In the summer of 2011, the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) issued a declaration that envisages “democratic autonomy” for Kurds in Turkey. It is basically a demand for self-governance of Kurds through reshaping the administrative structure of the country. It places emphasis on decentralization, suggests regional parliaments and demands official statutes for regional flags and languages. However, the declaration also underlines that the democratic autonomy will not be based on ethnicity or territory. It highlights a regional and local administrative structure in which there is freedom of expression for every culture, and it also refers to non-territorial autonomy experiences in Europe. Therefore, on paper, the democratic autonomy project seems to stand between the territorial and non-territorial autonomy. In this presentation, I will compare the democratic autonomy project with similar territorial and non-territorial models in Europe, and analyze the possible paths this project might evolve and what kind of autonomy could be a solution for Kurdish issue in Turkey.
