History & Culture

While it is important to remember the Mount Sinjar siege, it is equally important to remember the people who broke it, and saved thousands of Kurdish Yezidis from execution, sexual slavery, and torture. This year marks ten years since the siege of Mount Sinjar, one of the most devastating genocidal acts against the Yezidi community, […]

Today marks a somber milestone: the tenth anniversary of the Yezidi Genocide. It remains a dark chapter in human history, that unfolded on August 3, 2014, when ISIS launched a merciless assault on the peaceful Yezidi Kurds of Şengal, Southern Kurdistan (Sinjar, Iraq). On this solemn occasion, we at the Kurdish Center for Studies come […]

In November 1922, Ismet Pasha Inonu led the Grand National Assembly of Turkey delegation to the Lausanne Conference. The trip included an elite group of politicians, including Reza Nur, an Ottoman physician and minister in Ankara’s government at the time. The country was ruled by two capitals, Ankara, led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later named […]

On the 12th anniversary of the Rojava Revolution, Kurds and their supporters held the 2nd annual Rojava Street Festival in Vienna. For two days, Kurds and their friends took to the streets of Austria’s capital city. The first day of the festival was held outside the Kurdish Democratic Society Center of Vienna, stretching over two […]

July 19, 2024, marks the twelfth anniversary of the Rojava Revolution. Two years ago, on the tenth anniversary, I was asked by Hawar News Agency to give my thoughts on the occasion and what it signified for the world, based on my trips to the region. My time in Rojava (north and east Syria) witnessed […]

One cannot separate sports from politics. Though we like to believe football games are neutral apolitical spectacles, they are intertwined within a larger socio-political context that is inescapable (as all Kurdish fans of Amedspor are well aware). This past week, that notion was on full display, igniting a wider debate about the line between where […]

The defiant city of Şirnex (Şırnak) in occupied Northern Kurdistan (southeast Turkey) has always been a thorn in the side of the Turkish Republic and their desire to assimilate the Kurdish people. Figuratively, if Dersim (Tunceli) is the ‘brain’, and Amed (Diyarbakır) is the ‘body’, then Şirnex would be the ‘heart’ of Bakur. Taking its […]

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recently released their 2024 Annual Report on May 1st, underscoring that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), supported by its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), continues “to highlight religious freedom as a governing principle.” This is in stark contrast to religious freedom conditions in […]

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 […]

Birds have long held significant symbolic value in numerous mythologies and cultures throughout history, embodying multifaceted roles that represent a diverse array of themes. These include freedom, spirituality, guidance, protection, transformation, wisdom, creation, and fertility. While the significance of birds varies across different cultures, their symbolic importance remains a prominent and enduring feature within the […]

Kurdish culture is not only ancient and vibrant, but also holds a variety of elements that display its complexity and diversity. A powerful example of this diversity is that of Kurdish dîlan (dance) with its many local and regional varieties. For many Kurds, dancing is considered to be the essence of cultural identity and a […]

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 […]

“Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried.” — Walter Benjamin As an occupied people without a state of their own, for the last century Kurds have had all elements of […]

Any cursory google search of “Rojava” or “northern Syria” will likely leave you with a litany of articles, videos and photos consisting mostly of soldiers, war, and destruction. This one-sided media coverage of Rojava often fails to address the human side of the local society. Those who wish to take a deeper dive into Rojava […]

Revolutions can be made with guns, but they are preserved and maintained with pens, photographs, and video cameras. This is because the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy itself, and a prerequisite for a free society. Since Rojava is committed to that ideal, it is helpful to look back at a […]

In various cultures and mythologies around the world, nature in its multifaceted forms, including trees, rivers, or mountains, are considered sacred and believed to embody deities, spirits, or even the souls of ancestors. Such beliefs are also found in Kurdish culture and mythology, which attribute spiritual or supernatural qualities to all natural objects, including stones, […]

Historically, research in Kurdistan and about the Kurds entailed outsiders who have presented Kurdish identity and history to fit within the margins of their Eurocentric worldview and interests. The literature that emerged including travelogues, reports, diaries, novels, and historical writings emerged from the perspective of legitimizing Western imperial objectives and justifying its cultural hegemony, while […]

“I wanted everyone to have an education in their mother tongue. I wanted them to be able to learn in Kurdish; oppressed people like Kurds are not allowed to study in their mother tongue. For all those reasons and because of all the projects I began, they [Turkey] wanted to put me in prison for […]

Every year, Kurdish journalists and people across the four regions of Greater Kurdistan celebrate Kurdish Journalism Day on the 22nd of April to commemorate the publication of the first Kurdish newspaper, ‘Kurdistan’. Such celebrations are important, because one of the major forms of repression that the Kurds have experienced across Kurdistan has involved suppression of language […]

As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is drawing to a close, and as Muslims are preparing to break the fast and celebrate Eid al-Fitr, followers of a much smaller, yet far more ancient faith are also celebrating a new year, popularly called “Red Wednesday” too. This is a rare coincidence that fundamentally represents the […]

The current plight of the Kurds in Northern Kurdistan (southeast Turkey) has evolved through decades of state engineering and racist policies, which have resulted in the current crises under the Turkish state. A historical analysis demonstrates that the construction of Turkey was established precisely for the purpose of controlling, repressing, and silencing minorities such as […]

Afrin (Efrîn) was 96% Kurdish on the first day of 2018. Today, the Kurdish population is less than 30%. Such a dramatic shift does not happen by accident, it occurred because of Turkey’s systematic and diabolical ethnic cleansing. Turkish occupied Afrin has become a demented laboratory for Ankara’s social engineering and cultural imperialism, where they […]

On March 23, 2019, the General Command of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which includes the YPG (People’s Protection Units) and YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) – announced the defeat of ISIS and their so-called ‘Islamic State’ (in the territorial sense of the word) following the capture of the group’s last enclave in the […]

Newroz (Kurdish: نەورۆز /Newroz; Persian: نوروز /Nowruz) is one of the most ancient Aryan festivals. It is celebrated by different national groups and communities in the Middle East, as well as in other parts of central Asia. The celebration is an annual festival which marks the beginning of the new year among various national groups, […]

In that year (1988), three newborn babies (all female) and the football team of our village were named ‘Halabja’. Although incomprehensible to us – at such an early age – it was in that year too when we first heard of chemical weapons, when they were used by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein near the end […]

On March 18, 2018, the Erdoğan regime in Turkey announced that the Turkish Armed Forces and their affiliated ‘Syrian National Amy’ (SNA) jihadist factions had fully occupied the Kurdish region of Afrin (Efrîn) after 58 days of encirclement and unrelenting attack from artillery and the air. Both being devastating military means of war that Afrin’s […]

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (with all of its relentless ramifications) and the Arab Spring in 2011, have had colossal impacts on Assyrians in the Middle East in general, and in Syria (Rojava) and Iraq (Kurdistan Region) in particular. These impacts have been magnified by the fact that Assyrians have continually fallen prey […]

The death of a Kurdish woman, Jina (Mehsa) Amini galvanized the diverse ethno-religious groups across Iran towards an uprising that has reverberated across the globe. Jina’s death at the hands of the Iranian morality police highlighted not only the plight of women as second-class citizens across Iran, but also the deeply oppressed and persecuted nature […]

The genocidal campaign perpetrated by fighters of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) against the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar in 2014 brought the ethno-religious Kurdish minority in Iraq and Syria into the spotlight. While Yazidis in Iraq are heavily concentrated in the Sheikhan district of Duhok and Sinjar, adherents of the faith in Syria have lived […]