The New Wave of Politics in the Struggle for Self-Determination in Rojhelat
In an attempt to decolonize Kurdistan, at least discursively, Kurds refer to the Kurdish region of Iran as Rojhelat, instead of Iranian Kurdistan. Rojhelat, meaning “the place where the sun rises,” refers to the eastern portion of Kurdistan—the Kurdish homeland that stretches across four countries. This terminology has been
The Kurdish Movement’s Disparate Goals and the Collapse of the Peace Process with Turkey
The Kurdish movement in Turkey has three stated objectives: to achieve a resolution of the Kurdish issue, to democratize Turkey and to establish a decentralized political system formulated as Democratic Confederalism by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).[1] Although the PKK is at the
Where Will You Find That Many Women?
Aysel Tuğluk is a Kurdish politician, a founding member and the first co-chair of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Turkey. She was elected as a member of parliament in 2007 and banned from politics for five years when the Constitutional Court outlawed the DTP in 2009. Tuğluk wasThe Kurdish Movement’s Relationship with the Palestinian Struggle
The Palestinian and Kurdish struggles for self-determination share several common features. Both are stateless movements fighting against colonial, apartheid regimes in the Middle East and both have tortured histories of oppression and resistance. Despite the similarities, the relationship between Kurdish and Palestinian political circles is fragmented and tense since
Arabs Across Syria Join the Kurdish-Led Syrian Democratic Forces
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defending it were established by Kurdish political and military forces. But the SDF also attracts recruits from all over Syria. Why do Arabs from areas both inside and outside SDF control join this military
The Kurdish Freedom Movement, Rojava and the Left
Efforts by the Kurds to put revolutionary ideals into practice in Rojava captured the imagination of anarchists and leftists in Europe and North America. Thomas Jeffrey Miley explains the left's fascination with Rojava, the ties of solidarity that connect the Kurdish freedom movement to Europe, Öcal
The Armenian Genocide in Kurdish Collective Memory
Kurdish acknowledgement of participation in the Armenian genocide of 1915 along with Kurdish municipal efforts to atone have grown tremendously in the past 20 years. Adnan Çelik draws on his fieldwork and personal experience to explain how Kurdish memory work—drawing on knowledge transmitted for mor
Liminal Lineages of the "Kurdish Question"
Kurdistan is a liminal space. It has been at the geopolitical interface of both old empires and modern states. The historical dynamics of this geopolitical liminality have been and remain the primary determinant of Kurdish politics and history. Prior to the modern era, the central vector of these dynamics was
Tracing the Conceptual Genealogy of Kurdistan as International Colony
İsmail Beşikci is the first social scientist in modern Turkey to analyze the oppression of Kurds, distributed across four nation states, through the concept of the “international colony.” In recent years, Beşikci has been celebrated among his peers and a younger generation of intellectuals in Turkey and beyond, who increasingly