Non-territorial autonomy and gender equality: The case of the autonomous administration of north and east Syria - Rojava
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2003319BKljučne reči:
women, representation, plurinational democracy, non- territorial autonomy, Kurdish question, Syria, Rojava, PKK, minoritiesApstrakt
The Kurdish-led autonomous entity called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) – also known as Rojava – considers women’s liberation an imperative condition for shaping a democratic society. The practice of autonomy in NES shares strong resemblances with Non- Territorial Autonomy (NTA) models; however, it introduces a novelty in the role of women as active agents in building a plurinational democracy. This paper examines (1) the intellectual and political origins of the political role ascribed to women in autonomous administrations and (2) how the practice of autonomy in Rojava has advanced women’s rights by shedding light on both institutional implementation of women’s rights, as well as the creation of (non)-territorial spaces of women’s emancipation within the autonomous model. The argument made is that the conceptual framework of the Rojava model goes beyond the Kurdish question and can be considered an attempt to resolve a democratic deficit of liberal democratic nation-states through bringing together solutions that address the intertwined subordination of minorities and women.
Reference
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—. (2017b), The Political Thought of Abdullah Öcalan: Kurdistan, Woman’s Revolution and Democratic Confederalism. London: Pluto Press.
—. (2013), Liberating Life Woman’s Revolution. Köln: Mesopotamian Publ.
—. (2016), Demokratik kurtulus ve özgür yasami insa: (Imrali notlari). Neuss: Wesanen Mezopotamya.
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Rasit, Huseyin and Alexander Kolokotronis (2020), “Decentralist Vanguards: Women’s Autonomous Power and Left Convergence in Rojava”, Globalizations 17(5): 869–883.
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—. (2006), “Activists in Office: Pro-Kurdish Contentious Politics in Turkey”, Ethnopolitics 5(2): 125–144.
Yegen, Mesut (2009), “ʽProspective-Turksʼ or ʽPseudo-Citizensʼ: Kurds in Turkey”, Middle East Journal 63(4): 597–61
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Bookchin, Murray (2015), The next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy. London - New York: Verso.
—. (1991), “Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview”. The Anarchist Library. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-libertarian-municipalism-an-overview
Bozarslan, Hamit (2012), “Between Integration, Autonomization and Radicalization.Hamit Bozarslan on the Kurdish Movement and the Turkish Left. Interview byMarlies Casier and Olivier Grojean”, European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey 14. http://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4663
Burc, Rosa (2019), “Demokratische Autonomie: Staatenlos Regieren als Gesellschaftliche Alternative zum Nationalstaat in Nordsyrien und der Türkei”, in Küpeli, Ismail (ed.), Kampf um Rojava, Kampf um die Türkei, Münster: Edition Assemblage, pp. 20–29.
—. “One State, One Nation, One Flag—One Gender? HDP as a Challenger of the Turkish Nation State and Its Gendered Perspectives”, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 21(3): 319–334.
Burc, Rosa, and Mahir Tokatlı (2020), “A Second Foundation? Constitution, Nation-Building and the Deepening of Authoritarianism in Turkey”, in Rayner, Jeremy et al. (eds.), Back to the 30s? Recurring Crises of Capitalism, Liberalism and Democracy, London: Palgrave Macmillan
Chalcraft, John (2016), Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chalcraft, John and George Souvlis (2017), “The Middle East and Marxist History: An Interview with John Chalcraft”. Salvage (blog). 26 January 2017. https://salvage.zone/online-exclusive/the-middle-east-and-marxist-history-an-interview-with-john-chalcraft/
Connell, Raewyn and James W. Messerschmidt (2005), “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender & Society 19(6): 829–859.
Della Porta, Donatella (2016), Where Did the Revolution Go? Contentious Politics and the Quality of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deutsch, Karl W (1970), Nationalism and National Development: An Interdisciplinary Bibliography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Deutsche Welle (2015), “Demirtaş: “Tahir”i öldüren devlet değil, devletsizlik” | DW | 29.11.2015”. DW.COM. 2015. https://www.dw.com/tr/demirta%C5%9F-tahiri-%C3%B6ld%C3%BCren-devlet-de%C4%9Fil-devletsizlik/a-18882662
Dirik, Dilar (2018), “The Revolution of Smiling Women”, in Rutazibwa, Olivia U. and Robbie Shilliam (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 222–238.
Dunn, John (ed.) (1995), Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State? Oxford – Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Enloe, Cynthia H. (19892), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Forensic Architecture (2018), “Investigation of the Audio-Visual Material Included in the Case File of the Killing of Tahir Elçi on 28 November 2015”.Goldsmiths University. https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/FA-TE-Report_12_English_public.pdf
Fukuyama, Francis (1992), The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.
Gregory, Derek (2000), “Edward Said’s Imaginative Geographies”, in Crang, Mike and Nigel Thrift (eds.), Thinking Space, London – New York, pp. 302–348.
Gunes, Cengiz (2017), “Turkey”s New Left, NLR 107, September–October 2017”, New Left Review 107. https://newleftreview.org/issues/II107/articles/cengiz-gunes-turkey-s-new-left
—. (2012), The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance.London: Routledge
Gunter, Michael M. (ed.) (2019), Routledge Handbook on the Kurds. Routledge:London and New York.
Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas (2011), Föderalismus als Konfliktregelung: Indien, Russland, Spanien und Nigeria im Vergleich. Opladen: Budrich. Huntington, Samuel P. (1993), “The Clash of Civilizations?”, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1993-06-01/clash-civilizations
Jongerden, Joost and Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya (2011), “Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK”, in Casier, Marlies and Joost Jongerden (eds.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue, Routledge:London and New York, pp. 123–142.
Knapp, Michael and Anja Flach (2016), Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Lieberation in Syrian Kurdistan, transl. by Janet Biehl. London:Pluto Press
Kongreya Star (2018), “Kongreya Star and Its Committees”. https://rojavainforma-tioncenter.com/storage/2019/12/Kongreya-Star-2018-Brochure.pdf
Kymlicka, Will (1996), Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kymlicka, Will and Eva Pföstl (eds.) (2014), Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lehmbruch, Gerhard (1999), “Konkordanzdemokratie”, in Lexikon Der Politik, Band 3: Die Westlichen Länder. München: C.H. Beck, pp. 206–211.
Lijphart, Arend (20122), Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Mbembe, Achille (2003), “Necropolitics”, Public Culture 15(1): 11–40.
McAdam, Doug, Sidney G. Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (2001), Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press.
McGee, Thomas (2019), “Turkey”s Occupation and Expansion in Syria”, OpenDemocracy, 11 November 2019. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/turkeys-occupation-and-expansion-in-syria/
Meyer, David S. (2004), “Protest and Political Opportunities”, Annual Review of Sociology 30(1): 125–145.
Mies, Maria, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Claudia von Werlhof (1988), Women: The Last Colony. London – Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books.
Nimni, Ephraim (2013), “The Conceptual Challenge of Non-Territorial Autonomy”, in Nimni, Ephraim, Alexander Osipov and David Smith (eds.), The Challenge of Non-Territorial Autonomy: Theory and Practice, Oxford, Bern and Berlin: Peter Lang, pp. 1–24.338
—. (1999), “Nationalist Multiculturalism in Late Imperial Austria as a Critique of Contemporary Liberalism: The Case of Bauer and Renner”, Journal of Political Ideologies 4(3): 289–314.
Öcalan, Abdullah (2017a), Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization: Capitalism, Vol. 2. New Compass.
—. (2017b), The Political Thought of Abdullah Öcalan: Kurdistan, Woman’s Revolution and Democratic Confederalism. London: Pluto Press.
—. (2013), Liberating Life Woman’s Revolution. Köln: Mesopotamian Publ.
—. (2016), Demokratik kurtulus ve özgür yasami insa: (Imrali notlari). Neuss: Wesanen Mezopotamya.
— . (2015), Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization: The Age of Masked Gods and Disguised Kings, Vol. 1. New Compass.
Pateman, Carole (1988), The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Rasit, Huseyin and Alexander Kolokotronis (2020), “Decentralist Vanguards: Women’s Autonomous Power and Left Convergence in Rojava”, Globalizations 17(5): 869–883.
Rojava Assembly, Declaration (2016), “Final Declaration of the Rojava-Northern Syria Democratic Federal System”, YPG International (blog). 17 March 2016. https://ypginternational.blackblogs.org/2016/07/01/final-declaration-of-the-rojava-northern-syria-democratic-federal-system-constituent-assembly/
Rojava Information Center (2019), “Report: The Political System of North and East Syria”. https://rojavainformationcenter.com/2019/12/report-beyond-the-frontlines/
Said, Edward W. (1978), Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.
Schmidinger, Thomas (2018), Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Pluto Press.
Şimşek, Bahar and Joost Jongerden (2018), “Gender Revolution in Rojava: The Voices beyond Tabloid Geopolitics”, Geopolitics 23: 1–23.
Suksi, Markku (2015), “Non-Territorial Autonomy”, in Malloy, Tove H. and Francesco Palermo (eds.), Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-Territorial Autonomy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 83–116.
Tarrow, Sidney G. (2011), Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press.
Taştekin, Fehim (2016), Rojava: Kürtlerin Zamanı. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları.
Taylor, Charles, and Amy Gutmann (eds.) (1994), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Tejel, Jordi. 2011. Syria’s Kurds: History, Politics and Society. London and New York:
Routledge.
Tilly, Charles and Lesley J. Wood (2009), Social Movements, 1768-2008. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Villiers, Bertus de (2012), “Protecting Minorities on a Non-Territorial Basis: Recent International Developments”, Beijing Law Review 03(04): 170–183.
Watts, Nicole F. (2009), “Re-Considering State-Society Dynamics in Turkey”s Kurdish Southeast”, European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey 10 (December).
—. (2006), “Activists in Office: Pro-Kurdish Contentious Politics in Turkey”, Ethnopolitics 5(2): 125–144.
Yegen, Mesut (2009), “ʽProspective-Turksʼ or ʽPseudo-Citizensʼ: Kurds in Turkey”, Middle East Journal 63(4): 597–61
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Objavljeno
2020-09-30
Kako citirati
Burç, R. (2020) „Non-territorial autonomy and gender equality: The case of the autonomous administration of north and east Syria - Rojava“, Filozofija i društvo/Philosophy and Society. Belgrade, Serbia, 31(3), стр. 319–339. doi: 10.2298/FID2003319B.
Broj časopisa
Sekcija
NON-TERRITORIAL AUTONOMY AS AN ENRICHMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
Licenca
Articles published in Philosophy and Society are open-access in accordance with the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.
