Brighthelm Church and Community Centre, North Road, Brighton, BN1 1YD, UK

Organised by the STEPS Centre and Sussex Kurdish Community.

Havin Guneser is a Kurdish writer, journalist, a women’s rights activist, and a spokesperson for the International Initiative Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan-Peace in Kurdistan. She is also a translator and publisher of the works of Abdullah Öcalan, a leading figure of the Kurdish liberation struggle, who has been imprisoned by the Turkish state on Imrali Island since 1999.

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During his incarceration Öcalan has reflected on his own life and the struggle of the Kurds for democracy and rights, has examined lessons from history and has brought together insights from across a range of academic disciplines to produce a radical critique of the foundations of modern society.

In Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, Öcalan describes, ‘the historical struggle, that can be traced back to at least five thousand years’, as ‘essentially one between state-civilization and democratic civilization.’ Öcalan identifies the patriarchal structures and environmental destruction that have been the hallmarks of what has been presented as social ‘progress’; ‘The only way that cities can become fit for human dwelling,’ he writes, ‘is to transform them into ecological villages’. 

The Frankfurt School and Foucault, Nietzsche and Max Weber, Immanuel Wallerstein and Murray Bookchin are deployed to dismantle the claims of a Positivist approach to understanding society which turns science into an ideology. The Soviet attempt to form an alternative to capitalist modernity foundered on the rocks of ‘economic reductionism.’ What lessons can be learned?

“In this book Abdullah Ocalan destils 35 years of revolutionary theory and praxis and 10 years of solitary confinement in Turkish prisons. These reflections represent the essence of his ideas on society, knowledge, and power”. 

These are the ideas that are inspiring resistance in Rojava in Syria and across the border in Turkey, where a new autonomous democracy, with women in the forefront, is being created at great sacrifice. 

Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization: The Age of Masked Gods and Disguised Kings (2015), translated by Havin Guneser, with a preface by David Graeber, is published by New Compass Press. Read a review by Dr Felix Padel.

All are welcome at this event and there is no entry fee. Register online (Eventbrite)