Hi people. It's been a long time.

[unity100]

How big of a deal is the PKK in reality?  For a lot of leftists like me, their establishment of independently governed areas in northern Syria seems very promising.

PKK was and is a big deal, but its very complicated. For ~30 years now, there is a civil war in SE Turkey in between consecutive Turkish authorities and PKK.

There are factions (or the appearance of factions) within it, with PYD being its Syrian arm. Recently they seem to have been aligned themselves with US due to pursue various of their aims, but they seem to be going to get betrayed in favor of Turkish government by US.

The main problem with the independently governed areas in N.Syria is that, despite the PKK is Marxist-Leninist, they have a very heavy handed culture. Not only for implementation of Marxist-Leninist ideals as interpreted by their leader, but also culturally so - entire Kurdish society still keep a clan based culture that is quite strict and exclusive. Even if PKK,PYD etc implement numerous left-wing democratic and pluralist ideals, they are always overshadowed by this backdrop in culture.

For all these reasons, the implementations found in N Syria would be quite far from what would satisfy the general left perspective, in my opinion. Surely it would be a massive upgrade from the local clan based politics of middle east and the region. However it wouldnt be up to a standard like USSR, for example - pre or post Stalin.

Leave aside from being an actual working example like Spanish communes, past or present.