Beyond rupture and integration: decolonial recognition in the Kurdish struggle

Abstract The Kurdish movement in Turkey illustrates a complex struggle for political recognition and decolonization. The article examines this dual strategic orientation, focusing on the peace process initiated in October 2024 between the Turkish state and Kurdish representatives. Through a detailed and symptomatic reading of the two texts by Abdullah Öcalan, February Call and Perspektif , the article aims to demonstrate that the movement both interacts with the state to secure democratic prerequisites for political participation and continues to promote a radical critique of capitalist modernity and nation-state structures. Drawing upon Axel Honneth’s recognition theory and Étienne Balibar’s concept of “equaliberty,” the struggle for recognition is no longer seen just to result in a depoliticization through governmental control, but is rethought as building the capacity to stage an ongoing, performative process that manages the constitutive tension between equality and autonomy within Kurdish decolonial practice. This approach raises questions about how the movement navigates state structures while promoting alternative social institutions and epistemic spaces, including the problematic site of communes as a form of democratic autonomous experimentation.