parties (whoever they are) not only
will we probably lose, but we will remain powerless, divided, and with an illness service
that doesn't meet our needs or tackle the causes of our ill health. We need to methods and
organisation that empowers us: to organise ourselves, control our own struggles, without
leaders, and to use direct action methods: occupations, work-ins, strikes, work to rule
etc. We need to break down the barriers between staff and patients, carers and
service-users, workers and unemployed to link our struggles.
What do we want? - A free health service controlled and run by the staff and users. An
emphasis on empowering people through helping them to educating themselves in groups about
their bodies and health (e.g. books and pamphlets such as ‘Our Bodies Ourselves' and the
collective work in the last wave of feminism). Communities working together to tackle the
causes of ill health: dangerous and unhealthy workplaces, an unhealthy, car-based
transport system, poor food, widespread pollution, lack of green spaces for relaxation,
and exercise etc. Move away from processed and unhealthy food, and from the current
over-reliance on drugs. Again, self-organisation and direct action are key. But surely
this is pie-in-the-sky? No, we are drawing on what people have done, and are doing, both
here and abroad. In Greece, massive health cuts have resulted in health workers running
hospitals and clinics etc for free, with the support of their local communities.
https://londonacg.blogspot.com/2018/06/save-our-nhs.html
------------------------------
Message: 4
Ecology is one of the three pillars of the paradigm of Democratic Confederalism, the
political-theoretical concept of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Besides democracy and
gender liberation, ecology has been mentioned explicitly as a dimension in this concept
since 2005. However to date, ecology is less discussed and practiced than the two other
pillars. ---- Ecological destruction and exploitation in Kurdistan ---- With the
widespread introduction of capitalism to Kurdistan in the 1950s came a systemic and
destructive exploitation of nature. The four colonialist states -Turkey, Iran, Iraq and
Syria - started to plan large energy, mining, agriculture, infrastructure and other
investment projects whose implementation led to exceedingly grave ecological destruction
and exploitation[1]. This is caused, amongst other factors, by the capitalist economic
model, respectively low ecological and social standards in the implementation of the many
projects as well as by the simple fact that Kurdistan has the de facto status of a
quartered colony. While keeping the colonial status, the hegemonial states introduced step
by step, using economic as well as military measures, capitalist relations into the
societies of Kurdistan. In the 1970s the construction of numerous large projects -
particularly dams, oil-drilling and mining - had been realized through the exercise of the
hegemonic power of the highly centralized states in the four parts of Kurdistan under the
pretext of progress. After the first preparation work in the 1960s, agriculture started to
be industrialized in the 1970s, particularly in West Kurdistan (Rojava) and North
Kurdistan (Bakur), later in South (Basur) and East Kurdistan (Rojhilat).
One result of these policies was that communal and solidarity-based relations became
weaker in the society of Kurdistan. The infrastructure projects and investments were
designed and implemented with absolutely no consultation of the local population and
through an authoritarian approach, were in the interest of the colonialist states and the
colonialist and collaborative Kurdish upper classes and aimed a profit maximization
through capitalist modernization, oppression and a deepening assimilation. While this
development was still slow in the 1950s and 1960s, it took on a accelerating character in
the 1970s. As a result of the implementation of large infrastructure projects in rural
areas and the consequent displacement of hundreds of thousands; the industrialization of
agriculture; the continuous economically-driven migration of rural people; rapid
urbanization; industrialisation; and the colonialist wars against the population as from
the 1980s; society has lost for a big part its characteristics of solidarity and
communality. The main characteristics of the pre-capitalist societies were communalist
approach and solidarity on decision-making, economy, sociality, culture and others issues,
but different intensity of feudal and conservative forms were also present. Since the
1990s, the number of implemented large projects, as well as the livelihoods of people and
economic relations, experienced grave changes. The surviving elements of the subsistence
economy and local circles of economy were marginalised and Kurdistan became fully part of
the "national market" of each state and entered the neoliberal global market.
The former times were certainly full of hierarchy, patriarchy and discrimination, but the
transition to capitalism was a brutal break in the social and historical development and
in a certain way it has even deepened societal sexism and patriarchy. To understand what
has been diminished in these decades, the following approaches and characteristics of
communalism and solidarity were eroded between the 1950s and 1990s. Typically:
Although usually not inclusive concerning sex and age, many villages had in practice a
kind of assembly of mostly older men and sometimes of some older women which gathered if
necessary and took decisions.
Solidarity on economical issues was common. For example, when a family or a household
wanted to build a new house, the whole (or most) of the village joined the construction
for at least several days which were crucial to building work proceeding significantly.
It was usual that the animals of all households have been grazed together in appropriate
locations. This was managed in turn by all households.
When a household had a bad year of harvest, the others in the village supported the
affected family by supplying them with the basic foods.
When a household lacked yeast for cooking bread or milk, the neighbors shared it without
hesitation or any discussion. In the following days the supported household put the same
amount in the front of the house whose family gave the support.
When a household had a a large harvest of a certain product (like walnut), it was often
the practice to share some of the surplus with others in and around the village.
Solidarity on social affairs was also common. For example, when one or two parents of a
family died or were forced to migrate in search of work, then the others in the village
took care of the children who could not support themselves.
There was cultural solidarity. In the evenings often people gathered in one of the houses
and shared stories, myths, poems and songs among each other.
Kurdistan belongs worldwide to the countries where until recently capitalist
modernity[2]was weak and solidarity and communal structures in the societies were still
existing in a significant way. Today the older generations of Kurdistan remember quite
well how life was until the 1960s or 1970s.
There is no objective to romanticize the life several decades ago, but nevertheless there
was a significant solidarity and sharing in the society and not everything was valued
monetarily; life and commodification[3]was not materialized as it is the case today.
Start of discussion on ecology
After two decades of freedom struggle in North Kurdistan, in the 1990s the Kurdish Freedom
Movement (KFM) started to discuss the ecological question on a Kurdish and global level.
The discussion took place against the background of the systematic destruction in Bakur
through the Turkish State's war on Kurds; more than 2,5 million displaced people were
confronted in a brutal way with the urban and capitalistic life while Turkish state forces
destroyed up to 4000 villages and torched huge forested areas in Bakur. The majority of
the displaced people had been living before in a mainly subsistence economy with regional
product circulation and limited ecological damage. Particularly between 1992 and 1995
large areas were depopulated and many cities in Bakur often doubled their population
without being prepared in any way and without support from the Turkish government or others.
In the 1990s especially the political leader Abdullah Öcalan of the Kurdish Freedom
Movement (KFM) questioned the emergence of neoliberal capitalism, with new analyses in
general and notably in relation to neoliberalism's impacts on nature. Particularly the
concept of growth, and the increasing disconnection of profit from production has been
criticized in Öcalan's writings and speeches. In this sense, he is speaking against the
growing number of large investment projects because of the huge and irreparable
destruction of nature they cause. Here he included also the climate change which, among
others, he considered as an acceleration of ecological destruction by capitalism. To
destroy nature for the interest of central governments and profit of companies means
usually to destroy the basis of life of millions. The massive ecological destruction
affects seriously human life. Often large projects displace a large number of people
and/or exploit the land and surrounding areas which they are forced to leave. Öcalan also
discussed the disconnection of people to nature and what kind of impacts this could have
on people's minds and the relation of people to each other. In a fundamental way the
alienation of people has been put in relation to the disconnection of people from nature.
At this point Öcalan connects the discussion on ecology with institutionalized hierarchy
which has its roots in patriarchy.
But ecology had not found a place at the core of the ongoing discussions in the 1990s. It
was new, not yet theoretically strongly developed and in the shadow of the ongoing brutal
war of the Turkish state. The central theoretical discussion at that time focused on
highly important topic of women´s liberation. At that time, it was most urgent for the
Kurds to discuss the liberation of women as it was the main tool for overcoming
conservative and hierarchical structures in society. However an important part of the
revolutionaries and political activists within the KFM took note of the discussion on
ecology of the 1990s. It influenced in the following years the minds of thousands of
politically engaged and interested people. Öcalan's discussion showed a strategic approach
as it was a discussion which was ahead of the times in comparison with all other
left(ist)-democratic groups and movements in Kurdistan and Turkey. Öcalan was rather at
the same level with some global discussions and movements which had started to discuss the
ecological contradiction.
Municipalities in Bakur - Challenge to develop an ecological practice
Shortly after Öcalan has been kidnapped through an international plot under the
coordination of the USA and delivered to the Turkish state in 1999, the armed struggle of
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) stopped, and a new and broad discussion on means and
perspectives of the freedom struggle started while giving priority to the political-civil
struggle. The aim to set up a "Kurdish state" has been given up finally. In the same year
in the local elections several important municipalities had been won by HADEP, the
People's Democracy Party, the legal party of the KFM at that time. The gained
municipalities - among them Amed (Diyarbakir), Batman and Wan (Van) - became essential
elements of the freedom struggle of the Kurds. This coincided with decreasing repressive
conditions mainly because of the stop of the armed struggle. This facilitated the space
for the municipalities, HADEP and other organizations of the KFM to spread their own
political ideas and to get better in contact with new and not politically organized parts
of the society. What has been claimed for years, namely that the KFM has better and much
more democratic concepts, could be implemented at local level through municipalities and
other political organizations. But at the same time the dynamic created by the armed
struggle did not exist anymore. A shift in the way of thinking and acting became necessary.
Between 1999 and 2004 HADEP administered 37 municipalities and has been challenged to
prove to the population that it is capable to govern better and more socially-responsibly
than all other authoritarian and corrupted political parties of the hegemonic system.
After taking over of the municipalities the state repression never ceased, but it was much
less than in the 1990s. Rather the State's approach was to give some space, but to bring
the HADEP (replaced in 2002 by DEHAP, 2004 DTP, 2009 BDP and 2014 HDP/DBP) municipalities
with certain imposed policies, including challenging frameworks like neoliberalism and
administrative centralism, to a point where they would fail, thus loose the following
local elections and finally lose their attractivity.
The HADEP municipalities, and in broader terms the Kurdish Freedom Movement, have the
declared political goal of creating a democratic-ecological society with the year 2000. It
was expressed publicly that the approach to the nature would be respectful; natural sites
would be conserved and developed within the cities and their surroundings would be more
clean and green; and the investments projects would not be implemented at the expense of
nature. The practice had to be significantly different from municipalities ruled by other
parties which in Kurdistan did not care in any way for ecological life.
These first years were the time when thousands of political activists and other
politically-interested people in Kurdistan and Turkey started to read articles and books
on ecology and particularly social ecology, including Murray Bookchin. This brought
forward the discussion how an ecological life should be developed and what that could mean
in long-term and short-term politics. It affected also some employees and politicians in
the municipalities. This was important as the difference can be observed sometimes in the
details. It should be considered that in the whole state of Turkey the discussions on a
more ecological or "sustainable" country were quite new, and political campaigns against
destructive and exploitative developments and projects were rarely carried out. But it was
also the time when in several regions struggles against large investment projects came up.
In Bakur two struggles became widely known. One was against the Ilisu Dam on the Tigris
which is planned to flood a large part of the Tigris Valley and the ancient town of
Hasankeyf. Another one was against several dams on the Munzur River in Dersim where live
mainly people of Alevi believe. Both struggles gained big support amongst the Kurds. The
Kurdish society started to discuss for the first time issues of rivers, dams, energy,
cultural and natural heritage and development in relation to each other on a broader scale
that contributed to an increase of a critical awareness on these issues.
However, in fact the gained municipalities in their first period (until 2004) showed a
practice which was by far better than the others from an ecological point of view. The
cities became cleaner and healthier with improvement of the waste system, also in the
poorest neighborhoods which had been neglected for decades. The drinking water supply and
sewage management was improved significantly in several cities within few years. The green
area per person increased too. The sites of cultural heritage got more attention and
accessibility for the public. More public spaces like squares or market places had been
build up. The public transport had been developed to all settled areas and for a
comparatively low price. Some designed large projects with problematic social and
ecological impacts had been canceled or changed by the municipalities or not followed up.
The life conditions in the poor quarters had been improved also by paving the streets,
building social infrastructure like social centers or washing centers for clothes and the
neglection of unpaid water bills. Efforts to include civil society groups in the
decision-making process on many projects and even city planning became day to day reality.
We can state that in the very beginning there were many urgent works in the field of basic
services that had to be undertaken. The living quality in most cities was under a big
threat - a stress that was exacerbated by the situation of those displaced by conflict in
the 1990s.
Although these positive developments occurred, there was lack of an overall consensus as
to how to develop a further and future ecological policy and the bigger ecological context
could not be explained well. Almost all mayors and policy decision makers of the
municipalities and other structures of the KFM did not consider the ecological perspective
as one of the main strategic approaches and it remained often secondary if other aspects
prevailed. The ecological consciousness of such people stayed limited with the pragmatism
of parliamentarism. This was not very surprising as the general political movement stayed
weak in the field of ecology and the discussion was quite new for the movement in general
and particularly for the broader society. There were no strong actors within society who
claimed a stronger ecological policy by the municipalities. In these years the
fore-mentioned ecologist movements against dam projects concentrated their efforts on the
dam projects; and the new "environmental" associations and civil organizations that were
emerging in the cities, including organisations of engineers, architects, lawyers and
medical doctors, did not yet demand strongly enough ecological criteria to be included in
urban development.
There were two other aspects of relevance. The first is that the society was only just
emerging from an extended period of intensive systematic state terror and was still in a
phase of basic recovery. The political focus of the KFM was mainly on the human right
violations of the 1990s and the demand for Kurdish identity in Bakur to be accepted with
basic autonomous rights within the Republic of Turkey. The second is that capitalism in
Kurdistan became very strong after the crisis of 2001. In 2003-2004, the official economic
growth rate achieved up to ten percent, the money in the economy accumulated significantly
and everywhere new and larger investments were done. Many more people started to earn big
amounts of money through trade and investments. This created an intense pressure also on
the cities in Bakur and approaches to open space for private investors affected almost all
municipalities which suffered from structural financial low income. These were the years
when neoliberalism entered Bakur.
In Bakur and also in Basur (with the US occupation in 2003) and Rojhilat, the development
of extractive industries (mining, oil and gas) became very dramatic in these years.
Investment projects in all fields had become widespread. In this sense the rural areas had
been confronted with the following projects: all rivers should be transformed by hundreds
of dams into artificial lakes or dried out by diversion dams; thousands of licenses had
been commissioned to companies for test mine drilling; all main roads started to be
broadened; mega coal plants had been constructed in several provinces; one of the world´s
largest cement factory had been constructed; Bakur had become a hot spot for fracking; and
finally the whole agricultural land - even the mountainous areas - faced fast change
according to capitalistic market rules. The state planners started to consider each square
meter in terms of financially exploitable land and prepared or approved thousands of
projects. The AKP government under Erdogan attracted with such policies the interest of
global capital. Only the cities administered by the KFM resisted for a big part this
development. That is why the government could not implement the most planned policies in
half of the cities of Bakur.
In a period when the society of Bakur started to develop quickly an ecological awareness,
the neoliberalized capitalism started to make the largest historical ecological (and thus
social) destruction and exploitation in Bakur. The destruction of nature and overcoming of
most of remaining social-traditional elements in the society was much more intensive than
during the war of the 1990s. Only the mountainous areas with difficult access for humans
could recover after 2000.
Ecology within Democratic Confederalism: the theoretical concept
On Newroz 2005, Abdullah Öcalan declared "Democratic Confederalism" as the new
political-theoretical concept of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Thereby the writings and
discussions of the prior years and the whole experience of 30 years of struggle could be
summarized and put into relation to each other in a systematic way. Without doubt
Democratic Confederalism cannot be considered disconnected from the discussions and
critics after the collapse of the "state/real socialism" around 1990 and the new leftist
and libertarian social and political movements all around the world. The outcome was a
critical, inclusive and radical thinking with new perspectives for the Kurds in relation
with other people in the Middle East. The new political concept is being expressed with a
paradigm based on three pillars. An ecological approach to the life was stressed as much
as radical democracy, which goes beyond parliamentarianism, and gender liberation with a
focus on women liberation. To repeat the obvious: The pillars and the whole concept are
expressed with the aim to achieve a liberated, emancipated, equal and solidarity-based
society in harmony with nature.
Radical democracy and women´s liberation had been stressed and developed strongly among
the Kurds already for many years before. But actually each of the three pillars of
Democratic Confederalism cannot be thoroughly developed without links to the other two.
However the initial starting point is women's liberation.
Prior to 5000 years of women's oppression and exclusion evolved the Neolithic period when
a complete communal social order was created around woman which can be also called
matricentric society. Öcalan emphasizes that this social order saw none of the enforcement
practices of the state order and existed for thousands of years. It is characterized by
equality and freedom, was viable because the social morality of the matriarchal order did
not allow ownership and it had a harmony with the nature. It is this long-lasting order
that shaped humanity's collective social consciousness; and it is our endless yearning to
regain and immortalise this social order of equality and freedom that led to our construct
of paradise.
Öcalan states that with the overcoming of matriacentric society by patriarchy
institutionalized hierarchical structures had emerged and spread among human societies and
characterized the upcoming states until nowadays. Long before explicit social classes came
into being, the first oppressed and exploited class are women. This has been followed in
the following centuries and millenia by the oppression of children and man. This
political-ideological formation led also to the domination and destruction of nature by
humans during the different periods of human history. The ecological exploitation and
destruction must be analyzed basically from such an approach.
Today the conservative and reactionary approaches of existing states is experienced in the
first instance by society through the oppression of women. Another important point is that
Women as oppressed gender have a stronger relation to the nature than men; in all
patriarchal societies men are usually more attached to power and thus are more alienated
from nature than. Thus, the struggle for an ecological and liberated society means in the
end also the struggle against patriarchy and liberation of women or, to put it another
way, without the liberation of women there cannot be an ecological society.
As the oppression of society starts with patriarchy, it is logical that the KFM has
started to focus more and more on the liberation of women which at the same is the
liberation of all kind of genders and the whole society. Within the KFM, this
consciousness came out to top in the beginning of the 1990s and thus an intensive and
widespread discussion on women's liberation started which became more deep and systematic
after the halt of the war in Bakur in 1999 and additionally more with the development of
Democratic Confederalism.
Discussing more in depth the approach of the KFM on nature, firstly it has to be stated
that the KFM views nature as the body of all living beings, including humans. Humans are
part of nature and do not stand over it or any species. Like in the Neolithic Period it is
regarded as alive and animated, no different from themselves. All living beings are part
of one common big ecosystem which offers enough opportunities to live for everybody.
Nature was omnipresent, there was for the significant majority of people always in the
daily life a strong connection with nature. Öcalan describes this as follows: "This past
awareness of nature fostered a mentality that recognized a multitude of sanctities and
divinities in nature. We may gain a better understanding of the essence of collective life
if we acknowledge that it was based on the metaphysics of sanctity and divinity, stemming
from reverence for the mother-woman." Today there are still some beliefs where in nature
are a multitude of sanctities and divinities, one of them is the Alevi belief.
Consequently for spirituality and inspiration among humans nature was and is the main source.
Based on through adherence to ecological principles nature should be treated respectfully
and not as a resource for profit. Nature was and is the source of food, housing and all
other material needs of life. Under capitalist modernity, humans living in urban centers
are usually weakly connected to nature and understand less the relation and connection to
nature. Nature had and has a multidimensional meaning in life and is essential for the
development of culture and identity as well as spirituality. Due to the alienation between
human beings which contributes significantly to the alienation between nature and human
beings, nowadays nature is overexploited. Despite everyone experiencing the impacts of
grave ecological destruction in the next decades, the destruction of nature seems to
continue. The current approach of human driven capitalist modernity is a state of betrayal
of humans to nature, to their body.
In this sense, if human beings would meet only their needs[4], nature would not experience
serious destruction and the ecosystems would have the capacity to recover itself. At this
point, the question what is the real need of people today is not easy to be responded and
should not be left only to biologists or economists, rather it relates to the question of
democracy, i.e. whether a society can take decisions under broadly democratic conditions
free from imposed exploitative-extractive economy policies. We assume that in a liberated,
solidarity-based, radical-democratic and ecological society there will be no pressure to
over-extract "elements"[5]from nature.
Do not forget that humans are not only physical or material organisms, they have strong
and deep immaterial feelings and metaphysical needs in their life. Although humans cannot
express them, they do not think and act only in a rational way. For thousands of years,
people have sought inspiration and motivation following different methods, including
retiring from their surroundings to nature. With the exponential increase of urbanization,
asphalt application, cultivation of landscape and investment projects all over the
territories, less areas are suitable in this sense and so it becomes always more difficult
for inspiration by nature, in capitalist modernity particularly for poorer people from
cities who have less financial capacities to experience directly nature. In connection
with that this affects also physical reproduction and recovery activities for people from
urban centers.
Communities far away from the urban centers, industry and industrial agricultural areas
are closer to nature and have more spiritual connection with environment. The less there
is capitalist modernity, the more natural and spiritual the life can be. If such
communities in non-urban areas belong to oppressed groups like the indigenous peoples of
Latin America, the Adivasi from India and Alevi Kurds, then the connection to nature may
have an additional importance because the oppressed peoples express themselves also
through nature. In this sense the nature is a very essential part of their oppressed
identity. Accordingly the destruction or misappropriation of nature by the colonialist
force is an elimination of their identity. This is often not much understood by people in
the capitalist and big urban centers where life no longer has has a strong relation to nature.
In the ideology of the KFM, the ecological perspective is considered of strategical
importance and as a tool to create awareness in the whole human society and all human
linked activities and processes from a nature conservation, anti-capitalist and holistic
perspective. In doing so, the approach is that the dimensions not covered by gender
liberation or radical democracy would be expressed with ecology. In this sense, the
emphasis on ecology within Democratic Confederalism can be understood also as the
completion of the two other pillars.
However, it should be underlined that nature conservation and even nature restoration by
humans is a strategic goal. From the very beginning on, the KFM stressed that each living
being has the right to exist due to its natural occurrence. The life of animals and plants
must be protected actively by humans. Regarding nature conservation, the goal to limit and
stop anthropogenic climate change is a crucial topic, as in the next decades it could
affect in a much more dramatic way everything on our planet - actually Kurdistan and
Middle East have already been affected for almost two decades due to decreasing
precipitation. Climate change is no less important than "nature conservation" (here it
meant projects/policies to conserve species, habitats and areas of high biodiversity) and
reverse, as some environmental organizations or politicians prioritize in their
discussions, they are mutually dependent and should not be treated independently from each
other. Climate change can not be limited without the conservation and restoration of
forests, vegetation, rivers, water cycle, soil, air etc. For the KFM, climate change is
part of nature conservation and a reason why in this paper climate change is not mentioned
specifically.
Thus it is concluded that each struggle against ecological destruction is very essential
and a necessary step to reestablish a relation to nature for many people; but in long-term
not enough to protect the contested natural area and related human society. Not enough
because the related investment project as well as all other destructive projects are
caused by the dominant political-economic system. This dominant system will never step
back to implement all designed and planned projects.
That is why being ecological means also to criticize all processes in the society,
particularly the way of producing and consuming, feeding, housing, mobilization,
organizing leisure etc. The KFM rejects categorically the way these models are implemented
by capitalist modernity and the direction they take today - KFM's insistence on communal
life is an expression of such a rejection. The current level of consumption is without
doubt too much for the earth. Going on like this would end in the dramatic destruction or
significant deterioration of all existing ecosystems and the loss of the most
biodiversity. If there is no deceleration in the short-term and significant conceptional
change in mid-term, nature's destruction and climate change will continue and the basis of
life will become much weaker with grave impacts for the ecosystems, biodiversity, animals,
plants and billions of humans. The worst affected people would be mainly people,
communities and states with weak socio-economic capacities.
To achieve a considerable change of these models, the basic approach must be to reduce
consumption of energy and material by at least 80 % in industrial states in mid-term and
to find a new balance where each human has the same amount of energy and material for use;
one important criteria should be to allow degraded ecosystems and biodiversity to recover.
At this point it should be emphasized that each destruction of nature or ecosystem has
serious impacts on humans and is thus a social destruction - several factors determine the
level. Each investment project like dams and mining has the high potential to destroy
nature as well as to violate the basic rights of affected people. So ecological
destruction must be understood also as the violation of political, social, cultural and
economic rights of people. This connection is still not made by many critical activists or
analysts in our world.
Going one step further the KFM is aware that with capitalism - even without neoliberalism
- the ecological destruction can never be stopped, not to mention the reversal, i.e. the
renaturation of nature and restoration of climate balance. If capitalism dominates the
global economy and capitalist modernity the political sphere, there will be an intense
pressure to have "growth" in the capitalist sense and (almost) no space to develop other
forms of living, for democratic decision-making processes and a communal and democratic
economy. Over centuries and decades, capitalist modernity has conquered the brains and
behaviors of billions of humans in a subtle way. It cannot be overcome with a concept
based only on new social and economic goals as "real/state socialism" intended to do.
Hierarchy, state and capitalism is firstly an ideological development.
Capitalist modernity has started to deepen at an accelerated tempo the alienation of
humans from humans and from nature; and this much more than the former hierarchical
political systems. Particularly in the last 200 years each area of the world and each
community has been affected by capitalist modernity. Nowadays all people - except the rich
- have been put under pressure with neoliberalism. Through displacing people from their
natural environments by physical or economic force to cities, humans lost their culture of
living in much more natural surroundings. And when territories are under threat by such
destructive investments in areas where people are oppressed on the basis of their
identity, the displacement of people by nation-states contributes to the assimilation of
cultures under threat and pressure. Small or marginalized oppressed cultures are
particularly affected by such policies. The Kurds are one important example for that.
People in cities do not only consum , they are also disconnected from their strong social
and cultural heritage and thus are lost fishes in the sea easily to catch. Disconnected
from their cultural past means, among others, to be open for extreme individualistic and
isolated ways of life where a healthy balance between individuals and society does not
exist. People alienated from nature and communal and solidarity-based relations are much
easier to become instruments of exploitation in industrial production, consumption,
reactionary thoughts and establishing of authoritarian political systems. Urban people do
not know usually any more the name of most plants and animals and how in practice
processes in nature function or how humans can benefit from them sustainably as our
ancestors have done it for thousands of years. So humans in cities do not live the nature
on a daily basis. In other words, humans do not feel soil, plants, water, sun and air and
start to lose a deep understanding for them and their context; they may know it usually in
theory like biologists. In cities, more now than ever before, everything is organized with
money while villagers still can produce some of their needs, exchange goods among
themselves and support each other with self produced goods. People in rural areas are
usually less affected by capitalist modernity and reproduce a thinking and lifestyle less
connected to capitalism and state hegemony. In cities, on average humans are faced with
more psychological and social traumas than in rural communities; and these traumas are
transferred to their children. The traumas of displaced people from rural areas are maybe
the worst. Actually, today the majority of our societies live under heavy psychological
conditions.
Capitalist modernity creates people offering their labor force to private companies or
public organizations without to produce any of their needs as their ancestors did in
villages. Thus from their salary they have to buy all their needs. These people are put
under hard and stressful working conditions. . Working people under permanent pressure did
not care much about the ongoing ecological destruction in the first period of
industrialization when working conditions and salaries were in the center of their
interest. Although strong trade unions did not developed an ecological approach until
recently. However after generations more and more people in almost all parts of the world
have started to think about ecology and alternatives to the capitalist way of living.
While in the older industrial states the most people start to learn facts on nature and an
ecological life from zero, in the newly or hardly industrialized states there are much
more characteristics and remnants of non-capitalistic relations, processes and thinking on
which critical people can build up. The recovery can be realized in an easier and faster
way as for example critical people can benefit from the experience of their grand parents
or even parents. Kurdistan is such a geography.
While above the connection between ecology and women´s liberation has been introduced,
there is still the connection between ecology and democracy to be described. In order to
defend nature and ecological relations, destructive and exploitative projects need to be
stopped and the models of housing, production, consumption, mobility etc have to be
altered radically. All this can be done only if democratic decision making structures are
dominant in the society, i.e. radical democracy is developed, and no more small circles in
the society can influence via lobbying the political decision. Only when there is an
economy based on solidarity and communality can the big ecological destruction be
prevented in long-term. Summing up it can be analyzed that the connection between ecology
and democracy is realized particularly via the sphere of economic relations.
The KFM has developed over the years some new terminology with the concept of Democratic
Confederalism which may be of interest. Many movements do this, but within Democratic
Confederalism some more words have been created. It starts with the name of the concept.
Some definitions are a combination of words like "democracy" and "autonomy" or
"democratic" and "nation" which are widely used . The theory of Democratic Confederalism
follows also the line to occupy existing crucial definitions like "nation" or "modernity"
and to give them also a positive content in a certain framework. From an ecological
perspective within Democratic Confederalism the terms "ecological industry" and "communal
life" is of higher relevance. Ecological industry may be controversial as industrial
activities have led to a big part to the destruction and pollution of the nature and
concentrate continuously economic and political power. But at the same time the human
societies have achieved a point of life and economical relation which can not be
maintained without industry. For the KFM "industry" is understood as the production of
goods in a systematic and concentrated, i.e. by mechanized processes, way. . It needs some
expert skills and higher technologies. Actually primitive forms of industry exists for a
long period in human history. The current level of industry with its negative impacts was
not inevitable; history could have taken a different turn. However, nowadays it is
extremely challenging (almost impossible) to de-industrialize societies which would have
incalculable risks. Thus the question is how to reorganize the industry in terms of
technology, capacity and management from an ecological perspective and breaking with the
existing concept of economic growth. Democratic Confederalism has on this topic yet no
well-developed concepts, but rather basic ideas.
Role of the Guerrilla in the growing ecological awareness
The increasing ecological awareness is related also to the guerrilla of the PKK, the
People's Defense Forces HPG, which never ceased to exist widespread in the mountains of
North and South Kurdistan since the 80ies. The HPG has thousands of guerrillas in huge
areas of Northern Kurdistan, and in a broad stretch of 250 km in South Kurdistan; thus
must be considered as a geographically and political highly important factor. When not
fighting with the Turkish Army, the guerrillas spend their time in a mix of military and
political education. In South Kurdistan, the focus is even more on political discussion
and education.
The guerrillas discuss the entire range of social and political issues in their political
educational program. Since the 1990s when Öcalan started to discuss the ecological crisis
, the guerrilla included ecology in their discussions. The manner in which it discusses
ecology and all the other topics differs from people and organizations in the broader
Kurdish society, which makes the discussion itself more independent. The guerrillas are
not part of the hegemonic political system and have no narrow individual expectations from
the state or others. In contrast, people and organizations from the "normal" society are
influenced continuously by concerns and personal limitations. Even if they struggle
intensively to get rid of influences by capitalism and statism, there is always a
remaining part.
The difference with the guerrilla is that since its emergence in the beginning of the
1990s, the life conditions are exceedingly difficult, but completely communal, based on
solidarity and far away from capitalist modernity. There is almost no private propriety
existing; money and material interests play no role in the relations among humans;
decisions are taken sometimes on a basis democratic way; and a system of criticsm and
self-criticism is implemented systematically.
Concerning ecology, it is also very crucial that the guerrilla lives in harmony with the
nature. There is almost no negative impact by the guerrilla on plants, animals and
ecosystems; rather in the last years they care more than ever on this issue. The life is
oriented strongly alongside ecological criteria. It comes along that the existence of the
guerrilla in many mountainous regions leads to the prevention of widespread hunting, and
to the preservation of many forests through calls or bans on the start or continuation of
numerous destructive infrastructure projects of the Turkish state or the Kurdish Regional
Government in South Kurdistan.
The discussions and proposals for overcoming the ecological crisis are often practiced in
the guerrilla areas on a small scale and as much as possible in the lives of individual
guerillas and as a community. So there are not solely theoretical outcomes, there is also
a dimension of practice. Through this practice in some cases the guerrilla can adjust
their first theoretical assumptions.
The ecological practice of the guerrilla can be explained with the following examples. It
is absolutely forbidden to throw away waste like plastic or metal in the environment;
trees are cut only under exceptional cases; animals are hunted not much and only in a way
so that no species would be endangered in a certain region - some species could recover; a
few dozen small diversion dams for electricity are built in South Kurdistan which divert
usually one third of the flowing water (most states divert between 2/3 and 90%); as much
as possible food is produced by the guerrilla's own means in the mountains.
The results and developed approaches of the guerrilla reflect the material conditions with
the strong characteristics of solidarity, communality and ecology; and they challenge the
other parts of the society - particularly the part of the population which is physically
and politically close to them. The reason is that criticsm is much more profound and
ideologically justified, the claims are higher and there are less "realistic" elements
which could limit thinking. Thus the guerrilla accept fewer compromises and thus fewer
spaces for capitalism. The approaches of the guerrilla are closer to harmony with nature
and request stronger and broader communal structures.
Developed approaches and proposals on ecology - like with the other fields - can be
connected and transferred quite easily to the broader society of Kurdistan as there is a
strong relation of the guerrilla with the Kurdish society. Consider that each year
hundreds of thousands of people meet and discuss with guerrillas. Coming from the
capitalist modernity and meeting revolutionaries who share communal life affects these
people and beyond, especially young ones.
However in all fields two basic approaches within the Kurdish Freedom Movement - one
represented mainly by the expressed ideas of the guerrilla - collide often in a strong
way. Not all proposals are approved one to one by political activists or politically
interested people in the broad society who live in different material conditions. There
are aspects which the guerrilla does not consider in their discussions as they live far
away and in different and extraordinary conditions. Generally, the approaches of the
guerrilla are closer to what is considered more democratic, communal, gender liberated and
ecological.
The synthesis must have been in majority of the cases the most correct way as the KFM
managed to survive and to get stronger in the last years. We can say that the
mountain-city relations of the Kurds have created over the years a specific dynamic which
is beneficial for the whole KFM.
How the contradiction creates a dynamic
The Kurdish Freedom Movement has been winning the local elections in an increasing number
of cities in North Kurdistan since 1999, and they have acquired some important knowledge
on how local governments can transform the society to be more social, gender liberated and
ecologically oriented. It is only since 2010/2011 that the reasons to transform life
ecologically were grasped substantially; previously, the approach and the discourse of
ecology were rather shallow as described above.
There are basically three reasons for that. First, capitalist relations continued to
advance quickly in North Kurdistan in the second part of the 2000's and the ecological
destruction reached seriously concerning levels. Second, the concept of Democratic
Confederalism has encouraged and strengthened ecologists in Bakur to deepen and broaden
their struggle. Third, the critic and resistance against the ecological destruction and
exploitation increased in an organized way, gathered some serious experience and even
small successes.
The book "In defense of a people" by Öcalan published in 2004 and the declaration of
Democratic Confederalism in March 2005 contributed definitively to the better
systematization of the ideas and discussion on an ecological society in Bakur and other
parts of Kurdistan. In the first months after the declaration of Democratic Confederalism,
there was a controversial discussion among many political activists within the KFM or
those close to it, about the pillar ecology. While for the activists who already
incorporating ecology in their activism and discussions this was very encouraging and
supportive, the others either did not take it into account seriously or raised concerned
and considered it premature to emphasize ecology or "not fitting to the reality of Kurdish
society". However, in general, the political structures of the KFM welcomed the pillar
ecology and started to discuss it - even it was still only superficially. At least it
opened the mind for ecological discussions, campaigns and requests.
Just in this time the Ilisu Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant, the largest dam project in
planning or construction in Bakur and Turkey, came again on the agenda after the Turkish
government started a new effort to build it - the first attempt had failed in 2001/2002.
Between 2006 and 2010 the struggle against this dam project, which would have huge grave
impacts on social structures, cultural heritage and the Tigris ecosystem and destructive
consequences for the local society, was continuously on the agenda of the Kurds and got
support by many Kurdish organizations, activists and media. Coordinated by the Initiative
to Keep Hasankeyf Alive this campaign was an expression of the increased ecological and
cultural awareness among the Kurds. It contributed at a new level to the questioning of
energy, water, agriculture and development policies of the Turkish state and exceeded
significantly the discussions during the first round of struggle on the Ilisu project
between 1999 and 2002.
In the following years there was a steady increase in the number of groups and people
working on issues concerning nature conservation, the impacts of big infrastructure and
energy projects, food production and social ecology theory. Associations and initiatives
opposing dams, mining, coal plants, environmental pollution, urban development,
commercialization of life etc. have been initiated or strengthened for example in Amed,
Dersim, Çolemerg (Hakkari), Batman, Qoser (Kiziltepe), Wan and Riha (Urfa). Although in
these years the diversity of contested project types broadened, dams were still the main
challenge for the ecology movements. These were the years when each square kilometer of
Bakur and the whole Turkish state territory have been considered by state planners and big
companies as a source of profit - internationally this approach started to be discussed as
"extractivism". Capitalism was spreading to all niches of the society of Bakur. The
capitalist modernity unfolded its maximum destructive forces, the AKP government did
everything to enable investments in the region. The need to form a coalition of groups and
activists with a strong ecological and critic awareness in Bakur has become important in
these years.
Considering these growing protests and the need to act in a comprehensive way against the
encroachment of neoliberal capitalism, the coordination of the Mesopotamian Social Forum,
which has been organized for the first time in 2009 in Amed, decided to organize an
Ecology Forum. At this forum in January 2011 with the contribution of activists by all
struggles of Bakur, researchers, representatives of different civil organizations and
movements and activists from Turkey and other countries, ecological struggles and
approaches were discussed in Kurdistan in a broad and organized way for the first time in
history. As consequence of the forum, "ecology activists" started a discussion to form a
network of groups in Bakur. It took more than one and half year to achieve the first
meetings of about ten groups and a decision to form the "Mesopotamia Ecology Movement" was
taken. The theoretical basis from the very beginning on was Social Ecology and Democratic
Confederalism. Although the name described it as a movement, rather in the first years it
was a network.
In these years capitalism has started to affect in a strong way also some political
structures and thinking of activists in the KFM, including municipalities and activists in
small towns. Due to the fact that there was still a lack of system and depth in the
discussion of ecology regarding all decisions and actions within the KFM, it is not
surprising that some people and structures acted contrarily. The impact in the practice
was that, among others, the behavior and approaches of political parties and organizations
of the existing hegemonic system did not change significantly for many activists of the
KFM decisions like city planning did not really brake with capitalist-statist prescriptive
practices; some mayors were co-opted by local entrepreneurs to get tenders; and
competition far away from solidarity relations between organizations and activists partly
increased. These challenges may always come up and become dominant in the case of a not
very well developed and accepted radical democratic structure with transparent and
inclusive decision-making processes. The KFM had only started in 2007 to set up a
completely new political structure which takes the paradigm of Democratic Confederalism as
basis. The Democratic Society Congress (in Kurdish: KCD; in Turkish: DTK) as the umbrella
structure of the KFM for the new people's councils from the neighborhoods, civil society
organizations, social movements, professional organizations, municipalities and political
parties was quite new and still in the process of finding a way to function properly given
the big diversity of above-mentioned structures.
In the initial stage, the Mesopotamia Ecology Movement (MEM) was challenged to find ways
to bring the member groups together around subjects, campaigns and discussions and set up
a permanent and reliable working structure. If this could be realized, the struggle
against the numerous destructive and exploitative projects and policies of the state could
be confronted better and within the KCD the struggle for ecological discussions, thinking
and approaches would get more political weight. In confronting the government`s projects
and objectives, a continuously rising number of people started to question the state
policies in other areas. Not only the policies on Kurdish identity, collective rights,
education, women's rights, militarization, but also those on economy, energy, agriculture
and related issues in Bakur became more and more a focus of the political struggle. Each
economic decision or investment project started to be perceived more critically.
At the same time, the municipalities governed by the legal party of the KFM came under a
critical focus by the MEM because municipalities acting against the political goals of the
general movement would harm the whole struggle, including the ecological dimension. The
demand was that municipal politics had to be changed comprehensively along ecological
principles, developed by the MEM, and the self-administration of people's councils. The
aim of the state is clear: it wants to dominate, oppress and exploit the society in close
cooperation with big companies, and in Bakur also with middle big companies. In this
struggle, the KFM municipalities had to make a clear stance against the state policies.
Although municipalities are according to Turkish law in the end an organ of the central
government, they have limited capacities and freedom with which they could challenge state
policies. While on the one hand they are forced to act in compliance with Turkish law, on
the other hand the municipalities should do everything in their powerto support radical
democratic structures in the society, i.e. particularly the people's councils, women's
self-organization and a communal economy, as well as taking as stance against the
gentrification of urban areas and bringing equitably services to the entire population.
But the reality in these years was often only in part like this. Capitalism has put the
municipalities of Bakur under the pressure to follow the neoliberal AKP municipalities as
development model through the domination of discussions about urban development. It was a
time - up until 2011 - when economic growth in Turkey was high, the social contradictions
in Turkey and Bakur were significantly less and the AKP government was still not very
repressive: hence, the criticsm by the KFM against capitalist modernity did not go down
well in Kurdish society. Another pressure was systematic financial discrimination by the
Turkish national government: since 1999, KFM municipalities could not benefit from many
governmental funds unlike other municipalities.Obstacles were also often created in the
approval of big projects (each big project needs usually approval by the governor who is
directly appointed by the Turkish government) and the KFM municipalities have not been
supported with experts and skills like the other municipalities. This latter
discrimination was not very surprising as the Kurds have been oppressed since the
foundation of the Republic of Turkey. It is a subject with which a struggle is needed.
However, what was more concerning for the MEM was the lacking stance of the municipalities
on capitalist development. In this respect,one case became important for the ecology
struggle in Kurdistan. It is about the hill "Kirklar Dagi" in the outskirts of the city of
Amed where a housing project was announced in 2009. As a historical and natural area at
the south edge of the city of Amed, Kirklar Dagi is very known among the population and
thus a sensitive location. When the physical preparation for the housing projects started
in 2011/2012, which actually was not in line with the master plan approved in 2006, the
MEM and some other civil organizations requested an immediate stop and cancellation: after
long discussions and negotiations, the two involved municipalities of Amed rejected this
demand. So, when the construction started fully in 2013 a demonstration by the MEM with
thousands of people was organized. Although the project did not stop, the demonstration
was a novum for the KFM: a civil organization criticized publicly in a sharp way a
municipality from the "own political movement" because of an urban project. However, this
had some long-term impacts. In the following years, the Democratic Regions Party (DBP; the
party of the KFM and member of the HDP) municipalities started to act more carefully when
they planned any housing or bigger project. This case showed that thinking and acting
ecologically needs activists to consider also their own side and not the other side, the
state and big capital. Apart from the case of Kirklar Dagi there are many other projects
in the cities, which are object of capitalist transformation and need to be regarded much
more critically.
Another criticsm of the MEM targets the big shopping malls which have been constructed in
the last years in each city. These are private projects and of course supported by the AKP
government, but there were some cases where the DBP municipalities have not intervened and
in few cases even welcomed them. Some of the shopping malls could have been prevented, or
at least delayed. The Turkish law allows the central government to take over city planning
whenever it considers necessary. So, the question is how to resist this legal unfairness;
even if it not possible to impede in the long-term the non-wanted projects, at least they
should be delayed and subject to public debate. After intensive criticsm by the MEM and
other movements like the women´s movement in 2014, a much more critical approach has been
implemented by the DBP municipalities.
These two cases show that the ecology struggle in Bakur has not only to focus only in
rural areas, but also in urban areas, because capitalism has started many years ago to
seek for profitable investment projects everywhere. 2013 was the year when an ecological
awareness and criticsm started to express itself much more openly, accompanied by public
actions and this not only through the MEM. The youth movement, women´s movement,
professional organizations (particularly architects, engineers, medical doctors), trade
unions achieved qualitatively a new level in their approach as to how society mightbe
conceived from an ecological perspective.
At this point, it needs to be stated that within the concept of Democratic Confederalism
one field - in Bakur society is organized by the Democratic Society Congress (DTK/KCD)
into 14 fields (also branch or sector), like women, justice, health, education, diplomacy,
beliefs, ecology, municipalities, youth, self-defence - is usually promoted by one
movement or organization, but it is not only limited to this organization. Actually, it is
favored that activists from other fields also discuss deeply ecology, women´s liberation
or communal-democratic economy. For this, the connections between the fields become
important. In parliamentarian systems, ecological/environmental NGOs and movements act
usually on their own for the objective to stop certain projects and/or to change the laws
or society in ecological sense. In the new system of Bakur - and Rojava - the social
movements struggle for their objectives, but do it within a democratic and inclusive
system. This comes from the perception that society is one whole and has been divided by
capitalist modernity so much that the different social and political groups and genders do
not act in balance with each other: one group tries always to dominate the other one. In
capitalist modernity, usually the groups with big financial capacities or weapons dominate
over the others. This is a significant difference which has been brought by Democratic
Confederalism.
An example how the different movements can work successfully together and how much the
different fields are interrelated, are the relations of the MEM with the economy movement.
The economy movement has been formed in 2013 after broad discussions by dozens of
activists from different struggles and critical economists from Bakur and Turkey. Among
these people were several activists from the MEM. Since then there is a good connection
and exchange between the two branches. The good relationship has brought together the two
branches into cooperation on certain projects; projects which are related to both fields
ecology and economy. One example is the long-discussed construction of a bank for local
organic seeds. A dynamic, cooperative and critical relation with the new upcoming economy
movement, which wants to develop a communal and democratic economy in Bakur, is crucial
for the aim to develop an ecological society. All that is discussed and developed among
the MEM is aimed to be implemented in cooperation with the economy field as well with as
the municipalities. Without considering communal economy, an ecological society is
impossible as described above.
The Mesopotamia Ecology Movement
In 2014, a new discussion among the activists of the MEM about its restructuring with the
aim to become a real and broad social movement started. After many discussions, it
resulted in the formation of councils in each province of Bakur which offered space for
political activists working on ecology and for newcomers. All previous and new initiatives
and associations and activists working on ecology, but also other civil society
organizations, professional organizations, unions, municipalities and the people's
councils of the KCD in the urban quarters and rural regions had been invited to
participate. This form of representation intends to include as much as possible of
societal playors and to establish something which in short and medium term should build a
society that is more ecological, and thus, more just and democratic.
The main work of the MEM is done in the different commissions which are established
according to the needs and emphasis defined by the provincial councils. Every activist in
the MEM joins at least one commission in its province. Apart from the commissions which
exist in nearly every province, there are some specific commissions. For example, in the
province Dersim, there is one commission for forests and, in the metropolitan area of
Amed, one for animal rights. There are also a few commissions at the Bakur level, like
those for diplomacy, law and organising. The coordination at provincial level consists of
the two co-spokespersons - one woman and one man. The co-chairs are elected periodically
(3 or 6 months) by the provincial assembly which gathers at least twice a year (sometimes
4 times each year). Each provincial assembly elects annually several (around 6) delegates
based on gender quota for the assembly at Bakur level which meets twice a year. The
coordinations at provincial level elect two delegates, one woman and one man, for the
Bakur coordination which meets more often than the Bakur assembly. As it can be determined
within the MEM each structure has a gender minimum quota of 40% for its delegates. The MEM
has a 50% quota.
Since this restructuring the MEM is now represented more strongly in the KCD through the
actions, projects and campaigns it is realizing. The MEM can bring better its content and
requests to the coordinations of the KCD on provincial and Bakur level and to the KCD
general assembly. The stronger the MEM is, the more it can have impacts on the KCD as a
whole, and on its activists. For example, it is crucial to work towards those
municipalities which have no good practice on ecology as well as on other issues.
The MEM is connected quite well with many ecological movements and NGO's outside of Bakur
within the Turkish state. Since 2015 for several times there were common actions,
delegations (like on forest fires) and discussions. In this sense it is part of the
ecology council of the People Democratic Council (HDK). The HDK is the turkey-wide
supra-structure of all structures of direct democracy, thus also including the HDP. In
other words, HDK is equivalent to KCD while not being comparatively strong like the KCD.
Since its start the MEM had to struggle with a low awareness for ecology in society which
has its impacts in the different organizations of the KCD. Although there is a meaningful
change in the last years, ecology is still considered by a big part of the society as
something elitist and far away from real life and is associated with focusing on the
conservation of some species or important natural areas or having healthy but expensive
organic food. Moreover the terminology used still does not make much understandable what
the activists are seeking. That is why practice has become so crucial in order to attract
more people for the movement. Considering that even a large number of people with an
academic background are interested less in theory and more in practice, projects on the
ground can motivate and activate many and can make better understandable what is aimed
with an ecological society. Projects like common gardening and traditional construction,
which all interested people can join, have also the impact that the MEM can validate and
develop its theoretical approach based on the outcomes of such projects. This should be
considered also in the light that the KFM starts with the general approach in the most
fields of society and substantiate its approach in a protracted process of practice and
discussion. Projects on the ground offer collective work and give back the feeling of
community and solidarity to people, particularly from cities. One successful project was
the collection of local and organic seeds from different areas Bakur in the winter
2015/2016 and their reproduction in 2016 in seven provinces. The reproduction has been
done mostly with the local people's neighborhood councils which is a good example how the
different fields of the KCD can work together. This campaign on seeds received interest by
many parts of the society. Considering that humans are rational as well as emotional
beings, touching soil, water, mud, plants and wood can create a big synergy. A further
result such a practical approach can have: in times of repression and war it can hold
people together and allows them to come through politically difficult periods like the one
started with the war in summer 2015 which worsened with the state of emergency in summer 2016.
In autumn 2015 the MEM conducted a half year discussion on the eight main political fields
(agriculture, energy, water, health, communal economy, forests/biodiversity, ecological
cities, eco-technology) for what working groups at Bakur level had been established. At
the end of these processes, papers have been prepared and later approved at the first MEM
conference in April 2016 in Wan. These policy papers have become the guidelines for the
future work which cover a broad span and are linked to other political fields like women's
liberation, economy and health. This challenging work may help to find initial answers on
the question as to which direction the MEM should take, strengthen without doubt the
commitment to the struggle and privide tools for successfully struggling against state and
companies as well as within the KFM.
Remarks
1) It needs to be stated that the heavy political repression in Bakur on all levels of
political engagement, which started in summer 2015 and achieved with the state of
emergency, declared in July 2016, an extreme level, has affected in a strong way also the
MEM. Since then the most activities of the MEM have been limited, halted or changed.
However the activities have undergone some important change. In this paper the period
after the state of emergency has not been considered. Rather it has been aimed to describe
the development of the consciousness and discussion on and the struggle for ecology in
Bakur before the current repression.
2) The discussions and practice of Rojava has not been included in this paper as there are
very different frameworks (no state any more, much less capitalism etc.) although the
political concept is the same.
[1]In recent discussions also described as "extractivism".
[2]The KFM uses the definition capitalist modernity in order to describe the current
hegemonic political-economic system. According to that capitalism is covers mainly
economical activities while capitalist modernity is a system which includes the political
and ideological (for example it is meant: mentality, human relations, social behavior)
dimension of the developed hegemonic system.
[3]Change from use value to exchange value
[4]Often "basic needs" is used in such discussions. But its quite difficult to differ
between "needs" and "basic needs", thus here it is foregone to use "basic".
[5]Instead of "resources", which is used widespread nowadays, here "elements" is
preferred. "Resources" assumes that they exist or wait to be extracted and exploited by
capitalist economy.
Related Link:
https://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/2018/04/11/ecology-in-democratic-confederalism/
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31051
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