‘Rojava’: Evolving Public Discourse of Kurdish Identity and Governance in Syria

The Syrian conflict has contributed to major debates in culture, media and politics around transitions linked to borders, ethnicity and identity. Against this backdrop, this article explores the use of ‘Rojava’, a keyword referring to Kurdish-majority areas in the country. It examines the term’s changing meanings and usage against the evolving backdrop of the governance project led by Kurds since the post-2011 power vacuum in North(eastern) Syria. The article identifies how the term has been both operationalized and later abandoned and replaced by other nomenclature while highlighting the implications of these changes on public and political discourse. The term ‘Rojava’ traces its origins to the context of (pan-)Kurdish nationalism, with its literal meaning of ‘western’ (Kurdistan) implying a notion of trans-border Kurdish identity. From this point of departure, the author considers how it has been popularized in anarchist and Western solidarity circles as well as through international media in expressions such as the ‘Rojava experiment’ and ‘Rojava Revolution’. The article unpacks how it has become shorthand in Western media for an ideology of women’s liberation and leftist grassroots governance, as well as considering the term’s less favorable reception in the Arab press, where the word ‘Rojava’ itself is treated as a foreign, and sometimes threatening, concept. Finally, the article presents how from 2016 the Kurdish-led authorities in this region of Syria sought to formally distance themselves from the term they had introduced. This change was due to realpolitik imperatives to re-brand their governance project under the ‘Syrian Democratic’ banner when incorporating non-Kurdish-majority territories (Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Menbij). In the context of its official abandonment, the term has nonetheless retained currency in the media as well as popular everyday contexts among Kurds on street level.