Kurdish Politics After the Rojava Revolution

Kurdish Politics After the Rojava Revolution: Transnational Engagement and the Gendered Nation explores how the Rojava Revolution has transformed Kurdish political activism, identity, and engagement across the global Kurdish diaspora.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and extensive field research in Kurdish communities across Western Europe and North America, the book examines how developments in the Middle East have reshaped Kurdish politics beyond the region itself. Central to its analysis is the growing influence of women’s leadership and feminist ideas, demonstrating how the prominent role of Kurdish women in Rojava has redefined collective identity and inspired new forms of resistance, solidarity, and political mobilisation. The study explores key developments including challenges to the PKK’s terrorist designation in Europe, the transnational spread of the slogan Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (“Women, Life, Freedom”), and the renewed significance of Kurdish actors in struggles for democracy. It also assesses the consequences of Rojava’s limited international recognition and the retreat of Western support, situating these developments within wider debates on democratic decline and the future of liberal international norms.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Kurdish studies, Middle East politics, gender studies, and transnational social movements, as well as readers interested in feminism, radical democracy, and alternative political futures beyond the nation-state.

Soheila Shahriari is a political scientist and researcher affiliated with EHESS in Paris. Her work focuses on democracy, gender studies, international relations theory, transnational political mobilizations, vulnerability and political resistance, and Middle Eastern politics and its diasporas. She holds degrees from Sorbonne University and EHESS. She currently teaches courses on vulnerability and political resistance at Paris-Saclay University, as well as Religion and International Relations and Media and Politics at Rouen University in France.