İSTANBUL - "The aim of the first move towards Afghanistan was to act urgently and take the initiative so that Russia and China do not fill the gap in Central Asia. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were the front organizations to be used in that regard."

 

After the US withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban's capture of the cities one by one in a very short time, and the escape of the rulers, especially the President Ashraf Ghani, once again brought the nation-state deadlock into discussion. With the governments and opposition feeding from the nation-state deadlock even though their discussions are different, the problems were not solved and were deepened further. Against this vicious circle, the democratic modernity paradigm, formulated by PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has shown the way out to the peoples of the Middle East and the world with his ideas, despite the harsh isolation conditions for 22 years in the Imrali F Type High Security Prison, is a light of hope for the peoples.

 

In Öcalan's book "The Kurdish Question and the Democratic Nation Solution", which is the 5th volume of the "Democratic Society Manifesto" published in 2011 and published in prison, he developed solutions to the problems in the region, especially the Kurdish issue. In the sub-title of the book, "The Dissolution of the Nation State in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Structural Impasse of Capitalist Modernity", Öcalan predicted the current crisis and depressions experienced today and presented important perspectives for ways out.

 

Noting that the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001 with a high probability of conspiracy was the attempt of the capitalist system to start the Third World War, Öcalan said, “After the collapse of Soviet Russia in the 1990s by NATO, a new enemy was already invented and it was radical Islam, which was an idealogical mask. In essence, the aim was to ensure the full establishment of capitalist hegemony, which was left unfinished in the Muslim countries of the Middle East after the First World War. They tried to properly integrate the 'rogue states' such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya etc, and to consolidate the US hegemony.

 

TALIBAN WAS JUST A FRONT

 

Regarding the US intervention on Afghanistan, Öcalan said: "The aim of the first move against Afghanistan was to prevent Russia and China from filling the hegemonic void. And El Kaide and Taliban was just a front for this. They could have annihilate them in 24 hours. They chose not to."

 

WESTERN MODERNITY AND NATION STATE

 

Emphasizing that the deadlock and the cycle of crisis continues since the Sumerians, Öcalan said: "Every step taken for a solution aggravated the problems. Mostly, the cultures in the Iraqi region revealed how unresolved and problem-raising the nation-state practices were. Western modernity had no other tool than the nation-state. It was a typical chaos and anarchic situation that would survive after its fall. The situation in Afghanistan was no different than in Iraq. There were no ready-to-use system in place to replace the state-nation system. The nation-state perception was a superficial perception of modernity. The reality under it was the was the cultural issues that had accumulated over thousands of years. Traditional despotic regimes simply suppressed cultures. It was not possible for them to destroy these cultures. The front known as modernity was too superficial. It was a matter of time before it collapsed and reveal the real picture."

 

THE COLLAPSE OF NATION-STATE

 

Drawing attention to the fact that the collapse of the state-nation was not limited with Iraq and Afghanistan, Öcalan said: "It is not only Iraq and Afghanistan that have experienced the collapse of the nation-state. Similar crises are experienced in all nation states, from the nation-state in Kyrgyzstan on the border with China to Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean, from the nation-state in Yemen and Sudan to the nation-states in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the South Caucasus.  Pakistan is already no different from Afghanistan. Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan are constantly in a crisis. Egypt faced the collapse of the regime the minute it softened its methods.Algeria has not yet fully emerged from the civil war. Turkey, which has declared itself an island of stability, is kept alive only by the special operations of Gladio. There is hardly a single Middle Eastern country that does not have problems."

 

THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE NATION STATE CRISIS

 

Noting that the last and deepening crisis experienced by the European Union countries is also a nation-state crisis, Öcalan continued his observations as follows: “If the EU wants to overcome the crisis, it has to carry out radical transformations in the nation-state. The crisis will deepen as nation-states maintain their current state of sovereignty. However, the European Union has been trying to improve itself by limiting the nation-state sovereignty for sixty years. Since even these efforts are not enough, the globality of the nation-state crisis is clearly emerging. The question is no longer whether nation-states, and therefore capitalist modernity, are experiencing a structural crisis; It is about what will happen after the crisis. How will the crisis be overcame? Comparing it with the collapse of the Ottoman and Roman empires, we need to discuss with what the nation state system will be replaced with and determine what comes next.

 

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN LINE

 

In the last part of the book, under the title of "Democratic Modernity Solution in the Middle East Crisis", Öcalan made the following evaluations regarding the problems experienced on the Afghanistan and Pakistan line: “… One of the biggest disasters of the nation-state deadlock is experienced on the Afghanistan-Pakistan line today. In addition, the Kashmir problem, which is experienced in connection with this, is entirely due to nation-stateism. The ongoing Pakistan-India, Pakistan-Bangladesh problems are experienced as a result of the same nationalist minds. By their very nature, nation-state solutions creates deadlocks and wars.  It was desired to apply both republican, royalist and real socialist models of nation-stateism to Afghanistan. The result is a collapsed Afghan society that has lost its ability to sustain itself, in an environment of blind violence that has gone out of hand and has no principles.”

 

THE DEMOCRATIC NATION SOLUTION

 

Öcalan made the following suggestions for solutions after comprehensive assessments of the root cause of the problems: "There is no other way to save these societies from this deadlock and ensure a more free and democratic life other than Democratic nation theory and concept. It is the most appropriate integrative framework for a wide variety of cultures and peoples, from Central Asia to India. Moreover, the cultures and peoples in these places have been able to maintain their existence and originality, although not ideal, by living under common political roofs and empires of the confederal type throughout history. As long as the nation-state mentality continues, whether in the form of religious or secular nationalism, further dissolution and conflicts of these societies are inevitable. The most appropriate alternative to the intense disintegration that the nation-states of the Pakistani type are already experiencing is a Democratic National Unity project to be developed across the Middle East.  It is a model that shows everyone, every society the way to lasting peace and security.”