Book Talk | The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria with Dr. Amy Austin Holmes

In State of Survivors: The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria, Dr. Amy Austin Holmes charts the movement of Syrian Kurds and their Arab and Christian allies to govern their semi-autonomous region, also known as Rojava. Drawing from an original survey of the Syrian Democratic Forces, untapped archival documents, and seven years of field research, Holmes traces the genealogy of this social experiment to the Republic of Mount Ararat in Turkey, where a self-governing entity was proclaimed in 1927 based on a treaty of collaboration between Kurds and Armenian genocide survivors. Founded by survivors of modern-day atrocities, the Autonomous Administration does more to empower women and minorities than any other region of Syria. In this new book, Dr. Holmes analyzes its military and police forces, schools, the judicial system, the economic model it has implemented, and strategy of empowering women who were once enslaved by ISIS.
Please join the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program for a discussion with the author, Dr. Amy Austin Holmes, about the remarkable story of the people who both triumphed over ISIS and created a model of decentralized governance in Syria that could eventually be expanded if Assad were to ever fall.

[@filayhigh]

I’m a descendent of Armenian genocide survivors. My parents migrated from Syria to the United States. As far as I know, big number Armenian people were killed by organized Kurdish gangs during the genocide. Actually we traveled back to where my grandfather was born. All our properties were taken over by local Kurds. Some of distant relatives recently migrated to Europe from northern Syria. I’m not sure how we can call SDF as a democratic model. Obviously I was not there. But we know that SDF is an armed group and not a democratically elected government. Unfortunately, foreign powers destabilized the region by supporting Islamic groups or YPG/SDF. Western leftists/socialists often romanticize YGG/SDF for ideological reasons. They call it a democratic model for other regions which sounds absurd.

[@AreShakhavan]

Thank you professor