The shaping of cultural and political Kurdish movements in Turkey and Syria: some cross-border dynamics

Abstract

This paper analyzes the shaping of the Kurdish cultural and political movements in Turkey and Syria through the interaction of the two most relevant political actors in this process: The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Party of the Democratic Unit (PYD). This text highlights the Kurdish influence in the cross-border area of northern Syria and southern Turkey during the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, as well as the early years of the twenty-first century. The objective of this text is to identify some historical and conjunctural causes that explain how autonomy projects in both Rojava and Bakur have influenced each other, and how they have challenged the idea of the modern Nation State in the countries where they operate. The main objective of the article is to know how the Kurds in Turkey found more obstacles to the development of their autonomy projects in Bakur, while the Syrian Rojava movement, which was influenced by the PKK itself and Abdullah Öcallan's ideas, managed well to organize its successful model despite the authoritarian context it faced. The hypothesis to be defended is that Turkish State's security discourse was the main factor that prevented an autonomous development of the Kurds in Bakur, which not only managed to reverse the PKK's political agenda in Turkey, but also after 2015, sought to extend containment of Kurdish projects in northern Syria.