Party of Free Women of Kurdistan (PAJK) Coordination member Koçerin Amed talked with ANF about free municipalism, the reasons for its emergence, its ideological roots, how the social organization model was formed, and the inevitability of the state attack.

PAJK Coordination Member Koçerin Amed stated that the free municipalism is based on democratic autonomy, because the Democratic Nation has a mind-set based on democratic autonomous governments.

What is free municipalism?

In this sense, Amed noted that democratic autonomy is nourished from the perspective of social organization and added: “In its practical or implementation phase, by providing the representation of all the peoples living in the local area, it offers its services by adopting multilingualism.

It is based on the co-chair system. With the co-presidency system, the women's self-organization organizes and extends the struggle and develops the socialist free women's mentality.

Classic municipalism, in which the monopoly of power is institutionalized, elitarian, bureaucratic, based on position and authority, inevitably grows away from the people.

Free municipalism on the contrary develops by building on equal, free and fair life based on nature-human, individual-society, male-female, young-child, disabled-elderly, cultural-religious association and differences.

Equal representation

Koçerin Amed emphasized the importance of equal representation and co-presidency system in the understanding of the free municipality concept and recalled that the level reached by democratic society struggle and organization has opened the way for men and women to gain identity on the basis of free life by overcoming the sovereignty-slave dilemma.

“Our understanding of this tradition is based on the co-chairmanship system and equal representation” says Amed, adding that this system promotes equal representation in all stages of the organization of social life spaces.

Amed added: “This system aims at maximizing the participation of women in social organization based on co-ordination, complementarity, work and role coordination, and at disseminating democratic culture and democracy from the co-mayor to the whole society. Free municipalism is based on direct participation, transparent, accountable ways and methods are learned, because the people is actually part of the self-organization and management of existing municipalities.

The idea is reducing the centralised power of the state while at the same time strengthening local and regional governments.

It embraces the social life, where everyone believes in the necessity of being a moral and political human being, in which he/she actively participates with his/her identity, culture and mother tongue.”

Ecology and Free municipalism

PAJK's Koçerin Amed states that the free complementary nature of co-chairmanship and equal representation is one of the main features of the free ecological municipalism.

She added: “Ecological social life aims at establishing an alternative life with an alternative nature-human, human-nature balance.

The concept of ecological municipality has been adopted and by seeing all the living spaces as ecological villages and cities, it stands against all forms of monopolization.

Why is the State afraid of free municipalism?

Amed said that free municipalism, which is based on the democratic, ecological and women libertarian paradigm, poses serious pressure on the male-dominated power mentality.

Amed, underlining that the municipalities which are taken away from the society are transformed into the anti-society political power in the political sense, exploiting the society in the economic sense, added that the free municipalism idea reverts this by returning municipalities and decision-making to people.