Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been held under severe isolation conditions in Imrali Island Prison for 26 years, has spearheaded the “Peace and Democratic Society” process, which is gaining increasing support and resonance at the international level. Statements from various social segments and international circles welcome the steps taken by the Kurdish Freedom Movement towards dialogue and resolution. In this process, strong calls are being made for the Turkish state to take concrete steps on the political and legal levels to make peace lasting and meaningful. It is emphasized that for the process to succeed, Öcalan’s conditions for negotiation must be met and his freedom must be secured.
This process has also led to the democratic, ecological, and feminist paradigm championed by Öcalan and the Kurdish Freedom Movement for years gaining wider recognition and visibility. These ideas, shaped around the perspective of peace and a democratic society, are seen as a promising alternative not only for the Kurdish people but also for all the peoples of the Middle East and the world. This paradigm, which is increasingly being discussed, is emerging as a new alternative to the current crises.
ANF talked to Prof. Sandro Mezzadra, a political scientist from the University of Bologna, about the importance of the process pioneered by Öcalan and the theoretical and political significance of the ideas championed by the freedom struggle. Noting that the process is of great importance at the global level, Prof. Mezzadra stated that this initiative could be seen as a complementary step to the paradigm developed by Öcalan against nationalism.
First of all, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us. I would like to begin with the ongoing peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdish Freedom Struggle. How do you assess this process?
Thank you very much for having me. I think the peace process in Turkey is a really important moment, both in the history of Turkey and considering the regional dimension, which means what is happening also in Syria, in Iraq and in the greater Middle East, we can say. So, regarding the internal dimension of the peace process, I think from the point of view of Kurdish politics, it is a great accomplishment, a kind of fulfillment of the critique of nationalism that started several years ago, particularly in the thought and in the writings of Abdullah Öcalan.
Today, we are facing a new rise of nationalism in many parts of the world, and this is the reason why I find the peace process and the Kurdish post-national politics so important. And I repeat, this is, of course, valid regarding Turkey, but also very important regionally and I would say global implications.
In a period marked by increased militarization and war rhetoric globally, particularly in the Middle East, how should we evaluate Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s stance in favor of peace and negotiations and his insistence on this stance?
Well, precisely for the reasons you just mentioned, we are living through a kind of global conjuncture of war, even beyond the devastating wars that are fought on the ground, including the genocide in Gaza.
And we are kind of facing processes of militarization of politics in many parts of the world. And it’s precisely in such a conjunction that speaking of peace is very important. Speaking of peace and qualifying the meaning of peace.
Peace is not only the absence of war, but also a kind of political project to organize social relations and social cooperation in a way that is not compatible with war and militarization. So, it is from this point of view that I think the peace process is really important today in Turkey, in the region and beyond.
You pointed out that the ongoing process in Turkey has regional and even global significance. So, considering the experiences of conflict processes around the world evolving towards peace and resolution, how do you position this process towards a democratic solution to the Kurdish issue?
Yes, I mean, I think it is not easy to compare this peace process with other instances that remain important points of reference, of course.
But I think there is a peculiarity in the peace process that was launched by Kurdish politics in Turkey. And this peculiarity has to do with the very specific kind of conjunction that we are living through at the international level. And the peace process is taking place with all the difficulties that we know in a country that is trying to play an important role in the current crisis of the international system, and in particular of the Middle East.
Turkey is an important actor in the negotiations surrounding the ceasefire in Gaza. We know this. So, you see that there is immediately this kind of link between the internal dimension and the region.
I think that the peace process is kind of pushing toward a new social and political constitution of Turkey that would allow the country to play, let’s say, a positive, progressive role in the region beyond nationalism. It’s very strong in Turkey. Exactly, yes.
But I think that the peace process has a kind of alternative to nationalism, as a kind of attempt to criticize nationalism from within Turkey, but also in the regional dimension that, I repeat, is very, very important. Think of Syria, for instance. But think also of the role of Turkey, I repeat, in the negotiations on Gaza.
Abdullah Öcalan criticizes the nation-state as a repressive structure and proposes Democratic Confederalism, a model of self-organization based on direct democracy. You also analyze sovereignty in your academic and theoretical work as a concept that has fragmented and transformed beyond borders. Do you think Democratic Confederalism, as advocated by the Kurdish movement, could be an alternative to the global capitalism or nation-states that you criticize?
Well, the short answer is yes, but I think some qualifications are needed. I share the critique of national borders, which is part and parcel of the project of democratic confederalism. What I think we need to say is that democratic confederalism outlines some general principles, starting from self-government, feminism, ecology, and these are general principles that, taken together, foreshadow an alternative to capitalism.
But the point is that the translation into practice of these principles is necessarily different in different contexts. So I think that it is important to keep in mind that democratic confederalism has deployed a huge influence well beyond Rojava and even the Kurdish world. But this influence invites us to engage in an attempt to forge creative solutions, what I called before the translation into practice of the general principles that many movements in the world share with democratic confederalism.
Abdullah Öcalan defines capitalist modernity as a comprehensive system and proposes Democratic Modernity as an alternative path. You also examine the logic of capitalism through its functioning (logistics, data, control of mobility). In your opinion, what kind of social or political practices can truly break the hegemony of functioning capitalism?
First of all, we have to focus attention on struggles. Without struggles, it is very difficult to imagine an alternative to global capitalism. So we have to look at the way in which struggles emerge at the very point in which global capitalism reorganizes its circuits of accumulation.
And I think that there is a very general point to be made here, which means that the alternative, as you say, to global capitalism must be an internationalist alternative. It means that the kind of resonances that I was mentioning before, speaking of democratic confederalism, are key to the forging of an alternative. The need that we face is to intensify this kind of resonance, this kind of communication, if you wish, which is also, as I was saying, a translation in order to forge a kind of general alternative vision that then again has to be indigenized, if you wish, has to be translated into a very specific context.
I think this is a very important task for us today. And maybe we also have to go beyond the language of internationalism, because the language of internationalism is predicated upon the nation, of course. So maybe we also have to invent new words, new concepts.
But to work toward the definition of an alternative vision at the transnational, transcontinental level is very, very important. And I repeat, I mean, the travels around the world of democratic confederalism have been very important in this respect.
The popular uprisings we are seeing today, primarily in Europe but also in many other places, reveal that representative or liberal democracies are failing in many places. How can we explain the crisis facing liberal democracies? Are people without alternatives?
The crisis of liberal democracy is not something new. It has a history. And to reply at the general level of the question, I would say that the transformation of capitalism over the last decades is a very important factor if we are to explain the crisis of liberal democracy. You know what is usually called the neoliberal hegemony that took shape in the late 70s, early 80s, in a way has eroded the traditional, even the institutional framework of liberal democracy.
And nowadays, we are facing a radicalization of this crisis at a moment in which neoliberal hegemony is itself at the end of its historical path. And this end of neoliberal hegemony, that would need qualification too, is something that the social movements and leftist intellectuals have kind of dreamed of for decades. But it is taking place in forms that are very different from the ones we have been wishing for.
And these forms are connected with a new authoritarianism that takes different kinds of shapes in different places, but in a way is a kind of unifying thread.
If you had the opportunity to engage in direct dialogue with Abdullah Öcalan about the transformations of capitalism or the construction of alternatives, what question would you ask him or what issue would you discuss with him?
Well, I think the questions that I was addressing at the beginning of our conversation which made the political relevance of the critique of nationalism at the juncture between the internal Turkish dimension and the regional dimension. I would very much like to engage in a discussion with him.
And I really hope it will be possible soon.
Who is Sandro Mezzadra?
Italian thinker Sandro Mezzadra, a professor of political theory at the University of Bologna, focuses on migration, borders, globalization, and the current transformations of capitalism. In his works “Border as Method” and “The Politics of Operations”, he analyzes the functioning of capitalism through logistics, data, and mobility. Prof. Mezzadra, who has gained worldwide recognition for his theoretical work, approaches borders not merely as geographical lines, but as a methodological tool for understanding struggles over labor and freedom. Furthermore, as part of the “operaismo” and “post-operaismo” tradition, he offers intellectual contributions on contemporary social movements and alternative forms of politics.