For a Nonkilling Kurdistan and Middle East

CGNK Director Joám Evans Pim was invited to deliver a speech to over 1,000 participants at the Second Conference of the Network for an Alternative Quest, held on April 3-5, 2015 in Hamburg, Germany, and organized by a broad platform of Kurdish organizations in Europe. Joám presented a paper comparing the nonkilling political arrangements proposed in India by Gandhi with those of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan that are being implemented in Kurdish-controlled Northern Syria (Rojava).

The vision for a peaceful nonkilling Kurdistan and wider Middle East resonated with the interventions of other delegated from the region. Asya Abdullah, co-chairperson of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Rojava/Syria, dissected the reality of political violence arguing that “the state made people enjoy killing other people”, which partially explains the current ISIS phenomenon. To counter this, Saniye Varlı from the Bağlar Women’s Cooperative explained that “our legacy will be our culture of sharing” that draws from the previous communal arrangements.

Interest on CGNK’s approach to building nonkilling societies was also explored during side-meetings with political leaders and activits as a counterweight of the extreme violence the region is facing and that has also pulled in the Kurdish movement that has been striving to build its proposal peaceful “democratic confederalism” over the past decade. Initial discusions to promote and publish both Kurdish and Turkish translations of Glenn Paige’s Nonkilling Global Political Science book also took place and will materialize in the near future.