I originally added a series of updated links as a comment to our earlier post on this topic, but there are now enough of them to easily justify a new post:
• Surprising coverage of this story on (commercial) British TV this week: www.channel4.com/news/pkk-kurdistan-workers-party-islamic-state-kurdish-spring!
• Also a current on-the-scene report: rojavareport.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/village-communes-emerging-in-colemerg.
• An earlier account, albeit written in a more typically jaded American journalese, can be found in an Atlantic article from 2007: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/10/among-the-kurds/306448/
• A more in-depth, richly detailed account, tracing many specific dimensions of Bookchin’s ideas in the Kurds’ democratic praxis, can be found at www.academia.edu/3983109/Democratic_Confederalism_as_a_Kurdish_Spring_the_PKK_and_the_quest_for_radical_democracy. Unfortunately a registration and login are required to access this one.
• Janet Biehl addresses the involvement of Kurdish communalists in resisting ISIS in Syria and beyond at www.biehlonbookchin.com/is-obamas-best-ally/. She is also the translator of the book-length account, based on a 2011 investigation by German activists, which we previously described here: social-ecology.org/2013/12/new-book-democratic-autonomy-n-kurdistan.
On Wednesday 9/10/14, the New York Times said:
Turkey also has another important interest. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., has long fought an insurgency against Turkey, but after militants threatened Iraq’s Kurdish region — which prompted the first American airstrikes — its fighters swooped in to the fight in defense of the Kurds. The P.K.K. has long been on the United States terrorist list, but now there are calls for the group to be removed, which would enhance the group’s legitimacy, and anger the Turks.
Clearly this story is beginning to get much wider attention. Stay tuned…
