A Democratic Nation: The Kurdistan Workers Party PKK and the idea of nation beyond the state

Mazlum Dogan, a celebrated martyr within the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), had started to study economics at Hacettepe University in Ankara in 1974. The Armistice of Mudros in 1918 had implied a surrender of the Ottoman Empire to the French and British empires and resulted in its de facto partitioning and the occupation of its capital city, Istanbul. Mustafa Kemal, a distinguished military officer, became the leading officer of the resistance against British and French occupation. The harsh repression in the 1920s and 1930s and failed attempts by Kurdish leaders to resist political submission, military occupation, and cultural denial had been followed by years of “silence”. The revolutionary left in Turkey, also prone to a sectarianism that had led to the scornful comment that it was growing by splitting up, was moreover weakened by the influence of Kemalism. The right to self-determination and the network of self-organization sustain a democratic nation.