Para além do estado-nação: o confederalismo democrático de Abdullah Öcalan em diálogo com as teorias de relacões internacionais

Abstract

This paper analyzes how Abdullah Öcalan's political thought and Democratic Confederalism engage with critical debates in International Relations regarding the nation-state. Starting from the observation that state-centrism constitutes a structuring ontological presupposition of the discipline, it examines how different theoretical currents, from realism to Marxism, including the English School and post-positivist approaches, naturalized or problematized the centrality of the state as a legitimate form of political organization. It then reconstructs the historical trajectory of the Kurdish question, the ideological evolution of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and the formulation of Democratic Confederalism, whose pillars of community autonomy, direct democracy, social ecology, and women's liberation represent a rupture with the state model. Finally, it analyzes the political experience of Rojava as a contradictory materialization of this project and promotes a comparative dialogue between Democratic Confederalism and the critical currents of the discipline. The paper concludes that, although different critical approaches have contributed to denaturalizing the modern state, Democratic Confederalism proposes a deeper rupture by questioning not only the practices of the state, but its own ontological centrality as a legitimate form of political organization, even if its practical realization is marked by tensions imposed by the persistence of the interstate system.