Öcalan’s Revolutionary Gamble for Peace
Dr. Thomas Jeffrey Miley, University of Cambridge
November 2, 2025
Abdullah Öcalan has been in prison for over 26 years. Kept in inhumane conditions of near solitary confinement. Isolated from his lawyers, from his family, from his followers, from his people. Even before his imprisonment he was calling for peace. From 1993, at least. The fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a process of deep soul searching on Öcalan’s behalf, he began to reconsider what revolution, what national liberation, what self-determination can and must mean in the 21st Century.
While in prison, in an act of most impressive resistance and existential defiance, Öcalan would pen a five-volume Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, in which he would sketch a synthetic history of hierarchy and of the dialectic of domination and resistance, and in which he would advance a re-articulation of the principle of self-determination in accordance with the paradigm of the democratic nation and the program of democratic confederalism. That program is based on four pillars – radical, direct democracy (against the state); gender emancipation; multicultural accommodation; and ecological sustainability.
This is a program which has been advanced most valiantly and most notably by the Kurdish Freedom Movement in the North East of Syria, in Rojava. Just yesterday we celebrated Kobane day, in honor of that city’s heroic resistance in the 2014-2015 siege and onslaught by the brutal thugs of ISIS. Even in conditions of total war and up against, first ISIS, then increasingly the Turkish state and its proxies, the revolution in Rojava has managed to reignite the revolutionary imagination both in the so-called Middle East and around the globe.
Meanwhile, in Bakur, or Northern, Turkish, Kurdistan, the evolution of the struggle for Kurdish emancipation and self-determination has been characterised by much suffering and repression since the breakdown of the last peace process in 2013-2015. The declarations of autonomy in 2015 triggered a bloody and violent, sometimes indiscriminate, reprisal by the Turkish state. An all-out war against the Kurds was declared, one which led to the incarceration of so many Kurdish politicians and representatives of Kurdish civil society, and which spilled over to attacks on the Kurdish Freedom Movement in Bashur, in the north of Iraq, and in Rojava as well.
The ethnic cleansing of Afrin in particular, of this western-most canton of Rojava, at the hands of the Turkish state in collaboration with its proxies, constituted an example and a threat of atrocities that could yet come. While in the mountains, both in Turkey and beyond its borders, sophisticated drone weaponry has transformed the balance of forces between the state and the guerrilla, to the detriment of the latter. Even as the so-called war on terror has effectively fanned the flames of fascism, strengthening the hand of the Turkish far right.
Against this backdrop, and against the backdrop of never ending war and tyranny plaguing the broader Middle East, Öcalan’s message of peace, his gamble for peace, is a potential game changer. It could just defuse the dialectic of tyranny and chaos in which the region and world is immersed.
The call to dissolve the PKK, for the PKK to lay down its arms, and for it to retreat to beyond the border, in Iraq, has demonstrated the resolve of Öcalan and of those many millions inspired by him, to broker a lasting peace. And to foster the conditions of possibility for the future flourishing of the paradigm of the democratic nation and program of democratic confederalism. The proposal of a democratic society is a minimalist agenda intended to create the conditions in which more maximalist agendas can be pursued, in peace.
Öcalan is to be commended for his visionary and democratic leadership, and for his world-historical role of rearticulating what self-determination can and must mean in the 21st century. He is, furthermore, what Nelson Mandela’s lawyer, Judge Essa Mousa, once called a crucial role player in any peace process. But for that role to be consolidated, Öcalan needs to be set free. 26 years is way too long, the time has come to demand freedom for Öcalan.
The strategy of guerrilla warfare was the product of an era of struggles for national liberation. From China to Kenya to Cuba to Algeria to Vietnam to Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, the strategy of prolonged people’s war protagonised by an insurgent guerrilla army was in so many places embraced. The PKK was an organisation born in that era, but it lived on beyond it, never defeated nor co-opted. Its exit from the stage of history, with its head held high, ready to be redeployed, now as civilians in pursuit of a project of grassroots, bottom-up, direct democracy, this demonstrates a most inspiring and courageous level of commitment to the paradigm of Öcalan on the part of the cadres.
In the 21st century, with the so-called Middle East on the brink of total calamity, while the world sits by silently as the genocide of the Palestinians unfolds, bold initiatives for a peaceful and democratic alternative for the region and the world are desperately needed. Öcalan’s proposal for a democratic society lays the foundations for an alternative to never ending war. For Öcalan has figured out that the secret fuel fanning the flames of fascism is war. In such a context, the pursuit of peace becomes the most revolutionary course.