DAANES

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 […]

A handful of historical reference points are commonly deployed to contextualise the Kurdish freedom movement for unfamiliar audiences.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 […]

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 […]

Authorities in the de facto autonomous region of North and East Syria (NES) this week made an announcement many years in the making. For several years now, representatives of the region known by the Kurdish metonym ‘Rojava’ have promised a new, updated version of the ‘Social Contract’ which codifies the principles through which the region […]