was of the impression that on the ground they were fairly communist. Lenin was required reading etc. Libertarian Socialism is something Kurdish movements pivoted to when Öcalan and the PKK pivoted from Marxist-Leninism.

From what I gather, its mostly about having a decentralized organizational structure, which makes sense for a movement thats spread across three or more countries. Decentralized movements often lack the capability of coordinated action and seize opportunities but are much harder to kill off compared to centralized orgs.

Some Kurdish nationalist tendencies

I think this needs to be put in context as Kurds are a big ethnic group that has a very long history of pretty brutal oppression, especially given that the traditional Kurdish region spans across many borders so if you’re a Kurd in your ancestral lands in Iran - lol good luck, and if you’re a Kurd in Iraq - lol good luck, and if you’re a Kurd in Turkey - lol good luck.

I’m not sure where OP is but imagine if the Roma people had their own ancestral homeland that they have continually occupied which was pretty unified but which is also divided by modern European borders. There’s every chance that the Roma people would be like “Fuck this, we have been treated like dogshit (including being subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocide) and there isn’t a single state in Europe which is gonna look out for us so we need to look out for ourselves and create a Roma state” because it’s essentially exactly that for Kurds right now.

I’d say that Kurds are best understood as as existing in an internal colony within Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. With this in context I view Kurdish nationalism as being more aligned to national liberation than the uglier side of nationalism.

With that being said, the Kurds are not angels and there are troubling reports about Kurdish forces carrying out ethnic cleansing and even genocide. The problem is that governments, especially the Syrian and Turkish governments, are extremely hostile towards Kurds and the reports of ethnic cleansing are easily fabricated, exaggerated (e.g. non-Kurds who lived under ISIS fairly contently fleeing when Kurdish forces take a region because they don’t want to end up imprisoned for collaborating with ISIS or simply fleeing because a new salient has opened up where they live and they don’t want to get killed in the fighting), or they are distorted (e.g. masses fleeing ISIS or another force but the blame being pinned on Kurds for political reasons) so it’s difficult to really get a good grasp of what’s going on.

Ultimately Kurds are stuck in a shitty situation that has been foisted upon them by other political players and they’re doing what is in their interests so it’s hard to be unsympathetic towards them.

Are they being used as a splinter group to foment balkanisation in the region of the Levant by the US who seeks to destabilise and overthrow the Syrian government? Yep, at least historically.

Are they used as a tool by the US to keep Erdogan on a leash so that he doesn’t stray too far from Uncle Sam’s agenda, at the risk of them supporting Kurdish separatism and turning Turkey into a civil warzone/rump state? Yes.

If I were Kurdish and had the chance to shoot my shot for the opportunity of establishing a Kurdistan as a recognised state and distinct political entity, would I go for it? Yes.

If I were on the frontlines fighting against ISIS, a force that would absolutely exterminate Kurds if they are given the opportunity, and the US armed forces sought to broker a deal to coordinate attacks on ISIS and to provide support to my side, would I take them up on that offer? It brings me no joy to say it but yes, I would.

It’s a really messy, ugly situation and it has been this way for a very long time for the Kurds. They don’t have clean hands but when you’re fighting for survival you have to fight dirty.

Idk what to say. A balkanised Syria is bad news for the Syrian people and for the wider region but a strong, unified Syria is no guarantee for safety for the Kurds in any way. If Atatürk didn’t have an epiphany one day and decide “You know what? Fuck the Kurds!” then maybe things would be very different right now but as it stands the Kurds only have the safety that they fight for and maintain with their lives so Kurdish nationalism is understandable imo.

thank you for the reading, its very interesting! Of course i don’t make my support based on if they’re a proper ideology or socialist enough when it comes to national liberation, but the reactionary nationalist tendencies and western vassalage is something of great concern to me

They steal oil from anti-imperialist nations which would be used to fund and support said nations and instead sell it to the US and Israel, the latter having praised them heavily in the past while giving them direct aid - the parallels to Israel are alarming and the fact that any leftist here supports them is disappointing, especially after the events of the last year and the continuing escalation of war in West Asia.

although i do agree that there are many alarming things like its cooperation with the US in oil exploitation, an important difference between Israel and kurdistan (at least for those who dont think them similar) is that kurds are actually indigenous to the area, while zionists are settler fascists. I think that if I conclude that rojava is a reactionary imperial link in the western empire’s chain, it would be more akin to ukraine or estonia.

I myself am concerned due to my limited knowledge and rojava being constantly referenced positively by anarchists near me (im not an anarchist at all, but these anarchists are really good on indigenous rights), and they seem like a good side to support from the surface. The complication is its cooperation with empire and fight with another critical supported country of mine: syria. Although from recent information i’d say that Syria played no small roll in causing the kurds to revolt against them. Revoking citizenship to kurds is kind of asking them to fight against you in my mind.

They are essentially a military base for the US in Syria, with the SDF being literally named by a US General. They have taken weapons from Yzidi and other ethnic minorities in the region claiming they would protect them and then let them be slaughtered. They have participated in rounding up ethnic minorities and imprisoning them.

I have heard these critiques and they are my main concern. The link between the US and Rojava are not small and that gives me great pause.

People have romanticized them because of their origin story but failed to keep up with their transformation from a legitimate revolutionary movement into a full puppet of imperialism. Supporting ethno-nationalism is not it, it isn’t hard to see this for what it is, and their attempts at covering their ethno-nationalism with shallow “look at our token Assyrian, Yzidi, etc member” instantly vanishes if you speak to a Kurd who supports Kurdistan about their desire for a Kurdish state.

reactionary tendencies within such a decentralized ethnic sepratist group is bound to occur. I do think at this point though that a kurdish state may be necessary for liberation, as the separation under colonialist lines are entirely products of the west. Kurdish protection and autonomy at the very least, but the repression faced by kurds in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey (i know little of the situation of the kurds in iran but from what i have its not much different than the others) suggests the need for some sort of separate state entity. I do support Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan in their anti imperialist projects, but I cannot find a good reason to also deny the demand of liberation from oppression that the kurds have given.

Supporting Rojava is supporting the US grip in West Asia, including Israel, it is supporting the occupation of sovereign nations by US proxies, and is anti-communist. It seems like people have a liberal notion that because some Kurds are self proclaimed communists means they are actual, real communists. We have had hundreds of examples at this point to prove that people who call themselves communists or socialists aren’t magically principled, correct, sincere, or worth supporting. Stop romanticizing these people and do some actual research. They follow the guidance of a man who rejected Marxism Leninism for his own brand of Bookchin-thought which has spun off into an obvious cult of personality around him, why are y’all still stanning this?

As a Marxist Leninist, I know of their strange ideological platform and personally do not think it viable. decentralized bookchin nonsense is not something im going to cheer for. Democratic Confederationism is very restricted to Rojava.

But this is national liberation, and that changes things. I do not necessitate a Marxist Leninist ideological alignment for every national liberation, and in fact see national liberation as more important first due to it being a larger contradiction than class and capital. Should we support the Somali government’s invasion of ethiopia due to them being ‘socialist’? No. Should we not support the liberation of palestine even though the powers at the head are in fact religious fighters and not marxist leninists? Definitely not! Pol Pot was a socialist backed by the ‘true communists’ in china, should we support him (despite his allegiance to US imperialism and ethnic cleansing of the vietanmese)? never.

Of course criticism of revisionism, reactionary tendencies, and other such things are important, sometimes they take a backseat.

Like, we like the EZLN, or the Zapitistas. They are not anarchist obviously (much to the ignorance and chagrin of the western left), but theyre not a socialist state. We should still support them should we not? They are a native movement are they not?

I could see “critical support” over a decade ago but at this point there is nothing to support and everything to criticize. The people of Syria including the Kurds would be more liberated under a sovereign and independent Syria that isn’t occupied by the US via their proxies. We don’t need imperial proxy ethnostates for national liberation.

of course i agree, however Syria needs to also learn from their cruel treatment of the Kurds that lead to this happening in the first place. If that can somehow be achieved, then I would fully agree with this.

Of course America is the great satan, and any alignment with it gives me immediate pause. Not every national liberation movement is a real one (hong kong, taiwan, texas).

thank you vey much for the sources, i will comb through them!

I support EZLN, but they are not vassals of empire. Its hard to critically support rojava when it is linked so much to western imperialism. Of course i believe in kurdish liberation, but its hard to support it in this case when its being used so opportunistically in favor of the west.

its just confusing, and its rough, and i dont know who i should support, even critically. Its links with Israel also complicate things.