Introduction - Exploring the Kurdish Movement: Power Relations, Historical Dynamics and Theoretical Perspectives
Davide Grasso, Andrea Novellis
Partecipazione e Conflitto (PACO), 18(2) • 15/07/2025
This editorial positions Kurdish politics at a turning point initiated by the PKK’s 2025 decision to dissolve its armed wing and by concomitant institutional realignments in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Building on feminist, post-colonial, and transnational scholarship, the special issue advances a three-level framework. First, it traces the historically sedimented repertoires of state coercion and colonial governance that define Kurdish political opportunities. Second, it examines the movement’s evolving ideological corpus—especially Democratic Modernity and Jineolojî—which articulates a counter-theory of decentralised authority. Third, it analyses the micro-processes of recruitment, activist identity formation, and disciplined internal hierarchy that embed revolutionary ideas in everyday practice. A state-power cluster, an ideology cluster, and a micro-sociology study show the framework’s reach. Two cross-cutting themes structure the issue: power, understood as the intersection of coercive sovereignty, revolutionary decentralisation, and intra-movement organisation; and history, viewed simultaneously as a state instrument of closure and a movement resource for alternative futures. Building on the volume’s findings, the introduction sketches three forward research paths: (i) a sociology of mobilisation under post-insurgency transition; (ii) a comparative politics agenda on peace settlements, DDR, and autonomy design; and (iii) a political-theory programme probing how post-statist and decolonial imaginaries can be institutionalised.