Yesterday in Berlin there was great interest in the third volume "Sociology of Freedom" of Abdullah Öcalan's book “Manifesto of Democratic Civilization”. About 60 people gathered to listen to the presentation of the book by the translator and spokesperson of the international initiative "Freedom for Öcalan - Peace in Kurdistan", Reimar Heider. Due to the pandemic restrictions, admission could not be granted to other interested parties.

Heider introduced the event with some facts about the person of Abdullah Öcalan, his prison conditions, and the works he wrote, before discussing the contents of "Sociology of Freedom". According to the translator, the central category around which the work revolves is "society". In the first part of his defense, the author and leader of the Kurdish freedom movement, Abdullah Öcalan, describes the attacks to which society is exposed in capitalist modernity, which result in a "sociocide", understood as an attempt to eradicate all sociality. As his counter-draft to capitalist modernity, Öcalan sketches the perspective of democratic modernity based on the dimensions of moral-democratic society, eco-industrial society and democratic-confederalist society. In this way, Öcalan does not stop at a critique of the existing, but also offers approaches for the construction of an alternative.

According to Heider, Öcalan's remarks constantly invite the readers to question their existing knowledge structures. The defense writings are also of special significance because the author is not merely a political theorist whose ideas are discussed in academic circles, but because he is still considered a mastermind and important representative of the Kurdish freedom movement, which is a central political actor in the Middle East.