The long historical journey of the Kurdish freedom movement is a multi-layered series of breaks that have transformed not only the political geography of the Middle East but also the fundamental assumptions of modern revolutionary thought.

​One of the most striking breaks accompanying this journey is the PKK’s decision from the 2000s onwards to overcome the classic organizational form that established it, and in some aspects, to “dissolve” itself.

​However, this decision is not an organizational disintegration, a retreat, or a surrender, as is often simplistically interpreted, but an attempt by the movement to radically rethink its own historical logic of formation.

​This rethinking is directly connected to the paradigmatic transformation of the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan. For Öcalan, while pointing out the limits of the PKK’s founding political form, he also tries to build a historical horizon that transcends this form.

​Here, “dissolution” is not the annihilation of the organization, but the historicization and transcendence of the organizational identity. That is, it is an intellectual move that views the PKK as a tool formed according to historical conditions, and stresses the need to dismantle the rigidities that could obstruct the pursuit of social freedom which constitutes the goal.

​The establishment of the PKK was based on a fundamental assumption common to most socialist movements in the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1970s. History could be fundamentally transformed by seizing state power. Öcalan’s early discourses also carried certain variations of this paradigm.

​But as the movement’s practical experiences increased, the impasses of the state-centered understanding of revolution became apparent.

​The collapse of the Soviet Union, the bureaucratization of real socialism, the ways in which the unitary structure of the nation-state suppressed social pluralism in the Middle East, the capacity of patriarchy to reproduce itself in all political structures, and the multi-layered devastations created by war on society all proved that the idea of a state-centric revolution was not a solvent.

​The paradigm Öcalan developed in later years was born from the sum of these experiences. Seizing the state does not create freedom; on the contrary, it functions as a mechanism that absorbs revolutionary energy and transforms society into a passive object. This realization was a shattering break that invalidated the founding assumptions of not only the PKK but almost all modern revolutionary movements.

​It is precisely at this point that the idea of the PKK dissolving or transcending itself emerges. The movement realized that the classic organizational form could become an obstacle to the vision of freedom. The organization was a necessary tool at a certain point in history. However, when the tool and the goal become identical, the instrumentalized structure itself can turn into a center of power.

​Öcalan’s critique of the state converges with a critique of organizational power. For every structure that accumulates power can, at certain stages of history, deaden social dynamism. This indicates that the PKK entered a process of profound critical self-reflection. The movement is one of the rare examples that can transform by settling accounts with itself.

​However, discussions about the PKK dissolving itself are often misinterpreted from the outside. Some circles read it as ideological disintegration, others as a tactical retreat. Yet, the issue concerns the movement’s capacity to transcend its own historical foundation.

​The transformations the PKK has undergone throughout its 47-year history are not a story of the existence or non-existence of an organization, but a process of transformation in the perspectives developed on society, power, freedom, and history.

​Therefore, the term “Post-PKK” does not express a “post-organization” void, but a political ontology that goes beyond the organizational form. The ideological line of the movement has progressed with the will to re-establish and transform itself. This is a feature rarely encountered in classic revolutionary structures.

​With Öcalan’s paradigm, the idea of revolution ceased to be a change of power and transformed into a consciousness of freedom that permeates the cells of the social fabric. Women’s freedom lies at the center of this transformation. Because patriarchy is the oldest and most enduring of historical forms of power.

​Women’s freedom has become not merely a social demand within the movement, but a constitutive axis that determines all political theory. This is a radicalism that affects not only the PKK’s internal structure but also the forms of politics in the Middle East.

​The dissolution of patriarchy requires a mindset transformation as radical as the dissolution of the state. Therefore, the perspective of women’s freedom is the foundation of the movement’s effort to transcend the classic organizational form and create a new understanding of freedom in all spheres of society.

​The idea of the PKK transcending itself is also directly linked to the critique of the nation-state. According to Öcalan’s analysis, the nation-state is one of the pillars of capitalist modernity and reduces social pluralism to a single identity category. This reduction has had even more devastating consequences in historically pluralistic geographies like the Middle East.

​The movement’s paradigm shift has opened up the discussion that a democratic, multi-layered, directly participatory political form beyond the idea of the nation-state is possible. Thus, the PKK’s historical mission has moved beyond being a national movement and transformed into a laboratory for the idea of a non-state democracy.

​The discussions about the PKK dissolving itself must be understood in this context. The movement aimed to transcend the organizational form and transform into a social paradigm. This transformation is possible by the organization viewing itself as a historical tool. When the tool overtakes the goal, it transforms, becomes rigid, and produces its own power.

​Öcalan’s critique carries a quality that questions the movement’s own internal power accumulations. In this respect, the history of the PKK can be read as an organizational experience capable of transcending itself. Because the movement has shown the courage to break its internal dogmas.

​The post-PKK era is characterized not by the dissolution of organizational forms, but by the construction of new forms of political sociality. Society’s capacity for self-organization, the strengthening of local democracies, social gender freedom, ecological sensitivity, a pluralistic and horizontal political vision against the hierarchical and centralist structure of capitalist modernity…

​All these elements form the conceptual basis of the post-PKK era. In this period, the movement has moved beyond the conditions of armed conflict to an intellectual phase that discusses society’s capacity for self-governance.

​Seen from this whole framework, the question, “Why did the PKK dissolve itself?” requires understanding the logic of a historical and philosophical break, not the technical reasons behind an organizational decision.

​Dissolution is not the declaration of an end, but the transcendence of a historical form. Post-PKK, in turn, is the birth moment of a new political form. It is the construction of a political ontology that is not power-centric, rejects becoming a state, centers social freedom, makes women’s freedom a constitutive axis, and sees society not as a passive object of governance but as the carrier of the subjectivization process.

​This ontology pushes the boundaries of not only the Kurdish movement but also modern political thought. Because the issue here is not the fate of an organization, but an attempt to overcome the constitutive power mechanisms of modernity.

​In this sense, post-PKK is not a post-organization void, but the name of a thinking space beyond the organization.

​The movement’s 47-year journey offers unique material for political theory as one of the rare revolutionary experiences capable of criticizing its own historical tools.

​The idea of dissolution is the peak of this experience. A movement that can transcend the structure that established it can transform not only its own history but the idea of revolution itself.

---