SEMINAR
East Kurdistan/Rojhelat: the struggle of the Kurds for democracy and freedom in Iran
Join us for a discussion of The Kurdish peoples’ struggle for rights, for gender equality and democratic confederalism which is critical for the future of Iran, the Middle East and the end to war and oppression.
Matt Nathan, Director of the Freedom for Öcalan Campaign, describes to Kurdish Journalist Aleddin Sinayic how key trade unions came to back the Freedom for Öcalan Campaign, after becoming aware of the siege of the Kurdish-majority Syrian city of Kobane imposed by Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State) and exacerbated by the Turkish state. Nathan, who is also Labour Party Councillor for Clerkenwell, discusses how UK-based trade unions came to see the libertarian socialist vision of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan as representing a “fulcrum around which many issues that as trade unionists we would instinctively find solidarity with”.
Isabel Käser traces the complex history of the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement, discusses how women’s autonomous organisational structures have emerged and how they operate today between the mountains and the cities of the four different parts of Kurdistan.
Her talk, at the LSE Middle East Centre, analyses the emancipatory power this movement holds but also unpacks some of the tensions that emerge from the interplay between militarism, the party’s body politics and the movement’s revolutionary quest for a more democratic Middle East. Recorded on 4 June.
Continue reading “(AUDIO) The Kurdish Women’s Movement: On Revolution, Militarism and Body Politics”
Cambridge University Professor and author Dr. Thomas Jeffery Miley speaks with Journalist Alaettin Sinayic about Turkish state violence, Kurdish resistance and the philosophy of “democratic confederalism” which has been adopted by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the PYD in Syria for the better part of twenty years.
(VIDEO) A New Song Celebrating the Rojava Revolution
31 October 2019|Peace in Kurdistan
Political satirist and musician Dave Lippman composed this song in solidarity with the revolution in Rojava (North East Syria).
