Democratic integration, or annihilation? | Cihad Hammy and Thomas Jeffrey Miley

Originally published: https://www.theamargi.com/posts/democratic-integration-or-annihilation

This article and responses are based on a workshop co-organized by Jan Yasin Sunca and Joost Jongerden at the Université Libre de Bruxelles on 8-9 June, titled, A Process Without a Name: Fighting Wars, Negotiating Peace in Kurdistan. Hammy and Miley are co-authors of Rojava in Focus: Critical Dialogues (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2025). 

10 July 2026 | The Amargi

The Kurdish Freedom Movement suddenly seems so far off from achieving the horizons of a democratic confederal denouement. In Rojava [Kurdistan in Syria], the regression was swift and nearly much more brutal than it ended up being. But swift and still quite brutal it was.

On January 6, there was an agreement reached in Paris between Israel, the US, Turkey, and Damascus, to shrink or destroy the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES). Jolani’s forces quickly moved on the Kurdish neighborhood in Aleppo and then the rest of the northeast. Regional and imperial powers coordinated to eliminate the Rojava Revolution.

Meanwhile in Bakur [Kurdistan in Turkey], the dissolution of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) would seem the order of the day. The Kurdish people’s recourse to legitimate self-defense has been called into question by the so-called peace process. A balance of forces between the guerrilla in the mountains and the Turkish state with its drones seems to have shifted decisively in favor of the latter in recent times.

The Kurds find themselves, once again, caught in the crosshairs of imperial and sub-imperial antagonists, victims of geopolitical machinations above and beyond their ability to determine their own destiny. It is onto such slippery terrain that Abdullah Ocalan cautiously steps, ready at 76 to cement his legacy in the annals of Kurdish and universal history.

The nation state has by now gained a strong monopoly over new technologies, and has managed to use this monopoly successfully in war. Therefore, we have witnessed a decline in tactics and strategy of classic guerrilla warfare, with guerrillas forced to take refuge in elaborate mountain caves.

Then there is the wrath of Iran, lashing out at perceived and confirmed complicity between Kurdish actors in both Bashur [Kurdistan Region of Iraq] and Rojhelat [Kurdistan in Iran] and the forces of western imperialism, in particular the United States. The Kurds find themselves, once again, caught in the crosshairs of imperial and sub-imperial antagonists, victims of geopolitical machinations above and beyond their ability to determine their own destiny.

It is onto such slippery terrain that Abdullah Ocalan cautiously steps, ready at 76 to cement his legacy in the annals of Kurdish and universal history. After having spent over a quarter of a century imprisoned, chained to the rock of Imrali, in inhumane conditions of severe isolation, during which he penned his five-volume Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, out of the tiniest of openings, he appears eager to emerge. This is his last hurrah, the last chapter of a storied life. A storied but tormented life.

What does Ocalan want? What might he be thinking? In what follows, we will sketch a logic by which a peace process may be seen as the alternative to annihilation, and therefore as a condition of possibility for the bottom-up construction of democratic confederalism. This is a great gamble. It is a gamble that posits that the continuing existence of the guerrilla would threaten to provoke an ever-expanding spiral of fascism and violence. This, in a context where the conditions of survival of the guerrilla are ever more difficult, given technological innovations which have rendered lethal missions against them both cheap and increasingly accurate.

Ocalan has spoken of the specter of Gazafication of the greater Middle East. That means genocidal annihilation of the region’s minoritized ethnic and religious groups. His first aim has been to avoid such a genocidal assault on the Kurds. This bleak prospect he has tried to fend off by stretching his hand out to the Turkish right, to assure loyalty and solidarity in case of any attack by the Israelis upon the still-Kemalist Republic. Rumors have it that he was also quite influential in brokering a deal with the authorities in Damascus, a deal that effectively halted the onslaught of the Islamist forces in control in Syria and left the revolutionary forces in Rojava with at least a modicum of local power.

The avoidance of annihilation is a prerequisite for the construction of democratic confederalism.   The tactic pursued by Ocalan in that direction is that of democratic integration. It is a step which provides the space in which a more maximalist, bottom-up, radical democratic project can be developed and achieved.

By democratic integration, we mean a concept recently developed by Ocalan in response to geopolitical developments and one which is rooted in peace. He is using the concept to negotiate with the Turkish state. The Turkish state has a phobia of separation, and the emphasis on integration within existing nation-state borders is intended to appeal to Turkish sensibilities.

For Ocalan, the municipality is organically linked to the assembly. That is the political project of Ocalan’s democratic tendencies. In this sense, democratic integration is an expansion in a radical way of the liberal perception of integration as assimilation. It is at the same time an anticapitalist, feminist, and ecological project.

But at the same time, Ocalan does not use the concept of integration in a liberal sense, as an equivalent for assimilation. To analyze integration, as intended by Ocalan, we need to look at the adjective democratic.

The concept democratic is at the core of Ocalan’s thought. He speaks of democratic modernity, of democratic civilization, of democratic Islam, of democratic confederalism, of democratic autonomy, always signifying for him popular people power from below. This is to be achieved through the institutions of the assembly and the commune. It is a system in which people make decisions in assemblies, and these decisions are being coordinated in councils, and at the level of the municipality.

For Ocalan, like Bookchin, the municipality is organically linked to the assembly. That is the political project of Ocalan’s democratic tendencies. In this sense, democratic integration is an expansion in a radical way of the liberal perception of integration as assimilation. It is at the same time an anticapitalist, feminist, and ecological project.

We must also understand the dynamics of negotiation between democratic confederalism (or more recently he has been talking about democratic municipalities) and the state. Ocalan is trying to change the mentality of the Turkish state, the mentality that is rooted in one nation, one identity, one flag.

Ocalan proposes, as an alternative to the Turkish nation-state, the concept of a democratic republic. Again we see the word democratic appear. Ocalan is in this proposal seeking to construct a republic based on cultural diversity and the empowerment of people at the grassroots level. Which means in turn that any identity can express itself freely and govern its social and political affairs. In this sense, democratic integration entails the recognition of political and cultural rights for the Kurds. Unfortunately, the project has been smeared, especially after the attack on Rojava and the resurgence of what Ocalan would call ‘primitive’ nationalism among the Kurds.

Now it is the responsibility of the Kurdish movement to avoid the mistakes and the shortcomings of their practice in Rojava, and to raise consciousness and empower people truly on the grassroots level. And to translate Ocalan’s abstract concepts into concrete forms of political organization.

The core of the contradiction in Ocalan’s thought comes down to this: if the state cannot be trusted, then how to negotiate a democratic peace? Yet this is still a creative concept used as a tool for negotiations, and as a solution, an alternative type of social order.

It is precisely because of this contradiction between the state and democratic society that a new form of peaceful and legal politics can emerge. Now is the time for politics. Because politics means for people to run their own affairs.  The main object of this peace process is to open up the space for politics.

And now it is the responsibility of the Kurdish movement to avoid the mistakes and the shortcomings of their practice in Rojava, and to raise consciousness and empower people truly on the grassroots level. And to translate Ocalan’s abstract concepts into concrete forms of political organization.

It is the responsibility of academics and intellectuals to support, and at the same time, expand and critically analyze these ideas. After all, Ocalan’s entire project is anticapitalist, and to fight capitalism as a global system, we need grassroots internationalism.

Letter of response from Dr. Jan Yasin Sunca, an FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles specializing in decolonial politics, the Kurdish question, and peace and conflict studies:

I read the argument developed by Cihad and Jeff with great sympathy. I can comfortably say that I agree with the main message they convey, but I am somewhat reluctant to reduce “democratic integration” to a “tactic.” As presented in their argument, the tactic of democratic integration concerns the survival of the guerrilla, the organization across borders, and the avoidance of annihilation, all while negotiating peace to secure political and cultural rights for the Kurds and opening up space for grassroots politics. One can deduce even more aspects of this tactic. I think this is too much of a burden to place on the shoulders of a “tactic.”

I agree that it is immediately related to recent (geo)political developments in order to avoid annihilation. However, it would be too much to say that avoiding annihilation is a tactic. Rather, to me, it seems a goal in and of itself, one that seeks to ensure the very existence of the people while remaining within the overall ideological coherence of the Apoist movement. I think there is a logical and temporal continuity between democratic republic, democratic confederalism, democratic autonomy, and democratic integration. One is not derivative of the others, but each holds its own place in Ocalan’s overall thinking. What makes one appear different from the others is the temporality in which it emerges.

I wonder how Cihad and Jeff would conceive the temporal continuity and conceptual affinity that connects previous phases of the democratic expression of the grassroots in Ocalan’s thinking to “democratic integration”?

Letter of response from Dr. Joost Jongerden, an associate professor at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, whose research focuses on forced migration, rural development, and political and violent conflict in the Kurdistan region:

It was some time ago, at a workshop on the significance of Rojava, that someone remarked that the survival of Rojava mattered more than the survival of its democratic model. Cihad Hammy and Thomas Jeffrey Miley turn this proposition on its head. They argue that preventing the Gazafication of Rojava is a prerequisite for preserving the democratic, non-state approach through which Kurds, and others, can realize self-determination.

The authors link Ocalan’s project of democratic integration to the violent contraction of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria into its Rojava core and to drone-driven changes on the battlefield. While Ocalan’s intervention may have averted a war of annihilation against the Kurds in Syria – the regime was already beating the Anfal drums –democratic integration has much deeper historical and strategic roots.

For more than thirty years, Ocalan and the PKK have consistently called for a political solution, repeatedly taking initiatives to create space for democratic politics: from multiple ceasefires since 1993 and the dispatch of peace groups to efforts to end the armed struggle in 2015 and 2025. Even before launching its insurgency in 1984, the PKK tried ballots before bullets by contesting the 1979 municipal elections.

Democratic integration is therefore not simply a defensive response but the latest expression of a longstanding strategy to create legal and political space for democratic contestation. It combines the vision of a democratic republic, advanced by Ocalan in the early 2000s, with experiments in self-government beyond the state through concepts such as democratic confederalism, democratic autonomy, and the democratic nation.

Democratic integration cannot be reduced to surrendering territory, ending armed struggle, or averting annihilation. It seeks to reclaim the political from a state built on centralized power, securitized politics, and concentrated violence. Whether this project can succeed remains uncertain.

Final word by Cihad Hammy and Thomas Jeffrey Miley

There doesn’t seem to be too much in the way of disagreement among us. It comes down to the semantics, and perhaps analytics, of tactics and strategy. In the Marxist tradition, among others, a tactic refers to a means to arrive at an end, while a strategy refers to that end. According to prefigurative politics, to which we prescribe, tactics should strive to prefigure strategy, that is, we should try to live in accordance with our ideals even in this corrupt, systemically evil world.

Ocalan has engaged in profound self-criticism over the state-like qualities and behavior of the PKK in the past. He has sought to adapt the tactics and the strategy of the Kurdish Freedom Movement to be in line with the new paradigm of democratic confederalism. So too has he embraced the ethos of prefigurative politics. His articulation of democratic integration does not only pursue the negative goal of avoiding annihilation, Jongerden and Sunca are correct. It simultaneously prefigures the democratic commitments built into the new paradigm.

Whenever Ocalan engages with the peace process with the Turkish state, he empowers himself and develops new conceptual tools. Democratic integration, a new concept, expresses the legal and negotiating relationship between democratic society and the state. Ocalan has stressed that the more people can express themselves and organize in a radically democratic communal manner, the more the state will shrink. In this sense, democratic integration is a key and the pathway to lay the ground for democratic society to emerge within the boundaries of the state.

The question remains: will this relationship be without tensions? Perhaps not. These tensions will be a political battleground, and success depends on the degree to which people are organized communally.