WAR AND REVOLUTION IN SYRIAN-KURDISTAN

Thomas Schmidinger
born 1974, political scientist and social and cultural anthropologist,
Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna and at the
Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences

Moderation: Isolde Charim, author and philosopher

War and revolution in Syrian Kurdistan. Analyses and voices from Rojava
(Mandelbaum Verlag, October 2014)
In northern Syria, Kurdish fighters are fighting as the last bastion against the jihadist threat posed by the self-proclaimed „Islamic State“. After decades of oppression by the Baath regime, the Syrian Kurds managed to take over the majority of their settlement areas in the slipstream of the uprising against the regime in 2012. However, as the uprising developed into a civil war and the influence of jihadist groups grew, the security situation in Rojava („Western Kurdistan“), as Syrian Kurdistan is called by the Kurds themselves, became increasingly precarious and the defence of their towns and villages a struggle for survival.