Kobane, Syria, 7 February 2015. Picture by: Sebastian Backhaus/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved. During the Syrian revolution in 2011, the PYD (Democratic Union Party) party-- which has strong support among the Kurds-- took the third way. This meant supporting neither the Assad regime nor the opposition, for both have had the same mentality by denying the Kurdish right to self- determination.
The ideological project of the PYD is Democratic Confederalism --a project that was advanced by Abdullah Ocalan, a political theorist and ideological leader of the PKK-- which aims to empower people socially and politically at the grassroots level in popular communes, assemblies, and councils. In this project, feminism, ecology, and radical democracy are celebrated. This project proposes itself as an alternative to the nation-state.
Busy with suppressing the armed groups-- under the name of the Free Syrian Army-- the Assad regime withdrew its forces from the Kurdish cities in 2012. The Kurdish cities, in north Syria, were run by the Kurdish freedom movement.
