This manifesto is the definitive work of Abdullah Öcalan, crucial for understanding the Kurdish revolution. Here Öcalan outlines a democratic alternative for the Middle East.A criticism that limits itself to capitalism is too superficial, Öcalan argues, and turns his eyes to the underlying structures of civilization. Rethinking the methods of understanding culture, politics, and society, he provides the tools for what he calls a sociology of freedom.Civilization: The Age of...

When scientific socialism, which for many years was implemented by Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), became too narrow for his purposes, Öcalan deftly answered the call for a radical redefinition of the social sciences. Writing from his solitary cell in İmralı Prison, Öcalan offered a new and astute analysis of what is happening to the Kurdish people, the Kurdish freedom movement, and future prospects for humanity.The Sociology of Freedom is the fasci...

After the dissolution of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in 2002, internal discussions ran high, and fear and uncertainty about the future of the Kurdish freedom movement threatened to unravel the gains of decades of organizing and armed struggle. From his prison cell, Abdullah Öcalan intervened by penning his most influential work to date: Beyond State, Power, and Violence. With a stunning vision of a freedom movement centered on women’s liberation, democracy, and ecology, Öca...

To understand how capitalism has come to engulf our world, we must understand how it developed out of classical civilization. Its historical roots lie in the emergence of hierarchies, power, monopolies, and the nation-state, argues Abdullah Öcalan.Capitalism: The Age of Unmasked Gods and Naked Kings is the second book in a new five-volume work called Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization. Together, they present the synthesis of Öcalan’s political thinking. This volume co...

The Sociology of Freedom is the fascinating third volume of a five-volume work titled the manifesto of the democratic civilisation. The general aim of the two earlier volumes was to clarify what power and capitalist modernity entailed. Here Ocalan presents his stunningly original these of the Democratic Civilisation, based on his criticism of the Capitalist Modernity. Ambitions in scope and encyclopaedic in execution, The Sociology of Freedom is a one-of-a-kind exploration that reveals the...

After the dissolution of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) in 2002, international discussions ran high, and fear and uncertainty about the future of the Kurdish freedom movement threatened to unravel the gains of decades of organising and armed struggle. From his prison cell, Abdullah Ocalan intervened by penning his most influential work to date: Beyond State, Power, and Violence. With a stunning vision of a freedom movement centred on women's liberation, democracy, and ecology, Ocalan h...

PRISON WRITINGS - THE ROOTS OF CIVILISATION Abdullah Ocalan was the most wanted man in Turkey for almost two decades until his kidnapping and arrest in Nairobi in 1999. He has been in Prison ever since. He is the founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). From 1984, under his leadership, the PKK fought for an independent Kurdish state in the Southeast of Turkey. In a sustained popular uprising, thousands of Kurdish fighters took on the Turkish army to protect their Kurdish identity, cul...

“One of the few world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion.”—Nadine GordimerIn this sweeping philosophical work, Amartya Sen proposes that the murderous violence that has riven our society is driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. Challenging the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, Sen presents an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has...

Beginning in Inner Asia two thousand years ago, the Turks have migrated and expanded to form today's Turkish Republic, five post-Soviet republics, other societies across Eurasia, and a global diaspora. For the first time in a single, accessible volume, this book traces the Turkic peoples' trajectory from steppe, to empire, to nation-state. Cultural, economic, social, and political history unite in these pages to illuminate the projection of Turkic identity across space and time and the pro...

The 1967 War - which led to the defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt by Israel - felt like an unprecedented and unimaginable disaster for the Arab world at the time. For many, the easiest solution was to shift the blame and to ignore some of the glaring defects of Arab society. Syrian philosopher Sadik al-Azm was one of the few to challenge such a view in his seminal Self-Criticism After the Defeat. Exposing the political and cultural faults that led to the defeat, he argued that the Arabs co...

How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minoritiesThe plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains.

People have always lived in families, but what that means has varied dramatically across time and cultures. The family is not a "natural" phenomenon but an institution with a dynamic history stretching 10,000 years into the past. Mary Jo Maynes and Ann Waltner tell the story of this fundamental unit from the beginnings of domestication and human settlement. They consider the codification of rules governing marriage in societies around the ancient world, the changing conceptions of family w...