Why Öcalan?
Dr. Thomas Jeffrey Miley
University of Cambridge
November 2025
“Why Öcalan?,” Dimitri put the question to me. He didn’t want to hear about I Dreamt I Was a Rasta. His question, a provocation. An attempt to get me to write another book.
The spread of Öcalan’s ideas in the informal settlements of Nairobi, to incite this development and to simultaneously document it, was what excited me. But I have since come to discover that what my friends in Nairobi want the most from me is a succinct introduction to the contours of Öcalan’s paradigm and program. Democratic confederalism is on their minds, but they want to learn more, much more, about it.
Africa – indeed, all things Black – constitutes a big blind spot, a shrill silence, in Öcalan’s thought. This is no small matter, since, as Cedric Robinson once insightfully remarked, the obliteration of African history was a thousand-year process and at the root of the ideology of white supremacy.
I want to put Öcalan’s ideas into conversation with the Black radical tradition, on the one hand, and with Rosa Luxemburg and Otto Bauer, on the other.
Öcalan’s ideas were meant to start a conversation, let this book be read in such a spirit, as a broadening of the conversation, and an attempt to both internationalise and decolonise Öcalan’s paradigm and program.
I wrote nearly a decade ago an article titled “Towards a New Internationalism.” In it I proposed an endorsement and reading of Rosa Luxemburg alongside Frantz Fanon. I want here to now include Öcalan as providing a third crucial contribution, with the tapestry of democratic confederalism, but one which needs to be “stretched” to fit the African context. Not only Fanon, but some Césaire, some Cabral, some Rodney, some Sankara can all help complete a decolonised new internationalism. And one that is oriented against the framework of the nation-state, for the proliferation of local assemblies, coops, and communes, for multicultural accommodation, for gender emancipation, and for ecological “sustainability” (though even the language of “sustainability” perhaps perpetuates an economistic hegemony and worldview).
I came to the question of self-determination as a critic. A meticulously self-fashioned left-wing critic, but a critic nonetheless. I was with Hobsbawm, in his debate against Nairn. And with Rosa Luxemburg, in her debate with Lenin. In my graduate work, under the supervision of Juan Linz, I had positioned myself against the more ambitious of the revindications of the Catalan nationalist movement. The critique of essentialism run amuck, leading to a sophistic-ated song and dance, one that sounded all too harmonious to the ears of the Spanish right. Big nation, big language, chauvinism proves, after all, a most difficult thing to transcend.
But Öcalan’s words spoke to me. As did the brutal plight of the Kurdish people. I came to reconsider the status of the principle of self-determination, after seeing what the term meant to Öcalan and, by extension, the Kurdish Freedom Movement. He, they, had effectively re-articulated the concept, in accordance with what it can and must mean in the 21st century. A radical non-state, even anti-state, alternative to the still unfolding calamity, the terminal crisis of capitalist modernity. The anarchist inclinations I had long harboured, and even idealised in the example of the Spanish revolution, led me to consider the discourse of Öcalan in quite favourable terms. Indeed, it was through Öcalan that I came to be familiar with the most intriguing work of the American sometimes-anarchist Murray Bookchin. I remember being in Rojava, on an academic delegation with, among others, David Graeber, alongside Bookchin’s former partner Janet Biehl and devoted disciple Eric Eiglad. The latter was convinced that the blueprints for Rojava could be found in the work of Bookchin, and he was not altogether wrong.
The trip I took to Rojava was short, but transformative. I was introduced to the movement, whose collective effervescence in relation to the revolutionary project underway was still apparent. This was the end of 2014, the siege of Kobane was still on, and the movement was getting ready to strike a heroic chord. Well before the cleansing of Afrin, and the onslaught and genocidal threats by the Erdogan regime in Turkey. The movement in Syria is tired now, the contradictions in the revolution seem coming to fruition. But when I was there, the revolutionary enthusiasm, if not discipline, among the cadres was certainly contagious.
At first, I was tempted to dismiss the phenomenon of Öcalan’s charismatic leadership, to chalk it up to a so-called cult of personality. I remember the look that Havin Guneser gave me – if looks could kill – when at a CAMPACC meeting at SOAS, I responded in the affirmative to an African student’s question about whether I thought we should be wary of cults of personality, in relation to the Kurds. The only other time that Havin looked at me that way, while Graeber rolled his eyes, was when at the LSE book launch of the first volume of the Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, I criticised Öcalan for ignoring African history in his metanarrative about the dialectic of domination and resistance. I stand by this second point, though have come to understand Havin’s frustration with references to the cult of personality.
To say that Öcalan is a charismatic leader, in the Weberian sense, is to state the obvious. He seems, more precisely, to be a prophet. Born in the same place as the prophet Abraham, so they say, in Urfa. A man with a prophetic voice, a prophetic mission. It was he who dared whisper into the ears of his fellow student comrades that Kurdistan is an internal colony. It was he who galvanised a Kurdish insurgency, an armed resistance against the denialism of the Turkish state. And through this insurgency, it was he who consolidated a Kurdish identity, forged in the blood of the martyrs. He was captured, betrayed, by an international conspiracy, and has spent close to 27 years in inhumane conditions in prison in the Marmara Sea, on Imrali Island. But during this time, his spirit has never been broken. To the contrary, in an act of existential defiance of the highest order, he has penned a five-volume Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, in which he lays the foundations for a new paradigm and program of democratic confederalism. And now, as if that weren’t enough, it is he who comes waging revolutionary peace in the context of the so-called Middle East. His prophecy is of epic proportions.
He is, admittedly, a secular prophet. A national icon, of Islamic background and upbringing, but of a decidedly this-worldly bent. He is aware of his persuasive power over people, Özcan even, I think, quoted him as saying that he deliberately speaks like a prophet in order to get just the right effect. Whether this prophetic performance is deliberate or not, it certainly is effective.
Some might be tempted to say that in a secular age, with the hegemony of science, the supernatural qualities associated with prophecy are much less likely to be believed in. But inspiration, after all, means to breathe in, perhaps to be imbued with, the holy spirit. And so long as people breathe in, they are capable of being inspired. Which is what the movement says about Öcalan, that he is not only their leader, but their inspiration.
What is the source of his magnetism? Whatever it is, it predates, prefigures, and anoints the new paradigm. His followers consider him the incarnation of the Kurdish nation, his freedom, theirs, his captivity, a catastrophe so great and grave in scale.
His freedom now is a must. Only a cretin can claim he hasn’t yet done enough time. Even the European Court of Human Rights has recognised as much, his right to hope is being trampled, they claim. Not to mention that his has been a consistent voice for peace, dating back to well before his abduction and imprisonment, but with philosophical, paradigmatic foundations filled in since.
When he was captured, the streets across Europe erupted, the diaspora was up in arms, dozens of his followers burned themselves alive in protest. Now the stakes are so high once again, this perhaps the last episode of such a storied life. He is gambling for peace, taking the high road, ready even to disarm his movement in Turkey, to dissolve the guerrilla and redeploy the cadres with the purpose of building direct democratic institutions from below, from the grassroots. While calling for “democratic integration” into “democratic society,” in accordance with the paradigm of the “democratic nation,” in pursuit of the horizon of “democratic confederalism.” Always with an emphasis on that same word, democratic. He is a democratic theorist, par excellence.
Some of my Kenyan friends registered their disappointment with Öcalan’s decision to liquidate the PKK. Gacheke even asked, can the procedure by which the decision was made be considered democratic? Öcalan’s style of leadership certainly retains a good deal of Leninist vanguardism. It is he who articulates the paradigm, monologically, even if he intends for his writings to spark a dialogue. And it is he who directs the tactics and strategy in the peace process. The relationship between leader and followers is clear. The movement seems to hang on his every word, and are willing to obey him at all costs.
Öcalan is engaged in a project of political pedagogy. He wants to spread the ideals of self-determination, of radical, direct democracy against the state, against all unjust hierarchies, especially those of ethnicity and gender, and in favor of ecological living. His is a powerful, egalitarian project. It needs to be sharpened, through dialogue with other radical, anticolonial and decolonial approaches, perhaps especially those of the Black radical tradition. But still, the emancipatory appeal of the democratic confederal paradigm and program is there for all to see.
Öcalan’s message is intended to empower his followers to take matters into their own hands, to seize self-determination from the bottom up. His method is not altogether different from the one prescribed by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, where he warns against haranguing masses with political speeches, and insists instead that the task of political education consists in sparking creative thinking and in convincing people that they are in charge of their own destinies.
Likewise, there is an affinity between his message and method and that of Amílcar Cabral, the great anti-colonial leader from Guinea-Bissau, assassinated in 1973, who in The Weapon of Theory pointed out that there has never been a revolution without a theory (though he might have been forgetting Spain, or for that matter, Haiti). Öcalan is intending to provide for his followers a revolutionary theory underpinning and justifying a grassroots, democratic revolution.
What Öcalan has been robbed of by his inhumane isolation is the ability to “ground” with his movement, to sacrifice his privilege, and blend with the so-called masses of common folk. Cabral spoke of the imperative for “class suicide” in this regard; and the great Walter Rodney, who made “grounding” famous far beyond Rastafarian circles, elsewhere made reference to the Latin American liberation theologians and their notion of “conscientization,” which can be traced back to Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. There were riots named after Rodney, he was no stranger to charisma. But the point being, the pedagogical project in which all four – Öcalan, Fanon, Cabral, and Rodney – partake is one in pursuit of radically egalitarian, democratising horizons. Even so, there remains a remainder. A legacy of the Leninist mould out of which all of them were formed.
Rosa Luxemburg was no saint; the way she and Jogiches ran the affairs of the Social Democratic party back in Poland left much to be desired, to say the least. Even so, her critique of the Bolshevik party form, which dates back to the very first years of the twentieth century, proved more than a little prescient. She accused that model of promoting and perpetuating a military form of discipline and authority, the opposite of the free discipline prefigured and forged in the course of the struggle of the proletariat for itself. Such free discipline is inflected with creativity and spontaneity, with collective democratic will, it cannot be pistol-whipped into submission from above.
Here we get a glimpse of what direct-democratic self-determination as envisaged by democratic confederalism would require. The birth of free discipline, the transcendence of the dialectic of leader and led altogether. But for Öcalan and his followers, there appears, for now, no such moment of transcendence on the horizon. Or to put the matter another way, his leadership is not yet “self-liquidating.” He is holding on to that Leninist remainder.
Indeed, it is as if he has enunciated the general will for his people; and now, if need be, he is determined to force them to be free. Thus, the answer to Gacheke’s question about the democratic credentials of Öcalan’s decision for the PKK to disband – is both yes, and no. Yes, because it lays the groundwork, and provides the conditions of possibility for, the flourishing of “democratic society,” which in turn may just open the door to democratic confederalism. Even if the movement must be first forced down the path of peace for such dialectical developments to unfold.
Öcalan would seem caught in a dilemma of means and ends. Those among us who like to stress the prefigurative would certainly object to the Machiavellian marshalling of his charismatic power for the purposes of both dictating and persuading. Even so, the content of his orientation and agenda is deeply democratic and egalitarian. His message is intended to get his followers to avoid falling into traps such as “feudal nationalism,” patriarchy, or extractivism, and to pursue the democratic confederal alternative instead. Perhaps in the beginning people will obey because Öcalan said so. But the hope is that the practice of participation in grassroots, direct democratic initiatives will cultivate critical consciousness and leadership capacities in those who have hitherto only been led.
What does Leninist leadership look like? It is centralised, hierarchical, authoritarian. It is conceived as a head to the body of the masses. By contrast, democratic confederal leadership is decentralised, egalitarian, freedom-loving. It is conceived as so many tentacles on an octopus. To the extent it is centralised at all, it is oriented towards self-overcoming, towards self-liquidation.
Like I said, Öcalan is holding on to that Leninist remainder. He is using his concentrated charismatic authority to influence – indeed, to cajole – the movement, to make Leninist means achieve democratic confederal ends. Though his call for the dissolution of the PKK is a strike against the Leninist inheritance of the movement, a transformation in an anti-hierarchical direction. Still, it never occurs to him to dissolve himself, to treat his indisputable leadership as if it were disputable.
Indeed, even I, a radical democrat to the core, think he would be wrong to do so. Let Öcalan be the one to reach out to all sectors of society, both Kurdish and Turkish, and convince them they are brothers and sisters. Let him be the one to forge a new common sense. And let this new common sense lay the foundation for the construction of a democratic confederal alternative to capitalist modernity in the region and around the globe. His work as leader is to expand the imaginative horizons of the people, both among his core constituency but also beyond. It is his task to ignite a spark, that it might, just might, catch a fire. To get people to develop a new thought, as Fanon once put it. Or as Fanon’s teacher Césaire preferred, to open peoples’ minds, even to invent souls.
There is a passage in Jeffrey Paige’s brilliant book, Agrarian Revolution, in which he distinguishes between situations of petty status pyramids and hierarchies, where rank trumps the recognition of charisma, on the one hand, and egalitarian configurations of social relations, where those with the gift of charisma are more likely to be appreciated, on the other. If Paige is right, the transition to democratic confederalism need not signal the death of charismatic leadership; to the contrary, it could well usher in an era where organic charismatic leaders proliferate and prosper.
In the New Testament, the Pentacost is the day when the holy spirit descended upon the disciples, enabling them to speak in tongues. The spread of revolutionary consciousness among the people should be like the day when the holy spirit first descended, there will be a flame lit, one that must prove impossible to extinguish.
It is to be expected that the fire will shine brighter among a select few of the democratic confederalist disciples. Their influence in the formation of consensus and hegemony in democratic structures is bound to be disproportionately felt. And they are likely to be appointed delegates disproportionately as well. There is nothing particularly objectionable to that.
What is to be warned against is the institutionalisation of charismatic leadership, what is to be avoided is the construction of oligarchic leverage for those who seek to inherit the mantle of authority, and to usurp the name of those who once ruled charismatically.
The spectre of Mao and his cultural revolution haunt Öcalan’s democratic confederal turn. There would seem an affinity, a family resemblance, between Mao’s turning on the state and party bureaucracy, in an effort to empower the most radical among the students and the workers. Similarly, Öcalan looks to the mobilisation of the grassroots, while he seeks to dissolve and redeploy the guerrilla. The fact that Mao’s experiment went so tragically wrong should cause trepidation amongst the democratic confederalist rank and file.
But Öcalan is not Mao. His charisma is not bolstered by the power of any state. Rather, he is a popular hero. Subaltern, a symbol of defiance, of collective existential affirmation, the realisation of resistance. Perhaps the early Mao, before he came to power, during the prolonged peoples’ war, can best compare. His ever-oppositional positionality, the fact that he has never come to power, and that his movement has never been coopted, nor defeated, renders his appeal revolutionary, but given the content of his message, in a democratic vein.
The dilemmas and contradictions of charismatic authority, and ultimately, of democratic leadership per se, all come through quite clearly in the case of Abdullah Öcalan. His espousal of a radical democratic creed does not cancel out the fact that his followers embrace that creed out of obedience, because the leader says so. Their devotion to the prophet, to the savior of the nation, would seem to know no limits. Will the struggle for and practice of bottom-up, grassroots democracy get them to realise that the achievement of self-determination is a task that can only be carried out by themselves?
Lest it be forgotten, Öcalan is not immortal. There must be life one day without the leader. Are Apo’s many followers ready for the day after which their leader can speak no more?
In a short piece I wrote a few years ago, called “Fragments of Liberation,” I refer to a book that is a classic in the tradition of liberation theology, Leonardo Boff’s Church, Charism & Power. The last chapter of that important book, a book which brought down on him the wrath of Ratzinger, centers the question of charism, which Boff defines as a “manifestation of the Spirit’s presence in the members of the community, causing everything that they are or do to be done and ordered for the good of all” (p.158). Such an orientation towards the collective good is what distinguishes this democratic form of charisma, when it spreads across the bulk of a population. There are many gifts, distinct talents and abilities, distributed amongst the people, but the uniqueness of different types of charisma should not lead us to overlook how charismatic qualities can abound across the grassroots of societies. If only they are not stifled by unjust hierarchies. Charismatic leaders must take it upon themselves to smash the hierarchical idols that work to keep the self-determining spirit within the followers latent and subdued.
According to Boff, there is “charism at the root of all institutions and hierarchy” (p.159). It is the foundation out of which all vertically structured social relations are generated, and simultaneously the seed for transforming such relations in the direction of ever-more horizontal horizons. With the flourishing of communal charisma, leadership is not altogether cancelled out; but it is democratised, while the abilities of the common people are cultivated and encouraged to come to fruition.
Öcalan has been anointed, if never elected, the seemingly indisputable leader of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Though that movement does not represent all Kurds, not even in Turkey, it nevertheless articulates the collective will to exist, and the struggle for self-determination. Öcalan has taken it upon himself to broaden the horizons of that struggle, to place the Kurdish Freedom Movement at the forefront – indeed, the vanguard – of a global freedom struggle. The wind of the spirit is blowing again, but this time it is not the storm of progress which it brings; no, this time it brings the revolution in consciousness, with the spread of capabilities and commitments to construct democratic confederalism from the bottom up.