Women in the Gardening Women’s Co-operative (Turkish: Bostancı Kadınlar Kooperatifi, BİKAD-Koop) in central Van make jam from the strawberries they grow in their fields. They produce various jams, along with pickles, tomato paste, canned tomatoes and other bottled goods. A women’s commune that was formed under the same co-operative generates revenue by making vermicelli, bread, cakes, and ravioli in a pastry workshop.
This article aims to analyse the economic dimension of Democratic Autonomy, whose creation is projected to take place alongside politics, self-defence, diplomacy, culture, ecology and collective emancipation, and relates to the reader the arguments and experiences within the economic field.
Opposed to the economy controlled by the state and corporations, the number of cooperatives where relations of production and consumption are formed without intermediaries is on the rise. Recently, these cooperatives have begun to emerge in Kurdistan, as a reflection of the operation of an economy independent from the state and corporations. Below we share the interview we carried out with one of these co-operatives, the Medya Consumers’ Cooperative (Medya Tüketim Kooperatifi), at their market in Wan.
