Any political order that emerges amid destruction on this scale must be understood not simply as a governance choice, but as an existential response to chaos. History is not written solely in the language of destruction. At certain moments, order emerges unexpectedly from within disintegration itself. Recent world history is replete with such examples.
The Latin phrase Ordo ab Chao (order born from chaos) is not a randomly chosen metaphor to describe the experience of Rojava and Northern Syria. The structure that emerged from 2012 onward was not a predesigned state project, but the outcome of society’s effort to preserve its existence and generate continuity in the absence of the state.
Developing amid security vacuums, sectarian violence, and forced displacement, this experience did not seek to impose order by suppressing chaos; rather, it aimed to build order by recognizing chaos, internalizing its parameters, and managing it.
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The economic policies adopted in Rojava and Northern Syria rest on micro-level but highly decisive measures. Ensuring that essential commodities such as sugar, fuel, and basic foodstuffs remain accessible at controlled prices; preventing strategic resources like oil from being surrendered to market speculation; and above all, organizing healthcare services to be entirely free or provided without regard for payment—these are the concrete expressions of this political rationality.
These are not grand ideological claims, but vital balancing mechanisms that prevent social disintegration, displacement, and collapse.
It must be emphasized: this approach is not a romanticized “alternative economic model.” Capitalist reflexes, market relations, and irregular practices persist in this geography as well. This is inevitable. What is decisive is preventing these reflexes from becoming destructive to the political and social fabric. Rather than surrendering the economy to the absolute dominance of the free market, the governing rationality in Rojava has focused on preserving the minimum balance points necessary to keep society standing.
For this very reason, the economic pillar constitutes the sustainability test of the order beyond military and political momentum. A ground where people can receive treatment, access basic needs, and are not pushed into absolute uncertainty about the future serves as the silent but vital carrier of political order. Rojava’s survival to date has been possible because this carrying rationality has been preserved despite immense pressure.
Today, signals from the field indicate that this capacity is being directly targeted. The process conducted under the discourse of “integration” is turning into a liquidation line advancing through unilateral impositions rather than mutual and binding agreements. Turkey’s “multi-instrument pressure” strategy—simultaneously deploying diplomacy, security, and political coercion—aims to appropriate the military, political, and social accumulation built over more than a decade.