Stateless Democracy

This separate political geography is based on forms of selforganization
(democratic confederalism) and the strong
conviction and praxis to take one’s own fate into one’s own
hand. Since the election in 2009, this “separate political
geography” has deepened with the arrest of Kurdish
politicians, followed by a political counter-campaign of
the Kurdish movement, including demands for bilingual
public life within the framework of the project for democratic
autonomy. The Peace and Democracy Party and
the DTK sparked the discussions on a “bilingual life” by
demanding the official recognition of the Kurdish language
in public life. They also started to put their demands into
practice, with municipalities changing the signboards of
the municipalities into both Kurdish and Turkish, and local
shop-keepers changing their signboards into Kurdish.
Organizing the whole society from the bottom has been
on the agenda of the Kurdish movement since 1999, with
the take-over of an increasing number of municipalities in
the Kurdish region. On the level of districts and towns, the
Kurdish movement has formed different structures of selfgovernment
that produce policies for local needs. Later
on, the project of democratic autonomy aimed at enlarging
and formalizing these structures. 43
In the meantime, the Kurdish movement also tried to
present these projects to both Turkish and global public
opinion, with the organization of the Mesopotamia Social
Forum in 2009, which brought together organizations and
movements from the Middle East and several other countries
in the city of Diyarbakır. The DTK also organized a
workshop with Turkish journalists, academics, politicians,
and rights defenders to discuss the project of democratic
42 Fikret Bila, Satranç tahtasındaki yeni hamleler:
Hangi PKK? (Ankara: Ümit Yayıncılık,
2004), p. 10.
43 Zeynep Gambetti, “Alternatif bir sol proje:
demokratik özerklik,” Sendika.org, 27
December 2010, online at: http://www.
sendika.org/2010/12/alternatif-bir-solproje-demokratik-ozerklik-zeynep-gambetti-birgun/.
autonomy in 2010. The organization of all segments of
society from the bottom-up, under the principle of democratic
confederalism and democratic autonomy, has been
covering very different fields of social life and requires
various activities. All these activities demonstrate that the
PKK’s project of radical democracy involves an active agency
of people, in the form of a struggling force from the local
to the regional and global levels. Even more importantly,
they show that this is a project that is based on bottom-up
democracy, and therefore cannot simply be considered a
political project imposed from above. Through communes
and people’s assemblies, it aims to surpass the deadlock of
representational democracy. In this sense, the democratic
autonomy project in the form of 26 autonomous regions
as formulated by the Kurdish movement presents a radical
alternative that goes beyond the boundaries of the existing
political regime. Above all, it is based on a radical conception
of democracy — one that aims at the dissociation of
democracy from nationalism by excluding state and nation
from it and considering democracy as an unrestricted and
unmediated form of people’s sovereignty rather than a form
of government. As such, this project for democratic autonomy
goes beyond the boundaries of the existing political
regime as well the framework elaborated on the basis
of the European Union’s acquis communautaire, which uses
liberal democracy as its benchmark, although there is an
ongoing discussion as to whether this proposal might suit
the EU regional policy, given that it could be a useful step
towards a solution of the Kurdish question by abolishing
the centralism in Turkey. 44
The Kurdish movement is ready to negotiate a solution
on the basis of recognition and self-administrative rights.
44 Erhan Üstündağ, “Possible Solution for
Kurdish Question suits EU Accession Process,”
Bianet, 1 July 2010, online at: http://
www.bianet.org/english/english/123087-
possible-solution-for-kurdish-questionsuits-eu-accession-process.
186–187