With the fall of the Assad regime, Syria stands at a historic crossroads, with opportunities to build a democratic, decentralised, and pluralistic society. Against this backdrop, the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has emerged as a guiding force, advocating for inclusion, gender equality, and grassroots democracy.

In a recently released statement, prominent international academic networks, including the Centre de Solidarité avec les Universités Alternatives (CSUA), Netzwerk Kurd-Akad, and the Decolonizing Knowledge and Science Network, have called for global recognition of AANES’s higher education system. This system, exemplified by universities such as Rojava University (Qamislo), Kobanê University (Kobanê), and Al-Sharq University (Raqqa), represents a radical departure from traditional academia.

A democratic educational model

These institutions embody principles of participatory and democratic governance, integrating activist scholarship with social movements. The universities’ curricula prioritise women’s liberation, sustainable ecology, and grassroots democracy, aligning theory with praxis to foster societal transformation.

“The newly established universities in North East Syria region are not only academic institutions but also active agents in the region’s broader struggle for freedom and autonomy,” the statement reads.

Challenges from Turkey and Islamist groups

Despite its innovative achievements, AANES faces significant challenges. Turkey and its proxy forces under the Syrian National Army (SNA) have continued their assaults on key areas, including Shahba (Şehba), Tel Rifaat (Til Rifat), and Manbij (Minbîc). The statement warns of Turkey’s efforts to marginalise AANES and impose jihadist, extremist and misogynistic ideologies in the new Syria.

“Turkey is the biggest obstacle to peace, democracy, and women’s rights in Syria,” the statement asserts. These organisations call on the international community to ensure AANES’s full participation in upcoming negotiations about Syria’s future.

The global call for solidarity

International networks of academics and activists have launched initiatives to counteract the isolation of AANES universities. These efforts include the establishment of working groups and an online symposium scheduled for February 2025. “The de-colonisation of knowledge must extend beyond words to practical solidarity,” the organisers note, linking the region’s educational advancements to its broader political aspirations.

The statement concludes with a powerful appeal: “The world must not allow Islamist, misogynist organisations to dominate Syria’s restructuring process. Instead, the inspiring model of AANES, with its emphasis on women’s leadership and grassroots democracy, must guide Syria’s transition.”

According to the DAANES administration, the university system was born out of several goals. The first was the most simple, to provide tertiary education to the region’s youth. At the time of the foundation, access to other universities in the parts of the country controlled by Damascus was blocked. The second was to provide a source of jobs and incentive for higher-educated professionals, who were leaving the region during the war in record numbers. The universities were also conceptualized as a way for the revolutionary political project of the region, which has brought gender-equality, decentralization, pluralism and religious freedom to a population previously living under dictatorship, to be legitimized and realized through knowledge production. 

It is this last goal which has caught the eye of international intellectual heavy weights who have shown an interest in the NES universities.  Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek have both given guest lectures at the social sciences department, and David Graeber, a renowned American anthropologist visited Rojava University before his death. The main lecture hall in Rojava University is now named after him. Other universities around the world, including Bremen University, Washington State University, and the University of Applied Sciences at Emden/Leer have partnerships with the system, and offer joint courses and seminars through the internet. This is crucial to the health of the universities, as academic institutions don’t thrive in isolation. However, the power grid in the region is unreliable. Central electrical stations or gas depots are often attacked by Turkey, making a schedule reliant on the internet difficult to maintain. 

In addition, despite these burgeoning partnerships, material support for the universities on the ground remains a stumbling block. The universities find it difficult to import the necessary equipment for laboratory work, and even have trouble getting the adequate textbooks in Arabic. University officials often have to resort to smuggling books. The exemptions for education and NES under the US Cesar Act have done little to aid the situation, since the surrounding nations have a vested interest in preventing educational material from entering the region. 

On the other hand, the university system has allowed for a renaissance of the Kurmanci Kurdish language, previously outlawed at some point as a language of instruction in all four countries in which it is spoken, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. In NES, you can now major in Kurdish, and receive entire degrees, including in women’s studies, in the language. This has presented its own set of challenges, as the staff at the universities and the curriculum department of the DAANES have literally had to write textbooks and create certain language in Kurdish in order to make this possible. 

But the system’s biggest hurdle by far, is lack of international recognition. Students who attend the DAANES universities run the risk of earning a credential that will only allow them to work, or continue study, within the DAANES system itself. The universities must compete with other recognized universities in the area, including one university run by the Syrian regime, and a plethora of expensive private universities. Universities in NES are free for students, and provide free housing while enrolled, but this is hardly enough to make up for this huge difference in potential pay off. 

The NES system has broken new ground in the intellectual history of the region, and is able to offer an education more or less on par with the other universities in the region. It has gripped the interest of academics around the world. But the challenges it faces are unlikely to abate without an end to the Syrian conflict as a whole, and at the very least a stalling of the weekly Turkish attacks on infrastructure and personnel in the region. 

This rebirth of native languages, carried out alongside a turn towards indigenous and feminist liberation philosophy in academia, played a crucial role for the self-sustenance of a revolution that started over a decade ago. While students at Rojava’s newly reconstituted and founded universities can freely study more subjects than before, they struggle to gain accreditation for their studies by the international community.

“Rojava University, the University of Kobanê, and Shark University are all results of our revolution,” says Zozan Sîma, a member of Jineolojî Academy¹ in North and East Syria (NES), and continues, “We call our revolution the woman’s revolution. That is why students of our universities should learn about the women’s revolution, its gains, its struggle against sexism, and its aim to create free coexistence through the equality of men and women in the democratized space of politics, and learn about all these norms.”

It is an ongoing revolution in an ongoing war with multiple warring parties and multiple interfering regional and international actors. The situation critically raises the question of how a society can invent a new educational system—even higher education institutes—during the ongoing revolution while navigating warfare and the permanent threats of occupation by Turkey, the Syrian regime, and their proxies? This is not a hypothetical question but a very real one that people in Rojava have been asking themselves for about a decade. The answer is not easy.

Aras Hiso, one of the teachers organizing the first Kurdish classes in the schools in Kobanê after July 2012, remembers how they were “teachers and students at the same time” with almost no practical experience. Qualified teachers working at the schools established by the Ba’ath regime belittled them, saying, “You can’t organize any educational task, you are not qualified, you are not teachers; you have neither people to direct schools nor people who can establish educational systems.”

Skeptics were eventually proven completely wrong, with the system now sustaining more than 4,700 schools, 900,000 pupils, and 60,000 staff.² There are also three universities, several higher education institutions, and academies now operating. However, the real challenge is not simply to build schools and universities, but to develop an entirely new educational system with a philosophy based on new sociological principles. Discourses based on concepts found in the Sociology of Freedom as well as jineology – the science for understanding life from a woman’s perspective – are crucial aspects of this new educational system.

A former colony inside a former colony

For institutional reasons, we have to view the whole Cizîr region of Syria as well as Kobanê and Efrîn—the three cantons that together constitute Rojava—as internal colonies of the Syrian state until the beginning of the Rojava Revolution. Hîva Mihemed Elî, the deputy of co-presidents of the Educational Committee of Kobanê Canton, describes the exclusion of Kurds from the whole public and formal spaces before the revolution: “There were no prospective for Kurds to have any real space in the institutional structures of the Ba’ath regime in Rojava.”

The Kurdish language was banned, the culture was not recognized, and most importantly, the Kurds were mostly seen as non-indigenous population elements. Several thousand Kurds were denied Syrian citizenship, inflicting far-reaching consequences for those affected, forcing primarily men from those areas to emigrate to other regions within Syria or neighboring Arabic countries to find work. The state determined their political, social, and economic lives so that they could provide resources most desired by Damascus: oil, wheat, olive oil, etc.

The fact that the Syrian state gained its independence after several decades of the French mandate regime, first in 1946, means Syria was, until then, a de-facto French colony. On the other hand, this means Syria as a whole has both its colonial past and its subsequent post-colonial history of integration into different blocks and alliances. During the Ba’ath reign, it was mainly the Soviet block. After 2000, Bashar Al-Assad started several economically liberal reforms to integrate the country into the Western world order. We may consider Rojava from this background as a former colony inside a former colony. These intersecting colonial relationships are crucial to understanding the region’s recent history.

Discourses on Decolonizing the Universities of Former Colonies

Let us look at the example of the African experiences of developing educational systems and universities under postcolonial conditions. With the exception of South Africa and its different paths of liberation and post-liberation processes, the idea of colonizing structure is actually a relatively new introduction to the discourses on decolonizing education, especially higher education in African “decolonization” discourses. In the late 1980s, Congolese philosopher and writer Valentin Yves Mudimbe introduced the the concept of a “colonizing structure” (1988: 2). He found this structure reproduced in and continuing to manipulate and “integrate” postcolonial African societies and states. In the case of the elites of the “postcolonial” era in many African countries, they were very successful within the colonizing structure. As a result, the elite willingly and actively attempted to establish the same educational models—also in higher education—needed for the extraction of resources and knowledge. The influence and power of these educational systems, their methods of producing knowledge, were terrifyingly effective: they are still the mainstream in all African countries with a colonial past.³

Prompted by Mudimbe’s criticism, several efforts are now underway to reorganize and decolonize African educational systems and universities, and this also includes the field of African Studies as such in the former colonial centers. These efforts primarily aim at decolonizing education and building an alternative educational system, that is, developing higher education with a fundamentally new philosophy.

We can thus understand why for Ferat Gernas, a member of the Coordinating Committee of Universities in North and East Syria, it is vitally important to recognize the role of universities in “capitalist modernity”⁴ as to be able to imagine and invent new universities: “We witness daily how, in capitalist modernity, actual physical and moral genocides are going on.”

Gernas points out how the system’s crises boil down to the crisis between capitalism (with human actors) and nature. He summarizes this thesis by saying, “The global hegemonic system and its pushing ideology, liberalism, are normalizing this annihilation of humans and nature.”

Annihilation is indeed perceived as a deed that should not be happening. As a consequence, Gernas develops his arguments as follows: “We see the need for an intellectual intervention, and we ask ourselves: why are intellectuals, universities, and as a whole the academia so helpless and desperate? Yes, I generalize, but I have to ask, are they willing to participate in that genocidal way of organizing society, which is absolutely dark and inhuman?”

The question seems to be a starting point for a systemic critique and is indeed followed by one: “We felt, and still feel, there is a need for a revolutionary intervention to initiate an intellectual and academic revolution, too, indeed a mental revolution, which can challenge the mentality of 5000 years of state-formed and forced mentality. If not, we will continue seeing all of this darkness around us as normal. No doubt it is all but normal,” Gernas concludes.

The Myth of Independent Academia

In the colonial context, the fact that research and academic work are not independent and, to the contrary, serve as tools of the colonizers, is today partially known. But identifying research “as a significant site of struggle between the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways of resisting of the Other” opened the way for liberating research and academia from the colonizing structure. (Smith 1999: 2)

The leader and theorist of the Kurdish liberation movement Abdullah Ocalan conceptualized this critique, through the term scientism, which he has called the new religion of hegemonic power structures.⁵ His critiques of science focus on the purpose of science, and he convincingly compares the social role of the knowledges produced by various religions and knowledges produced by modern scientific structures.

According to Ocalan, both knowledge production systems produce and spread knowledge for power structures to enforce their dominance over the masses. Their difference is simply a matter of method: different technologies are applied to enact violence and power over people, while distinct knowledges are produced to justify these applications. (Ocalan 2020) We may also refer to Ocalan’s earlier reflection on state and power, where he argues that the reproduction of slave-holding social organizations, required—at least partially—convincing the slaves to be satisfied of their social role within their respective society. (Ocalan 2007) Accordingly, ideological or technological knowledges produced by religions or science are not as different as they seems if they are used to build power structures, serving merely their perpetuation instead of solving societal problems. The critiques of science and more generally Western knowledge-producing systems in the Kurdish Liberation Movement  are largely based on these reflections by Ocalan.

With the July 2012 Rojava Revolution, society in Rojava and the neighboring Arab majority lands started to develop a school system. It was primarily interested in schooling children in a more democratic way. The Kurdish Liberation Movement’s proposal to home-school Kurdish pupils has been practiced since 2008, despite the Ba’ath regime.

The Administration is well aware of criticism against the school system and curricula and the dissatisfaction of parts of the population with the lack of recognition, personnel (even though regime schools have the same lack of qualified personnel), laboratories, and educational equipment (for more, see Al Ahmad 2023). But it doesn’t give up the idea of a constitutive democratic educational system, enabling each entity to organize education and curricula autonomously, something indeed entirely new in that region and anchored in the “Social Contract” of the DAANES.

It may seem a small step, but such a small deed as offering public spaces for native languages has huge consequences for challenging power structures and ideologies too. This may partially explain why Kurds were politically and socially much more prepared for the “Spring of the Peoples” than many of Syria’s other communities.⁶ In Syria, the Revolution became militarized and turned into a bloody civil war, with several international and regional actors interfering. Eventually, the war between the regime, myriad Syrian opposition groups, and other Islamic factions evolved into a proxy war. The experience of organizing Kurdish schools and regular neighborhood meetings that were to be turned into neighborhood councils gave the areas with a Kurdish majority the opportunity to organize society autonomously. This also meant putting locals in charge of their own self-defense.

Critics of the new educational initiatives, including the Turkish-backed Kurdish National Council, which is frequently in dispute with the Autonomous Administration, have raised the issue of non-recognition.

According to Hîva Mihemed Elî, the deputy head of the Educational Committee in Kobanê, “this vocal critique on the DAANES’s schools by the opposition patronized by Turkey is an exaggeration of the non-recognition of degrees. The degrees of our schools are not nationally and, consequently, internationally recognized. Yet, people trust in the ability of our school system. However, the fact that the degrees are not recognized remains the main problem. That is why a social class looks down on the autonomous Administration’s institutions and its teachers.”

“A close look would make it visible that the undermost social class sends its children to the schools and institutions of autonomous Administration. That is why those with more financial resources, who are rich, are sending their children to cities like Damascus and Aleppo for their studies or enrolling them in the regime schools in Qamişlo and Hesekê,” she continued. This social segregation is critical in that it may aggravate the social cliff between classes, something the revolution acts against.

Aras Hiso, a member of the Educational Committee in Kobanê and staff at the University of Kobanê, confirms that the education system’s critiques are partly justified. However, he differentiates between two arguments for those officials enrolling their children in the regime’s institutions: “There are officials of the Autonomous Administration who send their children to regime schools and universities. One of the arguments is generally accepted and causes no dissatisfaction. It states that the subjects their children study are not offered in the higher educational institutions of DAANES; people show understanding for them. However, there is strong dissatisfaction and legitimate criticism for those who send their children to the regime’s school because of a lack of national recognition. But I have to add, with our graduates showing their qualification in the practical field, this tendency weakens among all social classes.”

Hîva Mihemed Elî was schooled before the Rojava Revolution. Given her background, she is able able to compare the educational systems of the Ba’ath regime and the Autonomous Administration: “The main difference between the educational approach of Ba’ath regime’s schools and those of DAANES is that, at the regime schools, information should be memorized without sharing information about how, why, and where to use this information. In the schools of the Autonomous Administration, there is a clear effort to mediate the meaning and use of any given information. Another important difference is the assessment process for pupils. In the regime’s educational institutions, assessment takes place through exams, and failing exams means being eliminated from the respective educational institution. On the other hand, in the institutions of DAANES, a pupils’ participation in the classroom, their general understanding and ability to discuss, their attitude versus others in the classroom, and the way of and reasons for knowing are as important as assessment through exams.”

She has experienced that there are pupils who “indeed love to understand subject matters as they are taught at our schools” because, for them, it is “an entirely new experience” to be given the opportunity to understand a subject. However, the lack of formal recognition and criticism of some parts of society may force them to leave the school: “When they are told several times that their degrees are not recognized, they sometimes decide to study elsewhere.”

The Language Revolution

Aras Hiso, a member of the Educational Committee in Kobanê and staff of the University of Kobanê, remembers how the first Kurdish classes after the revolution in Kobanê were held in the Martyr Osman School in the neighborhood of Gumruk. “At that time, the regime’s curricula continued to be applied at the schools. There were no teaching staff able to take on the task,” he said.

The cooperation between the Institution for Kurdish Language (SZK) and the Confederation of Kurdish Students organized Kurdish language classes for two hours a week in all schools.

Hiso remembers, “Sometimes teachers at those schools, some of them also Kurds, tried to hinder those language classes, but we eventually succeeded in entering all of the schools in Kobanê.” He also emphasizes that he was one of the first teachers in Kobanê. In a group of 14 teachers, he was one of the youngest. The same group also prepared Kurdish language teachers with support from teachers from the Refugee camp in Mexmûr (Makhmour) in Iraqi Kurdistan.

He recalls the first meeting to develop curricula for the schools as follows: “In 2015, in Efrin, a campaign to change the whole curricula was started. The same year, they succeeded in preparing their own curricula for the 1st to 3rd classes of elementary school. After the liberation of Kobanê in May 2015, there was a first meeting of the Committee for Social Education (KPC) in cooperation with the SZK, and we decided to develop a more democratic curriculum in Kurdish for the first six classes. That is why we established higher education institutes to educate teaching staff for our schools. It was decided that a curriculum for all schools, including high schools, should be ready the following year. The new curricula were ready after printing all books for all classes and subject matters. Classes such as Jineolojî were introduced at the high school level after 2018.”

Meanwhile, the Manbij City Council, in a rare move, decided to continue with the regime’s curriculum while adding courses from the Autonomous Administration’s curriculum. There is still an ongoing negotiation between different views within the City Council to accept the curriculum developed by the Autonomous Administration. However, Aras Hiso feels that the “language revolution” has succeeded: “Anyway, now, having master’s programs at our universities and preparing for doctoral programs makes me feel successful in the language revolution.”

It is not Our Fate

The future of Rojava’s revolutionary project will largely depend on how its higher education is structured. Rojava’s education system is being built under two postcolonial conditions: one being the beginning of the Syrian state after its independence in 1946, the other starting with the Rojava Revolution on 19th July 2012.

This is why Ferat Gernas, a member of the coordinating body of universities in NES, explains that “we, the actors of democratic modernity, those who place themselves within the philosophy of the Democratic Nation, are convinced that there is a need for an intellectual intervention into this existing hegemonic regime of truth.” Consequently, he states that “one of the main reason for us to establish universities is exactly this. If not, we fear this dark regime of truth will continue its hegemonic status. Mainstream and mainly positivist science may continue to try convincing us that this dark regime of truth is our fate, but we never fell into this trap and never believed that this darkness is our fate.”

One of the Autonomous Administration’s declared aims is to organize higher education based on a critique of the existing social sciences. Ferat Gernas describes the existing social sciences as a tool to “destroy social, ethical, and historical norms.” His view concurs with the broader idea that capitalist modernity and its ideology of liberalism (also neoliberalism) are anti-society, on a level that they actively destroy the very society they depend on (Ocalan 2020).

“By a new sociology, we mean that the social sciences should be based on strong historical and social sources, in a way that sociology can be reinterpreted and reconstituted,” stresses Gernas, highlighting the importance of “a new view” on history and anthropology, and a “new philosophy.” Successful implementation of this aim would accordingly bring about an amendment of social sciences and relations within society and the democratization of the social base itself.

That is why students of all faculties and higher educational institutions go through classes of jineolojî, democratic nation, history, and democratic confederalism. Gernas likens capitalist modernity to a “black hole creating a big and terrifying vacuum drawing and swallowing all social norms of the society.” Universities in DAANES are actively working to defend their students “against the huge impact of this vacuum” on them.

The successful implementation of a new social science is seen as a key for alternative universities, where students will be spared from the impacts of capitalist modernity. According to Gernas, these alternative universities not only condemn the idea of “industrialism in the service of political power and state, but we want to hinder its practical implementation.”

“When we produce knowledge, it is directly related to society itself, and we aim to find solutions to its problems. We don’t produce knowledge for power, market, and material gain,” he said.

While it is difficult to estimate how successful these efforts are, a few examples show there is plenty of room for hope. Ferat Gernas mentions that, in Syria, those studying medicine tend to rapidly open a medical office for financial gains, whereby their medicine students’ first choice is to work in health centers called Kilînîkên Gel (People’s Clinics), which provide free healthcare for everyone.

Until Rojava University opened its Petrochemical Faculty in Rimêlan, no women were allowed to enter spaces reserved for the oil industry and petrochemical studies in the city. With women studying petrochemistry, not only those spaces but also the politics of developing the petrochemical industry became “more human,” as Ferat Gernas put it.

“When women entered oil fields as engineers, their ecological sensitivity and their readiness to more actively preserve nature rapidly changed the politics and ways of oil production,” said Gernas. Oil is certainly not ecological in itself, but Rojava and DAANES rely on it as a source of energy and finances. According to Gernas, the fact that women are entering this field is already a significant change.

The biggest challenge in this continuing construction of an alternative university is still the same problem that the founding actors call the “big and terrifying vacuum” of capitalist modernity. As Ferat Gernas expresses it, “This vacuum draws many students to itself.” By contrast, the only imperative of alternative education is meeting the actual needs of society.

“We decided to develop a study program when we saw there is a real need of the local communities, of the institutions of Democratic Autonomous Administration or our educational system,” says Şervan Mislim, the co-president of the University of Kobanê. As an example, he evokes how they developed the master program for Kurdish Studies in their university: “At our university, we developed a master program for Kurdish Studies because there was a real need in our schools and communities in Kobanê to develop such a program.”

They first identified a need and proceeded to find the necessary spaces and capacities for fulfilling it. One need arose for schooling in the mother tongue: “Most of our students are schooled in Kurdish, but at the university level, we have not been able to secure all teaching in Kurdish until now, which is a real obstacle for some of our students,” says Mislim.

The universities were able to “successfully” mediate between their graduated students and the DAANES institutions, which, according to Mislim, “renders those institutions more capable of dealing with the tasks and services they are supposed to produce for the communities.” As a result, people consider this “as a gain of the whole society and the revolution.” At the same time, the graduate students’ participation in organizing social and political spaces raises people’s trust in “our universities and educational system as a whole,” states Mislim subsequently.

Şervan Mislim deals with the practical issues that emerge in organizing teaching and researching, much more than with theoretical considerations. That is why, according to him, “a lot of deficiencies” relate to the immaturity of the universities and the lack of personnel and several material resources. However, he states, “In our young history of about seven years at the University of Kobanê, we had successes and failures; we actively try to improve and develop according to the needs of communities and our students.”

In line with this practical approach, he calls for solidarity, saying, “We think there is a need to act in solidarity with our university, especially in developing teaching material and obtaining material needed for different laboratories in 12 different departments in our university. For academics, it is an act of solidarity to share their expertise with our students and staff.”

Hîva Mihemed Elî, a deputy of the co-presidency of the Educational Committee in Kobanê, indicates that the graduates have high employment rates.

“Those who finish the Autonomous Administration’s high schools mostly study at our universities. And every graduate student from our universities has been employed. There is no graduate student who hasn’t been employed. Actually, the students who graduated from the regime’s universities are also employed in the institutions of the Autonomous Administration. As an example, I can mention the staff of the University of Kobanê, especially in different fields of engineering, who graduated in 2022 and 2023 and have been employed by the university.”

Interpreting and Understanding Life and Society from a Woman’s Perspective

Jineolojî is an integral part of the alternative universities in Rojava. Zozan Sîma, a member of Jineolojî Academy, points to how women’s oppression – as well as their resistance and knowledge – are rendered invisible. This was the main reason for establishing Jineolojî Academy, which coordinates jineolojî classes at the university level.

“Jineolojî Academy was necessary because we couldn’t see either the way how we as people and as women are subjugated or our struggle against this subjugation within the existent science practices. Our identity as women and our issues were invisible within mainstream ways of knowing,” says Sîma. “On the other hand, the struggle of Kurdish people in the quest for freedom and its experience of more than 40 years has its own history and experience. Indeed, with the establishment of this academy, we could discuss the Kurdish movement’s ways of seeing things, its interpretations, its solutions for different problems and questions.”

The concept of a woman as the first colony played a role in establishing jineolojî as an independent discipline within the academia in NES. According to Sîma, conflicting descriptions and interpretations of women’s identity, and also still very present oppression of Kurdish culture and people, keep the traces of oppression and resistance against it very alive. She continued. “If we try to know ourselves, to understand the oppression against us as Kurds, we conclude that women as the first colony is a truth. It is a statement by Leader Apo [Abdullah Öcalan],” said Sîma about the concept of women as the first colony.

“When the movement analyzed our society as a whole, it discovered some truths about the situation of women as well. We see that it is not an eternal colonization; the identity of women was not invariably and forever an oppressed one. There are several different theories on the identity of women. Some of them consider women as an entirely oppressed identity, while others consider this situation as a natural state of being. But we will also show our differences in this respect. For us, women’s identity is neither an essentially sexual one, a naturally oppressed identity, nor an eternally oppressed identity. As I mentioned, being a woman is not an eternally oppressed identity, but ‘housewification’ has become the main method to subjugate any identity. When we speak of the first colony, our interpretation is based on this, and our interpretation continues to conclude that the first colony and the last colony are closely related, which implies that social liberation is connected to the ending of this last colony. The hegemonic global system, which is strongly patriarchal, is based on the colonization of women. Our conceptualization of women as the first colonized nation is based on such a reflection,” Sîma said, paraphrasing again Abdullah Öcalan.

According to Sîma, academies seem to be best fitted spaces to develop the expression of “our own ways of knowing, which have been rendered invisible in mainstream science and its different practices.” She says this is why “there is a need to build our revolution through a knowledge which is freed from occupation and colonization and make sure that this knowledge is produced outside of positivist sciences.” According to her, the way to ensure this is to “produce from our experience knowledge and share it with the broader society, that is why we see academies as a well-fitted format to produce this knowledge.”

Zozan Sîma thinks they can “erase all hierarchies and dogmas structurally fixed within the mainstream sciences” within the academy framework. This, in turn, will further enable them to “develop the curricula of Jineolojî independently, collect different knowledges, and register different ways of knowing.” She argues that the Kurdish movement’s experiences led it to decide on its method for the revolution, and their own experiences of education within the movement had led them “to establish these academies for Jineolojî.”

Sîma confirms the description of Jineolojî as the science of women, saying, “[it] is not a wrong description, but meanings we give to being women are multiple.” She states that constructing women’s knowledge is at the core of jineolojî and pursues her argument further, saying, “important thing hereby is, we don’t consider the identity of women as a biological one.”

For the system to reproduce existing social relations, sexism’s influence in society is considered a decisive one. In the field of sciences, Jineolojî sees the same “overwhelming impact of sexism.” According to Sîma, this is why jineolojî “plays a key role” in the struggle against the influence of sexism in “our higher education” but also in academia in general.

“This is an unimaginable political gain for the women’s movement,” says Sîma. “Our revolution made a dream come true: Educating our children against sexism and its influences.”

Knowing is “Xwebûn”

The new building of the University of Kobanê has a quote on its entrance: “zanîn xwebûn e, xwebûn hebûn e,” meaning “knowing is being oneself, being oneself is existing.” The relation conceived between knowledge and xwebûn—being oneself—is crucial for universities in the NES. The universities engage in processes of self-analysis to ensure that their foundationally anti-colonial perspectives are reproduced continuously. A research project called Project Xwebûn is part of this societal engagement and has been going for eight years at universities in the NES. A member of the research team working on the project, Leyla Ebdo, points out the importance of redefining the very concept of knowledge and producing and democratizing knowledge, especially as it concerns the “political subjectification” of individuals and the continuous application of alternatives.

“These processes and their socio-political effects, how they affect individuals, have hardly been investigated. That is why the Xwebûn Project is vital for understanding development and assessing our universities’ role in social change. To see what was implemented successfully, to redefine, democratize, and decolonize knowledge and the ways of knowing,” says Ebdo.

This self-analysis project calls for the participation of students and teaching staff to secure the decolonization of research processes. It is done through a method of dialogical meetings that is geared toward avoiding euro-centric influences. According to Ebdo, “not only the philosophy of the research […], but also the methods to conduct the project will be decided upon in an internal dialog between the teaching staff and students.”

Ebdo finds it important to secure expertise and, at the same time, “academic solidarity.”

“We want to have an external dialogue with academics with expertise,” she says. “We see it as an act of solidarity.”

Footnotes

1. Jineolojî is the science of woman and life, proposed by Ocalan. ︎
2. Şahîn Oso, a member of the Educational Committee of DAANES from Kobanê, gave these numbers during an earlier interview with the author. ︎
3. Japan is often mentioned as the only country outside the Western sphere that was able to industrialize successfully because it had never been colonized. ︎
4. As conceptualized by Abdullah Ocalan, capitalist modernity is the ideological, cultural, and social project that dominates and colonizes contemporary human imagination. In the same discourse, liberalism as a European ideology is a pillar of capitalist modernity, seemingly tolerating different views but monopolizing the claim to truth and judgment over good and evil. Ocalan sees it as the worst anti-society ideology. He proposes to strengthen democratic modernity to encounter capitalist modernity (2020). ︎
5. Scientism is the view that science and scientific methods are the only way to render the truth about the world and reality. The way Ocalan criticizes scientism can be read from this sentence: “The nation-state’s second most important eclectic ideology is positivist scientism [The first one being liberalism]. It is the ideological source closest to nationalism. They foster one another. Its founder, Auguste Comte, explicitly wanted to construct positivism as a secular, universal religion.” (Ocalan 2020) ︎
6. Actors of the Rojava Revolution refer to the struggle for regime change in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East in 2011 and 2012 not as the “Arab Spring” but as the “Spring of the Peoples,” highlighting that in many of those countries, the concerned population was all but homogenous. ︎

Sources

Al Ahmad, Samer. 2023. Education under strain in Al-Hasakeh Governorate: Disjointed Curricula and Political Antagonism Impact Civilians. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Alfaisal, Haifa Saud. 2011. “Indigenous Epistemology and the Decolonisation of Postcolonialism” in Studies in Social & Political Thought, Volume 19 Summer 2011.

Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ndofirepi, Amasa P. The African University in the Neoliberal Era: In Pursuit of Socially Just Knowledge in the 21st Century. In: Decolonizing African University Knowledge,

Volume 2: Challenging the Neoliberal Mantra (edited by Ndofirepi et al.) New York and London: Routledge. Pp 32-50.

Ocalan, Abdullah. 2007. Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation. London: Pluto Press. 2020. Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization 3. Oakland: PM Press.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

Every person and every child should have the right to receive education in his or her mother tongue. We are trying to realize this right and currently offer schooling in three languages: Kurdish, Arabic and Aramaic. In the first three years, all school subjects are taught only in the respective mother tongue. From the 3rd grade onward, the children learn another language of the local population, such as Kurdish, Arabic or Aramaic. From the 5th grade, they can then choose a third language. In most cases, English is chosen.

Our education system works well and so far we have not had any major problems due to multilingualism. However, in rural areas it is sometimes difficult to find teachers of the native languages for all school subjects, including physics, chemistry and mathematics. Due to the attacks and financial problems, many people fled, including teachers from rural areas. Another difficulty is finding Kurdish teachers for native Arabic speakers who want to learn Kurdish as a second language and live in areas where there are just few Kurds.

One of the biggest problems of the education system is that we lack Kurdish textbooks and dictionaries, especially for the subjects of mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography and philosophy. Novels, history books and poems, on the other hand, are plentiful. For a good education in Kurdish, we need thousands of dictionaries and textbooks. In this challenge, our school system urgently needs outside support.

The difficult economic situation and the embargo are also reflected in the education sector. Because of this, it is enormously difficult to provide equipment needed for good teaching, such as computers, projectors, but also laboratories. Even the power supply in the schools can sometimes become a problem.

In addition, we have a shortage of school buildings. We also need to renovate the existing schools so that the children can be taught in safe and child-friendly rooms.

Do you know how many schools, students and teachers there are currently in Nort East Syria?

The current numbers (as of May 2022) are as follows: There is a total of 4,356 schools, 838,086 students, and 39,696 employees in the education system in all North East Syria.

The Self-Government of North East Syria consists of seven regions, namely Cizîr (Jazira), Firat (Euphrates), Efrîn (Afrin), Tebqa (Tabqa), Reqqa (ar-Raqqa), Minbic (Manbij) and Dêrazor (Deir ez-Zor). Each region has its own Education Council, which is responsible for education in the region. The Education Council is also responsible for building new schools and renovating and refurbishing old ones.

In the regime’s schools only in Arabic was taught. You have established a multilingual school system. What other differences are there between your school system and that of the regime?

Our education system is multilingual. Education in the mother tongue is the most important pillar of our system. Our goals are: Promoting democracy in society, raising conciseness for human rights and gender equality and promoting the cultures and languages of the people in the region. We work against religious extremism and promote peace, acceptance and tolerance between and within religious communities. For this reason, children are taught about all religions beginning in 9th grade. The management of the schools is democratic. Decisions are made together with children and their parents.

The education system of the Assad regime’s is based solely on Arabic and promotes only Arab-Islamic culture. Content is taught only from a Syrian Arab perspective. As a result, members of other ethnic and religious groups are discriminated and assimilated. The Assad regime’s political system is centralist, and the nationalist Baath Party makes all decisions alone.

Universities have also been established in North East Syria. Can you tell us something about the number of universities and the subjects that are taught there?

We originally had four universities, but Efrîn University was closed after the Turkish occupation. The other three universities are called Rojava University, Kobanê University and Şerq University. These universities were opened in 2016, 2017 and 2020 and are in the cities of Qamişlo, Kobanê and Reqqa. According to our most current knowledge, the following courses of study can be taken at the three universities: Agricultural Engineering, Petroleum Engineering, Petrochemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Ecology, Medicine, Kurdish Language and Literature, Arabic Language and Literature. For the teaching degree program, there are the following subjects: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, History, Biology, and Elementary Education. In addition, there are the following faculties and institutes: the Faculty of Religious Studies, Faculty of Fine Arts, Institute of Translation Studies (English), Institute of Finance, Institute of Civil Engineering and Institute of Mechatronics (3 years). And of course, there is the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Jineolojî course at the Rojava University in Qamişlo.

In addition to the universities and schools, there are many academies in North East Syria. What role do they play? What is taught in them and who can participate in the education?

A wide variety of academies have been established in North East Syria. On the one hand, there are the Academies for a Democratic Society. These are open to society, especially to people who are active in the self-governing structures. There are also autonomous women’s academies and for example, academies specifically for teachers. This is because all teachers attend many different pedagogical, didactic and society-related courses. The purpose of the society-related courses is to build democratic consciousness among teachers. These courses in are very intensive and usually last between from 30 to 45 days.

The need for a “mental revolution” is often heard in North East Syria. Education plays an important role in this. Can you tell us what exactly you mean by “mental revolution” and what it is supposed to achieve?

A real revolution cannot be achieved simply by changing power or overthrowing someone in power. From our point of view, revolution means liberation from a nationalistic and hierarchical rule and ending the conditions that make such a rule possible. A revolution is successful when a peaceful, free and democratic system is established. This is not easy because the ideology and culture that the Syrian people have grown up with for decades is characterized by racism, sexism, islamism, cultural and linguistic racism. This has established an understanding that sees diversity as a threat to cohesion and uniformity as normality in society. Schools in regime-controlled areas have been and continue to be like factories for assimilation and brainwashing of the Syrian population. Moreover, the regime uses textbooks as a tool to continue its rule and Arabize all people in Syria. The regime’s decades-old education system is one of the main reasons of the Syrian brutal civil war that has lasted since 2011.

That is why we need an intellectual revolution. In self-government, especially in education, we are fighting for a democratic culture, a multicultural, multilingual society, the defense of women’s rights and freedom, gender equality, freedom of religion and belief. And our struggle against the old mentality and for a peaceful, free and democratic life continues.

Ismail said that that the curricula [of AANES] are being improved though they are a new experiment, “Year after another, new bases is laid down, and new methods are adopted and introduced.”  

There are 860,730 male and female students in 4,798 schools in the areas of the AANES, according to the Education Board of the AANES.  

However, the education system in the AANES-held areas is debatable as it lacks formal recognition, and people are divided as opponents and supporters.

The ANNES employs special curricula, and prevents Syrian government curricula be taught in areas under its control. This does not apply, however, on security squares that are under the control of the Syrian government in the two cities of Hasakah and Qamishli.

There is no recognition given to the AANES curricula except its affiliated three universities, Rojava in Qamishli, Kobani in the city of Kobani and al-Sharq in the city of Raqqa.

These universities have limited colleges that reduce options to students to study in colleges they aspire to, the matter consequently pushes a large number of students to study in Syrian government schools and join its universities in Damascus, Aleppo and Hasakah.

Differing opinions

On the pavement, just few meters away, Mizgin Hassan agreed with Ismail. Her three children go to AANES’ schools.

“Methodologies are a success via the discussions taking place in unclear points. My children are satisfied with their education,” Mizgin said.   

“I follow up on my children, it is true there are issues, however, the experiment is a new one, we hope it would succeed,” Mizgin added.   

On the other side of the story, Muhammad Saleh, 40, does not send his children to AANES schools, they go to schools of the Syrian government in the security square.

Muhammad Saleh, 40, who wanted his footage be withheld citing personal reasons, said, “I am not opposed to the idea my children study mother tongue, but the AANES is not recognized to date.”  

Late in September, people in the city of Qamishli protested the decision passed by the AANES to close down private schools and institutes that embrace Syrian government curricula.

Evaluation system

As a new education system, the AANES depends on evaluating students instead of undergoing examinations that allow the students to enter universities based on their evaluations in the secondary stage.  

In the all-girls al-Karama school in Qamishli, teacher Roshin Suleiman had a lesson on Jineologjî a new subject introduced by the AANES, in a crowded classroom of eleventh grade students.   

Roshin, who underwent special training by “specialists” said that evaluation is a “positive” step.

Since the start of the academic year, the students are being evaluated according to their oral and written evaluations and the projects they introduce.   

All in all, the students are being evaluated from the tenth grade up to the twelfth one, upon which they are allowed into an institute or a university of the AANES. 

Though this experiment is a new one, co-chair of the Education Board in northeast Syria Samira Haj Ali indicated that the aim was to build humans on the basis of comprehension, not memorization.       

“Students must have their own analyses, discussions and participation. They must do research and present projects each term. In this way, they can be guided to build their community.”  

Locals criticize educational staff of the AANES saying they are “inexperienced” based on the vision that a large number of teachers did not graduate from universities and have no qualifications.   

To avoid such accusations, the Education Board trained nearly 42,178 teachers in summer in different areas to develop their teaching skills based on the employed curricula, according to Haj Ali.   

“Training helps teachers to evaluate students and verify the way to give them marks. This evaluation is based on oral [tests] and written examinations as two fields could differ. Some students are orally weak while good at writing.”

UNICEF curricula  

Deir ez-Zor, Tabqa and Raqqa areas are exempted from AANES’ curricula except for scientific subjects. Due to the conservative communities in those areas, the AANES introduced Religion to the curricula taught in those areas that go in line with the area.   

However, in the academic year 2022-23, the AANES re-introduced Religion for Muslim, Christian and Yezidi students separately.

With the advent of the academic year, 2,400,000 books have be distributed to schools, according to the Education Board.

The AANES confirmed that in the last six years it worked to develop a lot of its subjects to follow up on scientific developments around the world, in spite of attacks and obstructions that faced the educational process.

The AANES has also signed a number of memorandum of understandings with a lot of European and American universities to exchange expertise.  

In this regard, Haj Ali said, “We continue to cooperate with international organizations to exchange curricula and send and receive delegates to our areas to develop our practical and educational curricula.”

Although there are efforts by the Education Board to make learning a success, it is challenged by popular rejection where locals, employees and even officials of the AANES’ institutions do not send their children to AANES’ schools.

In the face of war and regional isolation, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has constructed a network of universities on its territory in order to rival the knowledge-production institutions of the Syrian government. In its stead, it offers a tertiary education system on par with international standards, yet fundamentally influenced by its democratic values.

North and East Syria’s (NES) university system aims to provide the region’s youth with a better future, both politically and materially, as well as to seek recognition for and export the AANES’ political project by building bridges to international educational institutions. While the achievements in the seven years since NES’ first university opened its doors are remarkable, NES universities’ lack of broad international recognition is a stumbling block to the success of this project.

Over the past 8 months, RIC explored and immersed itself in the NES university system in order to publish the first English-language guide to tertiary education under the AANES. Our team observed a variety of classes offered at Rojava University, while also getting to know its administration, staff, students, and visiting professors. RIC also visited the al-Sharq and Kobane campuses and met with its administration in order to gain a deeper insight into the AANES university system. The resulting report is to serve the reader as an introduction to NES’ universities, while also highlighting the challenges this system faces and will face in the future.

With the Rojava Revolution a new education system was established in North East Syria. Today, there are not only Arabic schools in the region, but also Kurdish and Aramaic ones. Could you tell us what the school system is like? How successful is the education system and with what difficulties do you have to deal with?

Every person and every child should have the right to receive education in his or her mother tongue. We are trying to realize this right and currently offer schooling in three languages: Kurdish, Arabic and Aramaic. In the first three years, all school subjects are taught only in the respective mother tongue. From the 3^rd grade onward, the children learn another language of the local population, such as Kurdish, Arabic or Aramaic. From the 5^th grade, they can then choose a third language. In most cases, English is chosen.

Our education system works well and so far we have not had any major problems due to multilingualism. However, in rural areas it is sometimes difficult to find teachers of the native languages for all school subjects, including physics, chemistry and mathematics. Due to the attacks and financial problems, many people fled, including teachers from rural areas. Another difficulty is finding Kurdish teachers for native Arabic speakers who want to learn Kurdish as a second language and live in areas where there are just few Kurds.

One of the biggest problems of the education system is that we lack Kurdish textbooks and dictionaries, especially for the subjects of mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography and philosophy. Novels, history books and poems, on the other hand, are plentiful. For a good education in Kurdish, we need thousands of dictionaries and textbooks. In this challenge, our school system urgently needs outside support.

The difficult economic situation and the embargo are also reflected in the education sector. Because of this, it is enormously difficult to provide equipment needed for good teaching, such as computers, projectors, but also laboratories. Even the power supply in the schools can sometimes become a problem.

In addition, we have a shortage of school buildings. We also need to renovate the existing schools so that the children can be taught in safe and child-friendly rooms.

Do you know how many schools, students and teachers currently exist in North East Syria?

The current numbers (as of May 2022) are as follows: There is a total of 4,356 schools, 838,086 students, and 39,696 employees in the education system in all North East Syria.

The Self-Government of North East Syria consists of seven regions, namely Cizîr (Jazira), Firat (Euphrates), Efrîn (Afrin), Tebqa (Tabqa), Reqqa (ar-Raqqa), Minbic (Manbij) and Dêrazor (Deir ez-Zor). Each region has its own Education Council, which is responsible for education in the region. The Education Council is also responsible for building new schools and renovating and refurbishing old ones.

In the regime’s schools the lessons were only taught in Arabic. You have established a multilingual school system. What other differences are there between your school system and the regime’s?

Our education system is multilingual. Education in the mother tongue is the most important pillar of our system. Our goals are: Promoting democracy in society, raising conciseness for human rights and gender equality and promoting the cultures and languages of the people in the region. We work against religious extremism and promote peace, acceptance and tolerance between and within religious communities. For this reason, children are taught about all religions from 9^th grade. The school management is democratic. Decisions are made together with children and their parents.

The education system of the Assad regime’s is based solely on Arabic and promotes only Arab-Islamic culture. Content is only taught from a Syrian Arab perspective. As a result, members of other ethnic and religious groups are discriminated and assimilated. The Assad regime’s political system is centralist, and the nationalist Baath Party makes all decisions alone.

Universities have also been established in North East Syria. Can you tell us something about the number of universities and the subjects that are taught there?

We originally had four universities, but Efrîn University was closed after the Turkish occupation. The other three universities are called Rojava University, Kobanê University and Şerq University. These universities were opened in 2016, 2017 and 2020 and are in the cities of Qamişlo, Kobanê and Reqqa. According to our most current knowledge, the following courses of study can be taken at the three universities: Agricultural Engineering, Petroleum Engineering, Petrochemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Ecology, Medicine, Kurdish Language and Literature, Arabic Language and Literature. For the teaching degree program, there are the following subjects: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, History, Biology, and Elementary Education. In addition, there are the following faculties and institutes: the Faculty of Religious Studies, Faculty of Fine Arts, Institute of Translation Studies (English), Institute of Finance, Institute of Civil Engineering and Institute of Mechatronics (3 years). And of course, there is the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Jineolojî course at the Rojava University in Qamişlo.

In addition to the universities and schools, there are many academies in North East Syria. Which role do they play? What is taught in them and who can participate in the education?

A wide variety of academies have been established in North East Syria. On the one hand, there are the Academies for a Democratic Society. These are open to society, especially to people who are active in the self-governing structures. There are also autonomous women’s academies and for example, academies specifically for teachers. This is because all teachers attend many different pedagogical, didactic and society-related courses. The purpose of the society-related courses is to build democratic consciousness among teachers. These courses are very intensive and usually last between from 30 to 45 days.

The need for a “mental revolution” is often heard in North East Syria. Education plays an important role in this. Can you tell us what exactly you mean by “mental revolution” and what it is supposed to achieve?

A real revolution cannot be achieved simply by changing power or overthrowing someone in power. From our point of view, revolution means liberation from a nationalistic and hierarchical rule and ending the conditions that make such a rule possible. A revolution is successful when a peaceful, free and democratic system is established. This is not easy because the ideology and culture that the Syrian people have grown up with for decades is characterized by racism, sexism, islamism, cultural and linguistic racism. This has established an understanding that sees diversity as a threat to cohesion and uniformity as normality in society. Schools in regime-controlled areas have been and continue to be like factories for assimilation and brainwashing of the Syrian population. Moreover, the regime uses textbooks as a tool to continue its rule and Arabize all people in Syria. The regime’s decades-old education system is one of the main reasons of the Syrian brutal civil war that has lasted since 2011.

That is why we need an intellectual revolution. In self-government, especially in education, we are fighting for a democratic culture, a multicultural, multilingual society, the defense of women’s rights and freedom, gender equality, freedom of religion and belief. And our struggle against the old mentality and for a peaceful, free and democratic life continues.

There are four universities in NE Syria, first was founded in Afrin. These universities have many faculties such as Kurdish Literature, Economics, Engineering and Jineology. The new departments are opened in the universities according to the demands of the students. The universities are ready to welcome students for the academic year 2021-2022

The people living in NE Syria faced many difficulties under the oppression of the Baath regime for years but now they are rebuilding a life by taking part in many areas such as culture, art, communal life, and education. The universities founded in the region are one of the developments during the 10-year revolution process. The first university in the region was founded in Afrin and then Rojava, Kobanê, and El Şerq universities were founded. The number of universities increases according to demands. The universities in NE Syria have a department called “Jineology”, a new department in the world. The universities of NE Syria open new departments every year according to the demands of the students to encourage the students to succeed and the number of students of these universities is increasing day by day. We prepare a three-day article series to give information about the activities of these universities.

The first university was founded in Afrin

Afrin University was founded July 26, 2015, in the Afrin region of NE Syria. It had three departments: Kurdish Literature, Economics, and Electrical Engineering. The university had 160 students in its first year but it was closed down in 2017 when Turkey attacked the city and the Turkish army now uses the building of the university as a military base. The students of the university were transferred to other universities in the region.

Rojava University

Rojava University was founded on November 20, 2016, in Qamishlo city. In the first year, it had two faculties; Agriculture and Kurdish Language and Culture faculties. Then, it opened the Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Faculty in Rimelan. The university made rapid strides in opening new faculties and it opened new faculties; Jineology, Kurdish Language, and Fine Arts faculties. The university opened other faculties such as Communication and Health in accordance with demands. Surely, opening universities during the war caused problems. The university had difficulties finding materials for physics and chemistry laboratories. The university was newly founded and had no curriculum. Academics of the university worked hard to overcome those difficulties; they discussed opening new departments. Faculties of finance, engineering, statistics, and mechanics were opened.

Faculty of Jineology and partnership

Rojava University always stays in touch with other universities. It has made contact with Halabja, Raperin, and Sulaymaniyah universities. The university’s Faculty of Jineology has made more contacts. The faculty arouses interest. Emden/Leer University in Germany signed a partnership with the Faculty of Jineology. The faculty is new around the world so it attracts the attention of many people. Paris University held official talks with the faculty.

Kobanî University founded in 2017

Kobanî University was founded on September 30, 2017. The university had faculties of Kurdish Literature, Biology, Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry in its first year. It is the third university founded in NE Syria. Northern and Eastern Syria Executive Council founded this university because students had difficulties going to Rojava University due to long-distance. The system of the Kobanî University is the same system as Rojava and Afrin universities. The students have to have a high school diploma to study at university.

El-Şerq University founded in Raqqa

Northern and Eastern Syria Executive Council decided to form special coordination carrying out works about the universities in 2020. The universities are directly attributed to the Executive Council. The Coordination of Universities decided to found a university named El-Şerq University in Raqqa.

Its door is open for students in Syria

The students began to enroll in El-Şerq University in August. The university’s academic year 2021-2022 will start in October. In the beginning, the El-Şerq University has three faculties; the Faculty of Arabic Language and Literature, the Faculty of Educational Sciences, and the Faculty of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. The door of the university is open for all students in Syria.

Part 2: Rohan Mistefa: Students are educated with a perspective respecting democracy, ecology, and women’s freedom

Coordination of NE Syrian Universities Co-chair Rohan Mistefa says the universities in NE Syria are managed with a co-presidency system and the university students are educated with a perspective respecting democracy, ecology, and women’s freedom.

In Northern and Eastern Syrian universities, teachers give importance to students’ thoughts. Rohan Mistefa, the co-chair of the Coordination of NE Syrian Universities, spoke to our news agency about the organization and system of universities in NE Syria. “The opening of the universities was a necessity under war conditions. Autonomous Administration provided the opportunity to open universities. This was a result of the Revolution in Rojava. Many scientists and academics emigrated due to the war and the chaos in Syria. This situation caused a gap for education.”

Afrin University was plundered during the invasion

Noting that the gap was filled in time, Rohan Mistefa said that many students don’t have the opportunity to go and study outside the region, “That’s why we decided to found universities in the region,” Rohan Mistefa said that they aim to create a new generation and society based on the idea of Democratic Nation, freedom and equality. “We didn’t want the universities to remain as institutes focus on only academic achievement. Our aim was to educate the university students to serve their people after graduating from the universities. In accordance with this purpose, our first university was opened in Afrin in 2015. Although Afrin was under siege, the university took an important step in science. But unfortunately; Afrin was invaded in 2018 and all materials of the university were stolen and plundered. In addition, the teachers, students, and administrators of the university went to different places.

New departments will be opened at Rojava University

Rohan Mistefa commented on the increasing number of faculties and institutes meeting the needs of the students. The second university in NE Syria was founded in Qamishlo in 2016. “The university had Agriculture and Kurdish Language and Culture, Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Faculties. Then, the Faculty of Jineology and the Institute of Finance and Management were opened. Our Faculty of Medicine was an academy and it was officially transferred to Rojava University. We also opened the Civil Engineering, Ecology, and Civilization departments and Faculty of Communication and Religious Sciences ((Islam, Yazidism, and Christianity). In the past years, the university opened the Faculty of Law and this year it opened the Faculties of Electronics and Computers.”

Rohan Mistefa told us the Kobanî University was founded in 2017. “The university had faculties of Kurdish Literature, Biology, Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry in its first year. This year, it will open electronics, technical and communication institutes. It also has Kurdish Literature, Arabic Literature departments.”

El-Şerq University’s academic year 2021-2022 will start next month

Rohan Mistefa told us the El-Şerq University was founded in 2021, “Because the majority of the citizens in the liberated areas are Arabs and they needed a university. The university has Arabic Literature, English, and Computer departments for students studying in Arabic. The students begin to enroll in El-Şerq University and the university’s academic year 2021-2022 will start next month.”

Women are active at universities

Rohan Mistefa also commented on the education system of universities, “The systems of universities in NE Syria are very different from other universities.” The universities in NE Syria are managed with a co-presidency system. “Everything about the universities is decided equally. Women are very active at these universities. We formed the Women’s Council at the universities. In addition, there is the University High Council and some students have taken part in this council. The universities have also an organization called “University High Coordination” including co-chairs of faculties, administration, and spokespersons of the universities. Subjects related to faculties, short-term strategies and basic discussions are held by this coordination. The reason why we form these councils is to decide everything about the universities in a democratic, free manner.”

The Autonomous Administration gives certificates to students

At the beginning, the number of students of these universities was about 500-600 but this number is increasing day by day. “The number of female students is more than male students,” Rohan Mistefa said that the Autonomous Administration gives certificates to students in Kobanî and Shehba and Cizre. “We estimate the number of students will be 2,500 this year.

“The universities in NE Syria are different from the universities of the Baath regime”

Rohan Mistefa indicated that the universities in NE Syria are different from the universities of the Baath regime, “The universities in NE Syria are managed with co-presidency system. But the universities of the Baath regime are managed by one person. We give importance to students at universities because the students form universities. Students must have responsibilities at the universities. We want to educate free people. At the regime’s universities, teachers give their lessons and leave. They don’t care about students understand what they say. At the universities of NE Syria, we assess students’ participation in classes. Students and teachers work collectively.”

They want to develop programs offering master’s degrees

Rohan Mistefa talked about the Faculty of Jineology at universities, “The Faculty of Jineology Science is the first in the world. But we don’t have programs offering master’s degrees. We want to develop programs offering master’s degrees to students after their graduation. We have already signed a partnership with universities in other countries and we also want to get in contact with many abroad universities.”

“The door of universities is open for everyone”

Rohan Mistefa talked about the plans of the universities in the upcoming period, “We want to open new departments for students every year. The universities belong to students. The door of universities is open for everyone.”

Part 3: Students: Our future is in our own universities

Most students prefer Rojava University to study in Kurdish and they want to teach what they have learned to next generations, “Our future is in our university.”

Universities in NE Syria educate generations as constructive universities. The students studying at these universities describe these universities differently. After completing a preparatory class at the regime’s university, I want to continue my university education at Rojava University. I wanted to study in the Department of Jineology, and this year, I will graduate from this faculty. The reason why I wanted to study in this department is that I wanted to learn more about it,” says Simav Heyder, one of the students of Rojava University’s Department of Jineology.

“Universities are our future”

Simav Heyder drew attention to difficulties she faced for transferring from an Arab university. “In the beginning, I had difficulties in understanding the concepts. Now, I have comprehensive knowledge because the science of women includes all sciences. I have learned the history, will, and rights of women, who led revolutions in the past and have been leading the revolutions. Students at the university are equal and have rights, they also have a good friendship. All students can study in their own language. Our universities are our future.”

“I have learned a lot in the academic area”

Hevin Ebdo studies fine arts at Rojava University. She has had an interest in painting since her childhood, “However, I didn’t have any opportunity to develop myself in painting. I used to take private lessons to develop myself. When I heard the foundation of Rojava University, I wanted to study fine arts at the university. Studying fine arts was my dream. At university, I have improved my Kurdish and learned a lot in the academic area. I want to teach what I have learned to the next generation after graduating from the university. I am a mother and I will send my children to Rojava University when they grow up.”

“Most people wanted to learn Kurdish”

Canda Erefat, a former student of Rojava University, is an academic in the Faculty of Kurdish Language and Literature at Rojava University. She is one of the first students of Rojava University’s Department of Kurdish Language and Literature in 2016. “The department normally lasts four years but we graduated after studying two years because our society needed teachers. We graduated from the university in 2018.  We were several students. After the revolution, most people wanted to learn Kurdish.”

System of Rojava University is different

The Faculty of Kurdish Language and Literature has a basic system and that it creates new things within itself, Canda Erefat said, “We studied in the schools of the regime before studying at Rojava University. In the schools of the regime, we weren’t allowed to go close to the rooms of the school administrators and we couldn’t express what we wanted to say. At Rojava University, we have a good friendship with students. We respect each other. The students learn Kurdish poetry, novel, grammar  in the Faculty of Kurdish Language and Literature.”

“Jineology brings change”

Sewsen Remo is an academic in the Faculty of Jineology at Rojava University. She spoke to us about the faculty. “I became one of the first students of the faculty in 2017. When the faculty was opened, I wanted to study Jineology in the faculty because Jineology is important for women. You learn the history of women and everything about women.”