Tatort Kurdistan. Demokratische Autonomie in Nordkurdistan, Rätbewegung, Geschlechterbefreiung und Ökologie in der Praxis. Hamburg: Tatort Kurdistan/Informationsstelle Kurdistan, 2012, 183 pp., (ISBN: 978-3-941012-60-8).

Anja Flach, Ercan Ayboğa and Michael Knapp, Revolution in Rojava, Frauenbewegung und Kommunalismus zwischen Krieg und Embargo, Hamburg: VSA Verlag, 2015, 352 pp., (ISBN: 978-3-89965-665-7).

After a long period of struggle aimed at the establishment of an independent state, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) has changed course and set its sights on a project of radical democracy. In its 1978 manifesto, the PKK declared an independent state as the only correct political goal, like other national liberation movements at the time. However, following a critique and self-critique on the character of national liberation struggles, the PKK began to question whether independence should be conceptualised and practised as a state/nation-state construction. This resulted in a redefinition of its political strategy. Though adhering to the idea of self-determination, the PKK no longer ties itself to the idea of a state, but rather to developing people’s capacities to govern themselves. Referred to by and within the PKK as a paradigm shift, this is the subject of two new works, Demokratischer Autonomie in Nordkurdistan, written by a collective of authors under the name of Tatort Kurdistan, and Revolution in Rojava, written by Anja Flach, Ercan Ayboğa and Michael Knapp.

Several authors have discussed the PKK’s changing understanding of politics as it evolved in the 2000s, concentrating the debate on the emergence of a communal form of politics that evolved around the projects of democratic autonomy and democratic confederalism. This communal politics is regarded as standing in a tradition of a political counter-current that found expression in the Paris Commune of 1871, the initial councils (soviets) that emerged in the springtime of the revolution in Russia in 1917, and in the Spanish Revolution of 1936–39. Yet, few have written about the issue on the basis of observation and fieldwork in Kurdistan, wherein lies the value of these books.

Demokratischer Autonomie in Nordkurdistan is a report written by a delegation of 10 people who travelled through the region in September, 2011, visiting Diyarbakir, Batman, Viranşehir, Dersim, Hakkari, Yüksekova, and Van. The book sets out with a brief introduction on the changing character of the PKK’s national liberation struggle and its reflection on and critique of the nation-state, followed by a brief discussion of the ideas of democratic autonomy and democratic confederalism. This is followed by six chapters based on transcribed interviews and observations on the ground. The first chapter discusses the development of the councils, which are at the heart of a networked (confederal) system of self-government (autonomy). The interviews here extend beyond those involved with the city councils to incorporate also people working with and for the district and village councils and the women’s councils. This is followed by a brief chapter on the Kurdish youth-movement and chapters on gender-relations, ecology, and education.

The main value of this book is the wide range of issues discussed and the many voices heard. The book is, as the authors state, a snapshot of a struggle and a process, and therefore more about future-oriented ideas, rather than a statement of what actually is. This makes the book a rich sourcebook for those who want to study this struggle. The obvious weakness of a snapshot, of course, is the difficulty of a critical engagement with the initiatives reported. An example is the focus on the “Ax û Av” cooperative in Viranşehir, about which the book contains a long interview in the chapter on democratic alternatives. Here we learn that the cooperative has provided people with housing and livelihoods although in a way that is very different from the communal idea out of which it started. Further insights into, for example, the gap between ideology and practice, might have been most rewarding here. Indeed, what is missing in the book is some sort of a conclusion or an afterword, in which the authors could have brought together and reflected on their main findings.

Revolution in Rojava discusses the issue of communal democracy and the women’s movement in Rojava. The book is the product of extensive fieldwork in the region and offers a comprehensive discussion of developments in Rojava since the revolution started in Kobani, on 19 July, 2012, and cities in the region were freed from regime control. The book starts along a space-time axis, explaining the geography of Rojava and presenting a brief history, including overviews of the Assad dynasty and the neo-liberal turn after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is followed by a chapter on the multicultural composition of Rojava. The book systematically unfolds in chapters on the liberation of Rojava, the project of democratic autonomy in Syria and the Middle East, the role of women, the development of council democracy and communes and the role of civil society, the defence and legal system in Rojava, education, healthcare, ecology, and economy, and then a chapter on the revolution in Rojava in the context of a wider geo-political context.

One of the merits of this book is the in-depth discussion of the council system and how it is organised and working in practice, including a detailed consideration of the commune as basic unit of the council system. The authors historicise council or communal democracy, arguing that the councils were the main institutions in the revolutionary movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in particular in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the German uprisings of 1918, when workers’ and soldiers’ councils were established as a socialist revolutionary project. They further investigate the establishment and functioning of the council system in Rojava, from the communes, which are the councils at village and street level, through the district and city councils to the confederal structure at canton level and in Aleppo. The book’s in-depth discussion of this system is of importance, dismissing the often heard suggestion of this attempt to build another polity as mere ideology. Overall, one may say that Revolution in Rojava is the most comprehensive and systematic account of socio-political developments in the region since 2012, if not the only one, which makes it a must-read for all those interested in serious discussions of the Kurdish struggle and unfolding politics of the region.