It was such a pleasure to speak to Professor Pinar Dinç, a brilliant, funny, and deeply human scholar.
We talked about her tattoos and how they remind her to do research with a conscience, and how the personal is always political.
We talked about the benefits and challenges of living and working in Sweden as single mother, and as an immigrant.
Then we dug into it.
Pinar told me why it’s important to think about and understand Rojava, the autonomous political entity that arose in Syria after 2011. Rojava is a truly unique contemporary experiment in direct democracy, gender equality, and ecological safeguarding. Pinar does a wonderful job outlining its history and the political challenges it faces today.
She explained the research which lies closest to her heart: How genocide is closely related to ecocide. This genocide-ecocide nexus helps understand the horrors unfolding in Palestine, and in other areas across the globe.
I was able to visit the West Bank… I could see tiny [olive tree] branches, and they were just broken over night. There was no chance of settling there, of existing on that land... it’s not only about killing people, it’s about killing their environment.
We talked about so much more, including the human capacity to resist and find joy, even when facing seeming annihilation.
I hope you’ll enjoy the episode as much I enjoyed learning from Pinar.
You can learn more about Pinar and access some her writings for free here:
ECO-Syria project: https://eco-syria.blogg.lu.se/
(Article) “Roots of destruction: exploring the genocide-ecocide nexus through the destruction of olive trees in occupied Palestine and Rojava”: https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2025.2541756
(Book) The Republic of Turkey and its Unresolved Issues: 100 Years and Beyond: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-981-96-1583-4.pdf
Sound credits:
Sci Fi Organ.wav by samule44 -- https://freesound.org/s/96028/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Political (loop) by AudioCoffee -- https://freesound.org/s/718891/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
