“in the context of the current refugee crisis, Turkey has been turned into an EU buffer state: the outer frontier of the supranational project which now operates as the new extralegal border”
“The three billion euros handed over to the regime perversely suggests that it provides some kind of safe haven. It might not have been intended to bolster Erdoğan’s ever growing military apparatus, but it does provide for its ethical legitimacy.”
“The EU sponsors regional human rights for its member states while sponsoring bullets for its buffer state.”
“The buffer state is not an exception to the EU: it is the prototype of the new European authoritarianism to come.”
“the HDP itself is not an armed movement. It wishes to achieve what it refers to as new forms of “democratic autonomy” on a nationwide level, through a combination of parliamentary representation and intersectional grassroots mobilization.13 And this is the real “terror” that Erdoğan fears: the combination of emancipatory ideology and popular mobilization that drives the HDP’s agenda for democratic autonomy, women’s and LGBT+ rights, and radical ecology.”
“In its political program, the HDP describes its ideal for an intersectional “we”:
We are women, We are youth, We are the rainbow, We are children, We are defenders of democracy, We are representatives of all identities, We are defenders of a free world, We are protector of the nature, We are builders of a safe life economy, We are workers, We are laborers, We are the guarantor of social rights.”
“Erdoğan doesn’t fear an opponent who merely wants to usurp his power; rather, he fears one who rejects the very organization of power that his regime represents.”
“the HDP’s agenda is one that aims to challenge the design of power all together”
“The aim is to establish a decentralized confederation of self-governing neighborhoods and municipalities, represented in regional assemblies within a democratic Turkish state. This is a “dual-power” vision, consisting of parliamentary representation on one hand, and local assembly-based representation on the other”
“The HDP requires that 50 percent of its representatives be women and 10 percent of its membership come from LGBT+ communities. In this way the HDP takes responsibility for the structural recognition of a plurality of political subjects, rather than catering to a specific ethnic group.”
“Essentially, the HDP is a transitional party: on one hand, it aims to “transition” politics from an identitarian foundation to an intersectional foundation; and on the other, it aims to transfer state power to local municipalities in order to make the project of democratic autonomy a reality.”
“The goal is not to take power as a party, but to establish—through the party—a confederation of local assembly-based structures of self-governance.”
“It is this paradigm of democratic autonomy that is articulated in the HDP’s “We,” which breaks with the repressive identitarian nationalist politics that has plagued Turkey ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.”
“The HDP’s vision opens a realm for a new diversified culture of the demos—or, in plural, demoi—to emerge.”
“If the Erdoğan regime is the equivalent of Orbán’s authoritarianism in Hungary, or the Law and Justice Party’s shameless takeover of the judicial system in Poland, or the regimes-to-come of the Front National and the Freedom Party, then the equivalent of the HDP are the new forms of political parties and pan-European platforms emerging from the continent’s crises: from the rise of Podemos, which has replaced the “party” with the “circle,” to the Icelandic Pirate Party’s support of a new crowd-sourced constitution; from the rotating co-presidencies of Catalunya’s Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) to the project for a new borderless Europe propagated by the Swedish Feminist Initiative.”
“In the same spirit as the HDP, these movements have interrogated the very structures of power they are up against, refusing to replicate the oppressions of their opponent.”
“The HDP’s gesture of solidarity towards progressive movements in Greece and Catalunya, Basque Country and Spain, shows us the possibilities for new transdemocratic alliances—new unions—and raises hopes for forms of being-human that cannot be reduced to a degraded humanity that sells us regional human rights under the auspices of authoritarian regimes.”
“The question of whether the HDP’s new political paradigm of democratic autonomy can be shared across Europe needs of course to be addressed. One cannot negate the specificity of the history, geography, and culture that led to a complete rejection of the nation-state in a region where its construct is interlinked with a long history of colonization, one-party rule, and religious doctrine.”
“Nonetheless, the HDP’s transitional-party strategy—moving power from government to municipalities, while remaining faithful to larger ecology of new transdemocratic movements throughout Europe—initiates a process that can help us unionize anew.”
“This process revolves around the possibility of a self-questioning form of politics, one that does not take power for granted, but ceaselessly interrogates its very foundations.”
“As Judith Butler wrote, this process seeks to “devise institutions and policies that actively preserve and affirm the unchosen character of open-ended and plural cohabitation.””
“For more elaborate texts on the concept of stateless democracy in the writings of Abdullah Öcalan and other Kurdish activists, with an emphasis on its practice in the autonomous region of Rojava, West Kurdistan (Northern Syria), see Stateless Democracy, eds. Dilar Dirik, Reneé In der Maur, and Jonas Staal (Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2015)”
“The concept of transdemocracy emerged through a conversation among Renée In der Maur, Dilar Dirik, and philosopher Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei. It takes Öcalan’s concept of democratic autonomy and other related forms of nonstate self-governance and turns them into a methodology—a series practices of transitional politics.”
“Judith Butler, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 112–13.”