Ocalan

On the 24th anniversary of Abdullah Öcalan’s kidnapping by Turkey (February 15, 1999)—a day known to his supporters in Kurdish as “Roja Reş” (Dark Day)—the following is a chronological outline of the months and events that led up to that fateful moment. Understanding the international conspiracy against him—and for all intents and purposes the Kurdish […]

The Kurdish Center for Studies (KCS) recently conducted an interview with Dr. Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Lecturer in Political Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. In the interview, Miley shares his expertise on defining “nation” and “nationalism” and elaborates on Abdullah Öcalan’s democratic nation and his reinterpretation of the concept of […]

“I don’t like having to shoot my gun. I wish there was another way to stop Turkey’s inhumanity, but there isn’t. We shoot to live. They shoot to kill.”  — A PKK guerrilla woman I interviewed in 2014 To paraphrase Arundhati Roy and Stokely Carmichael’s observations on the issue, non-violence is a piece of theatre […]