Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish fight for autonomy in Syria: a study about the institutionalization of the group and its security practices.

• Grant number: 22/08247-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2023
• End date: March 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Samuel Alves Soares
• Grantee: Heitor Cassiano Senra Neves
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the context of the popular movements that erupted in different Syrian cities from 2011 onwards, demanding the deposition of President Bashar al-Assad, the Kurdish movement in Syria gained strength, with the proclamation of an autonomous government centered in Rojava (a region composed of the unification of the three Kurdish-majority cantons in Syria: Afrin, Jazira and Kobane). The political party that mainly led the process was the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), relying, for that, on one of its armed arms, the Popular Protection Units (YPG). However, the expansion of the Islamic State in the region since 2014 and the recent Turkish incursions, which are part of Ankara's larger project to establish a "buffer zone" on the Syrian border with Turkey, pose serious security challenges for the Units. With this situation in mind, the present research aims to study the security practices adopted by the YPG in its institutionalization process as a non-state military actor, based on the relationship established with the existential threats to the Kurdish project of autonomy in Syria - notably the hostilities of the Islamic State and Turkey. To this end, the established methodology combines the historical method in order to build a chronology of the Kurdish political movement in Syria as well as the constitution of security practices and internal organization of the YPG; and documental ethnography, in order to outline a picture of the constitutive characteristics of the guerrillas' revolutionary praxis based on their collective perception of existential threats. The chosen approach has as theoretical framework the Critical Studies of International Security.