Democratic autonomy and women’s revolution in Rojava

The article explores the unique political and social experiment in Rojava (northern and eastern Syria), where a project of democratic autonomy grounded in women’s emancipation has been unfolding for more than a decade. Conceptually developed by Abdullah Öcalan through his reading of Murray Bookchin’s communalism, this model seeks to transcend traditional state and patriarchal frameworks by organizing collective life around communes, councils, cooperatives, popular academies, and self-defense structures. The women’s revolution, regarded as a driving force behind this transformation, is grounded in jineology, a critical feminist science that reconnects historical knowledge and practices— particularly from the matri-focal Neolithic cultures of Mesopotamia—with the development of an ecological, democratic, and egalitarian society. The article demonstrates how these processes, driven by women’s self-organization through groups such as Kongra Star or Mala Jin, have profoundly reshaped social, familial, and political relations in Rojava, challenging patriarchal violence and asserting new rights. It also highlights the ongoing military, political, and ideological threats to this project, as well as the imperative to safeguard these experiments as alternatives to dominant capitalist and patriarchal modernity.