Ecological Solidarity and the Kurdish Freedom Movement: Thought, Practice, Challenges, and Opportunities examines Kurdish ecological politics and its modeling of communalism and environmental justice, which offer important insights into democratic renewal and women’s liberation for the West.

Ecological Solidarity and the Kurdish Freedom Movement: Thought, Practice, Challenges, and Opportunities is a pioneering text that examines the ideas about social ecology and communalism behind the evolving political structures in the Kurdish region. The collection evaluates practical green projects, including the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement, Jinwar women’s eco-village, food sovereignty in a solidarity economy, environmental defenders in Iranian Kurdistan, and Make Rojava Green Again. Contributors also critically reflect on such contested themes as Alevi nature beliefs, anti-dam demonstrations, human-rights law and climate change, the Gezi Park protests, and forest fires. Throughout this volume, the contributors consider the formidable challenges to the Kurdish initiatives, such as state repression, damaged infrastructure, and oil dependency. Nevertheless, contributors assert that the West has much to learn from the Kurdish ecological paradigm, which offers insight into social movement debates about development and decolonization.

Introduction: Ecology in the Kurdish Paradigm

Part I: Theory

Chapter 1: The Value of Social Ecology in the Struggles to Come

Federico Venturini

Chapter 2: Social Ecology in Öcalan’s Thinking

Cihad Hammy

Chapter 3: Ecological Self-Governmentality in Kurdish Space at a Time of Neoliberal Authoritarianism

Engin Sustam

Chapter 4: Radical or Reactionary Tomatoes? Organizing against the Toxic Legacy of Capital’s Environmentalism

Nicholas Hildyard

Part II: Positive Initiatives for Ecological Change

Chapter 5: Ecology Structures of the Kurdish Freedom Movement

Ercan Ayboğa

Chapter 6: An Interview with HDP Ecology Commission Co-Spokesperson, Menekşe Kizildere.

Chapter 7: Greening and Feeding the City: The Difficult Path to the Implementation of Political Ecology in Diyarbakır/Amed, 2015-2017

Clémence Scalbert-Yücel

Chapter 8: Regenerating Kurdish Ecologies Through Food Sovereignty, Agroecology, and Economies of Care

Michel P. Pimbert

Chapter 9: Free Life Together: Jinwar, the Women's Eco-village

Fabiana Cioni and Domenico Patassini

Chapter 10: Women’s Subjectivity and the Ecological and Communal Economy

Azize Aslan; translated from Spanish by Karen Tiedtke

Part III: Social Movements and Environmental Activism

Chapter 11: Environmental Activism in Rojhelat: Emergence and Objectives

Allan Hassaniyan

Chapter 12: The Kurdish Freedom Movement and Gezi: Strategic Reluctance and Tactical Ambiguities

Kumru Toktamis and Isabel David

Chapter 13: Hasankeyf, the Ilısu Dam, and the Kurdish Movement in Turkey

Laurent Dissard

Chapter 14: The Kurdish Ecology Movement and Human Rights

Marlene A. Payya Almonte and Thomas James Phillips

Chapter 15: The Internationalist Project to Make Rojava Green Again

Stephen E. Hunt

Part IV: Nature Protection and Kurdish Alevism

Chapter 16: Dersim as a Sacred Land: Contemporary Kurdish Alevi Ethno-Politics and Environmental Struggle

Ahmet Kerim Gültekin

Chapter 17: The Philosophy of Ecology and Rêya Heqî: Religion, Nature, and Femininity

Dilsa Deniz

Part V: Conflict and Environmental Destruction

Chapter 18: Forest fires in Dersim and Şırnak: Conflict and Environmental Destruction

Pinar Dinc

Chapter 19: Breaking the Kill Chain: Exposing to Challenge British State and International Corporate Complicity in Turkey's Killer Drone Industry

Ceri Gibbons

Part VI: Conclusions

Chapter 20: “To Plant the Tree of Tomorrow”: Seeding and Spiraling Ecologically Aware Democratic Autonomy Beyond the Kurdish Freedom Movement

Stephen E. Hunt

Chapter 21: Concluding Reflections on the Kurdish Ecology Initiatives

Stephen E. Hunt