Rojava

I. Background Since 2011, cultural heritage in Syria has been under constant threat. Even though the civil war has raged on for more than a decade, there is still no end in sight. The involvement of various foreign actors has further complicated the country’s ongoing division between several rival factions. With around 5.2 million Syrians […]

At just 15 years-old, Shamima Begum left her home in London with two friends to travel to the Islamic State (IS). They would be smuggled through Turkey by a Canadian spy, where the three girls would be married off to foreign fighters. Two are presumed dead, and the survivor, Shamima Begum, ended up in a […]

On February 16, 2024, The Kurdish Center for Studies (KCS) organized a seminar on US policy towards the Middle East following the events of Oct. 7th and the war in Gaza, moderated by KSC fellow Shoresh Darwish. David Schenker, the Taube Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute and former US Assistant Secretary of State for […]

The war in Gaza has increased tensions between Iranian-backed proxies and the US military, with Iran-backed groups carrying out over 160 attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since October. Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani has repeatedly called for a timetable for US forces to leave Iraq and chaired a joint Higher Military Commission […]

A handful of historical reference points are commonly deployed to contextualise the Kurdish freedom movement for unfamiliar audiences. The jailed Kurdish figurehead Abdullah Öcalan is represented by his supporters as the ‘Mandela of the Middle East’ – while his detractors opt for less generous comparisons. Meanwhile, the Kurdish-led polity established around the Syrian Kurdish region […]

Erdoğan’s regime in Turkey has continued its reign of terror on the Kurdish region of Rojava, which is governed by the DAANES (Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria). Ankara’s litany of weekly war crimes for the past several months involves ceaseless bombardments, airstrikes, and drone attacks across a wide range of civilian sites. […]

KCS conducted an exclusive interview with Semira Hac Eli, the co-chair of the Ministry of Education for the DAANES (Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) – commonly referred to as Rojava. In the interview, she discussed the impact of the latest bombardments by the Turkish state, which began in October, their ongoing targeting […]

On December 27th, 2023, The Kurdish Center for Studies (KCS) organized a discussion about the continued attacks of the Turkish state against Rojava. The program was conducted by KCS official Nawaf Khalil, and featured the co-chairman of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Salih Muslim, who evaluated the repeated Turkish assaults on civilian infrastructure and the reason […]

There are certain inflection points in history around which decades are defined, and October 7th was one of them. The Hamas incursion into Israel, and the subsequent Israel bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, have escalated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an intensity unseen since 1948. Events of such historic importance are seldom contained to their […]

The following is an exclusive KCS interview with Berivan Amuda, from the YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) Information and Documentation Office, which was conducted on December 8th, 2023. The YPJ was established in 2012 and emerged from the bloody outcome of the Syrian Civil War. Since then, the YPJ has gained global renown as a women’s […]

What does it mean to repair a destroyed city? Is it merely the construction of buildings or the restoration of collective hope? Leila Mustafa, former co-chair of the Autonomous Administration-affiliated Raqqa Civil Council, passed away from medical complications on November 23rd this year. For six years, Mustafa had worked tirelessly to rebuild from the ashes […]

On November 20, 2023, The Kurdish Center for Studies (KCS) held a special panel on the impact of the Turkish bombardments around six weeks after they began. The panel was titled: ‘Rojava Under Siege: Analysis from the War Crime Scene’ and moderated by Co-Directors Dr. Hawzhin Azeez and Dr. Thoreau Redcrow. Both have spent extended […]

Children searching around for their father’s head. Cats running away from homes and refusing to return. Fires so bright they turn the night into day and resemble the surface of the sun. Terrified children who have gone mute out of fear. Fainting mothers who awake and do not recognize their children. Six young friends lying […]

“The attacks specifically targeted the region’s vital infrastructure, including oil, water, and electricity, significantly impacting the daily lives of Rojava’s people. The Turkish government’s objective is the suppression of Kurdish identity. For decades, Turkey has waged a relentless campaign against the Kurdish cause, irrespective of location. These attacks on the Kurds in Syria have persisted […]

On October 5, 2023, the former residents of Serê Kaniyê bore witness to the world’s impotence to protect internally displaced persons (IDPs). It seems that such safeguards, which are supposedly enshrined within international law, do not apply to attacks from Turkey – a NATO member with an apparent free pass to bomb whichever Kurdish civilians […]

This interview was originally conducted in Kurdish on October 23rd, 2023 and can be found here (including the original video). “It is possible that the Turkish state will continue these attacks and attempt to displace the local population. We have seen historical examples of this, even in recent history, such as the forced displacement of people […]

Rojava, north and eastern Syria, a region already ravaged by years of conflict and instability brought on by ISIS, Assad regime attacks, and Turkish invasions plus occupations, has now been plunged into a deeper humanitarian crisis as Turkey’s Air Force sets out to systematically leave all civilian infrastructure in ruins. Water, gas, and electricity stations that […]

“These Turkish air strikes against us are war crimes according to all international laws and regulations. There is no pretext that allows for the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. But it seems like the Turkish regime does not care and is not abiding by these legal rules. And they have announced publicly that they will […]

Introduction This report aims to shed light on three major socio-political chapters and phases in the city of Ras al-Ayn[2] (hereafter referred to by its Kurdish name of Serê Kaniyê) since the outset of the millennium up to the current day. Much attention has been paid to details of the barbaric acts perpetrated by the […]

“The councils have always been undoubtedly democratic, but in a sense never seen before and never thought about.” — Hannah Arendt As Greece and other parts of the world are once again engulfed by wildfires, while almost each day a new heat record is reached, an increasing number of people are realizing that the effects […]

Despite the risk of indictment, Donald Trump still seems to be enjoying considerable popularity in the United States. A survey conducted in 2021 revealed that 74% of American Republicans wanted Trump to run for president again in 2024. The news was significant then, and it is even more so now that the former president was […]

[names in this article have been changed to protect their identities] “Biji Kurdistan, Biji Kurdistan, Biji Kurdistan!” “şehîd namirin, şehîd namirin, şehîd namirin!” Somehow I had gotten sidetracked from my post-Uni holiday and found myself in the middle of a crowd of PKK members rushing an ambulance carrying their martyred friend back from the mountains. […]

As suggested by the title of ‘Self-Determination Struggles: In Pursuit of the Democratic Confederalist Ideal’, the vaunted right to self-determination is worthy of deeper critical scrutiny. Rather than uncritically surveying historical and international struggles for self-determination, in his new collection of essays and papers then Cambridge University’s Thomas Jeffrey Miley scrutinises struggles about and within movements claiming […]

The following is an exclusive interview with professor Thomas Schmidinger following his presentation during a two day international conference on the centenary of the Lausanne Treaty held in Hasaka, Rojava (Northeastern Syria). The international conference was organized by The Rojava Center for Strategic Studies and held on the 7th-8th of July. Professor Schmidinger is a Political Scientist […]

From the late medieval period until the mid-19th century, Kurdish lands were ruled by Kurdish hereditary chiefs. From the mid-19th century until WWI, the centralization process in the Ottoman empire and Qajar Iran brought Kurdistan under the direct rule of the central governments. The Treaty of Lausanne, which was signed on July 24, 1923, resulted […]

The following is a transcription of a speech presented by Thomas Schmidinger during a two day international conference on the centenary of the Lausanne Treaty held in Hasaka, Rojava (Northeastern Syria). The international conference was organized by The Rojava Center for Strategic Studies and held on the 7th-8th of July. *The following transcription entails editing […]

Lack of International Recognition Hampers Reporting Effort In the autonomous Kurdish region of Syria, known as Rojava, a pressing dilemma has been brewing for the past decade. Over 500 Syrian Kurdish journalists, dedicated to reporting the truth amidst the chaos of the Syrian conflict, find themselves grappling with a significant obstacle – the lack of […]

The progressive, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) this week announced its intention to begin trials of the estimated 2000 ‘third-country national’ male ISIS fighters it is currently holding in its detention centres, along with around 8000 Syrian and Iraqi combatants. The mooted trials are commonly represented as ‘unilateral’ – a loaded […]

“We can no longer keep these prisoners without an indictment or trial. These people must be held accountable for their crimes. They remain a danger not only to the region, but to the entire world. These are thousands of the most brutal ISIS fighters. We cannot keep them anymore. It is creating a security problem […]

On Saturday the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) announced that it will commence trials of the thousands of ISIS militants it has held in detention since 2019. The Kurdish-led administration of northeast Syria (Rojava) had back in 2020 announced a similar trial with International Monitors led by the Swedish government but such […]