ECR Members’ Publications
Banning the pro-Kurdish HDP in Turkey is a move towards fascism
The government’s attempt to ban Turkey’s third-largest political party is the latest attack against voices of change in the country.
Meredith Tax, “The Revolution in Rojava,” April 22, 2015, Dissent
An overview of the revolution, including the fight against ISIS and rescue of the Yazidis, the PKK’s origins and their paradigm shift to democratic confederalism, with a call to the international left to pay attention.
Meredith Tax, “Turkey is Supporting the Syrian Jihadis Washington Says It Wants to Fight,” Sept. 16, 2016, The Nation
Turkey’s recent “battle” to evict ISIS from Jarabulus was a fake; article documents consistent Turkish enabling of ISIS and direct support to other jihadi militias including those associated with al Qaeda.
Meredith Tax, A Road Unforeseen. Bellevue Literary Press, 2016. Book
A Road Unforeseen recounts the dramatic, underreported history of the Rojava Kurds, whose all-women militia was instrumental in the perilous mountaintop rescue of tens of thousands of civilians besieged in Iraq. Up to that point, the Islamic State had seemed invincible. Yet these women helped vanquish them, bringing the first half of the refugees to safety within twenty-four hours. Who are the revolutionary women of Rojava and what lessons can we learn from their heroic story? How does their political philosophy differ from that of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Islamic State, and Turkey? And will the politics of the twenty-first century be shaped by the opposition between these political models?
Meredith Tax, “Showdown in Afrin: Turkey’s Attack on Syria’s Kurds Threatens That Country’s Most Democratic, Pluralist Force.” January 26, 2018, The Nation
Written during the first week of Turkey’s attack on Afrin, Tax’s article describes the pluralistic democracy found there, and frames Erdogan’s attack as motivated by racist hatred and driven by electoral politics.
Meredith Tax, “When Women Fight ISIS.” August 18, 2016, New York Times
While militaries often target women in wartime, as a way of symbolically defiling and disrupting a culture, Kurdish female guerrillas have become empowered through actively taking up self-defense and defense of other women from ISIS, particularly the Yazidis.
Meredith Tax, "Climate, Solidarity and Resistance," June 1, 2019, Publication of DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)
An argument for the support by the U.S. Left of movements around the world, such as Rojava, that have a holistic approach to social change, implementing in practice the principles of gender equality, ecology and bottom-up democracy.
Debbie Bookchin, “How my father’s ideas helped the Kurds create a new democracy.” June 15, 2018, New York Review of Books
This article moves back and forth between the historic experience of the Kurds, Ocalan’s discovery of Murray Bookchin’s work, and the politics of Rojava; and the author’s memories of her father and the democratic ideas that are central to his work.
Debbie Bookchin, Forward to Make Rojava Green Again by the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, Nov. 2018
Debbie Bookchin, “Report from Rojava: What the West Owes Its Best Ally Against ISIS,” April 5, 2019, New York Review of Books
Writing from Rojava, Bookchin details the end of the war with ISIS and the achievements of the revolution but points to the dangers it still faces from ISIS sleeper cells, Turkish threats, the thousands of ISIS prisoners nobody in the West is dealing with. The West has an obligation to make sure peace negotiations lead to a federal outcome.
Debbie Bookchin, “The Feminist, Democratic Leftists Our Military is Obliterating,” Feb. 1, 2016, The Nation.
Erdogan’s assault on Kurdish cities in Northeastern Turkey is an attempt to wipe out the most feminist, democratic movement in the Middle East. Turkey’s NATO allies are enabling this assault because of the airbase at Incirlike and fear of refugees.
Anna-Sara Malmgren & Robert Hockett: “Turkey is murdering its own Kurdish civilians. Will America speak out?’ February 18 2016, Haaretz
Malmgren and Hockett put together the details of Erdogan’s targeting of Kurdish cities and prove his massacres go beyond his claims of merely responding to the PKK.
Robert Hockett & Anna-Sara Malmgren, “Feminism across borders: don’t let Afrin become the next Srebrenica.” March 14, 2018, Jerusalem Post
Hockett and Malmgren discuss Erdogan’s violence against Afrin as explicitly residing along gender fault lines. Afrin’s bottom-up and female-led, secular democracy is the opposite of all Erdogan represents.
Anya Briy, “Interview: People’s Democratic Congress (HDK) in Turkey: A New Model for Organizing?” February 2019, Jadaliyya
The People’s Democratic Congress (HDK) is a country-wide coalition platform of left-wing forces in Turkey that contains around thirty organizations, including political parties and trade unions, out of which came out the pro-Kurdish party HDP, the second opposition party in Turkey.
Anya Briy and Mahir Kurtay interviewing Ayşe Gökkan and Gülcihan Şimşek, “Interview with the Free Women’s Movement (TJA) in North Kurdistan,” October 23, 2018, openDemocracy
An interview with TJA-KJA representatives in Diyarbakir. The Free Women’s Congress (KJA) was established in 2015 as an umbrella for various women’s initiatives, as well as political parties, NGO’s, culture and faith groups, and local governments.
Anya Briy, interviewing B.E., “The theory and practice of the Kurdish Women’s Movement,” January 3, 2019, openDemocracy
An interview with an editor of the Jineoloji Journal in Diyarbakir about theoretical and practical activities of the Kurdish women’s movement in Turkey. The journal is one of the few remaining initiatives by the Kurdish movement that have not been shut down in the wake of the 2015-2016 military offensive by the Turkish state on predominantly Kurdish cities or otherwise repressed since the 2016 failed coup attempt.
Ozlem Goner, Turkish National Identity and its Outsiders. Routledge, 2017. Book
This book examines the ways in which states and nations are constructed and legitimated through defining and managing outsiders. Focusing on Turkey and the municipality of Dersim – a region that has historically combined different outsider identities, including Armenian, Kurdish, and Alevi identities – the author explores the remembering, transformation and mobilization of everyday relations of power and how relationships with the state shape both outsider identities and the conception of the nation itself.
Matthew Whitley, Against the Odds, a Stable Economy in Syria
Through structures like Women’s Committees and economic councils, avenues of micro-credit and vocational training have been created, allowing for the creation of many new enterprises ranging from agriculture and animal husbandry, to recycling, to wholesalers’ organizations. Academies have been formed to fill gaps in educational access, training young people in everything from agronomics to economic theory — newly available in suppressed languages and at minimal cost.
Matthew Whitley, COVID and the Solidarity Ethos in North and East Syria
Faced with the pandemic, the AANES emphasized socialist (democratic, solidarity-based) policies that get down to the roots of the crisis. The administration waived sanitation, water and electricity bills across their territory for all residents for two months. Local, directly democratic councils are provided resources to deliver food and fuel to their neighbors in need. The democratic approach, which empowers society to act “from below,” endeavors to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.
Meredith Tax, Towards an Internationalist Foreign Police
Rojava's self-administration is an explicitly non-state system, based on direct democracy and local assemblies, with parallel structures for anything affecting women, and numerous other checks and balances. Decades in which elected political elites mainly served the rich have eroded their claims to represent all of us; as a result, the nation state has ceased to feel natural and inevitable, and increasing numbers of people are looking at alternative forms of social organization. One of the places they are looking is Rojava.
Şehîd Lêgerîn Çiya: “A Beacon of Hope for the World”
After listening to a talk in the auditorium at the University of Nariño, Alina approached us and said: “From the way the speaker talks, one can tell he has a people behind him.” She was referring to how one can tell how much someone has felt, thought, or stood beside a people by his or her words. Alina then continued, saying, “There are some people who speak only from their head, but there are others who bring a people in their words.” At that time, I did not know that Alina Sánchez had been working as a physician for the Rojava Revolution since 2011. It was only after her death, on March 17, 2018, that the group of acquaintances she made in Colombia ––including myself–– learned more about her work with the communal health system in Rojava.
Anya Briy and Ariella Patchen: “CELEBRATING ZAPATISTA AND KURDISH WOMEN’S STRUGGLES ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY,” MARCH 8, 2022, the Nation
Women in both the Zapatista and Kurdish movements have successfully pushed against the internal patriarchal tendencies—engaging in a double struggle for their rights as women, and for the right of their communities to be autonomous. Far from being the only examples of women’s organizing within broader social struggles, they have arguably been the most successful in resisting opposition to women’s liberation within movement spaces. So how did they do it, and what can we learn from them to fight patriarchy in our own communities? And how—in the spirit of International Women’s Day—can we stand in solidarity with both movements as they face increasing attacks that threaten to undermine their achievements?
Meghan Bodette: “How US Security assistance Funds Turkey’s Anti-kurdish aggression,”May 5. 2022, progressive international
As Turkey is engaged in a vicious military invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan and intensifying political repression at home, previously unreported documents reveal the extent of U.S. assistance to Turkish officials who designed and implemented the country’s anti-Kurdish policies.