By Dr Simon Ross Valentine: It has been stated with much justification that “the twentieth century was a period of false promises, betrayal, and abuse for Kurds”.(1) Such “abuse” was exemplified in the Sykes-Picot agreement, a secret deal signed by Britain and France 100 years ago, on 16 May 1916. Sykes-Picot divided the Middle East…
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Category Archives: History
Mahabad Amnesia
By Ata Hariri: In the modern age it is all too easy to get caught up in what is going on today and tomorrow, and forget what happened yesterday, last week, last decade. At first this may not seem like such a bad thing — after all the future is what is important, right? Well…
Portsmouth’s Halabja Memorial Ceremony, 16 March 2016
By Judith Kerby & Brian Futcher: Wednesday, 16th March 2016 at 12.00 noon Ceremony held in the Garden of Hope, (D-Day Museum), Clarence Esplanade, Portsmouth PO5 3NT The Kurds have suffered many tragedies not least being 16th March 1988 when chemical bombs were dropped on Halabja, immediately killing 5,000 men, women and children and leaving thousands more destitute and…
Iran: Between Fuad and Behrouz, an Islamic Fascism!
By Rebwar Rashed: Iran, according to US President Carter in 1977, was “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world”. But it became a centre of murder and destruction just two years later. The Ayatollahs came to power in 1979 and established the Islamic state which soon developed into…
Ignoring Self-Determination: The Imperialist Agenda and The Artificial Failed State of Iraq
By M.I. Augustine: From the time Cyrus the Great of Iran conquered Babylon in 539 B.C., all the way until British cartographers created something called “Iraq” in 1920, the area along the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers was never a united political entity. Due to one very important business interest, the British, after WWI, clumsily drew…
For History — Unfiltered: How Arab, Turkish, and Persian So-called Intellectuals and Educators Fight the Kurds Thousands of Miles Away From the Homeland
By Dr. Rashid Karadaghi: (This is not a story; I was a witness to it.) The year was 1973. I had already finished my graduate studies in English at UC Santa Barbara and earned a Ph.D. in that field. At that time, I was working on an English-Kurdish dictionary, which I eventually published in 2006…
Zilan Valley Massacre – July 13, 1930
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Eighty-five years ago, the Turkish military slaughtered between 7,000 and 15,000 Kurds in less than a week in Zilan Valley in North Kurdistan (southeast Turkey). Some historians put the figure at 47,000 Kurds killed by the Turkish state. Bookmark on Delicious Recommend on Facebook Share on Linkedin Tweet about it…
The Case for a United States of Kurdistan, USK: Part 2
By Dr. M. Koohzad: PART 2 OF 2 Part 1 3. Kurdish-Centered Calls Kurdish nationalism predates Europeans organizing themselves into modern nation states. The uprisings for independence have their roots in the Ottoman Empire of the late 1820s. However, modern rebellions for independence began shortly after Ataturk founded his Turkish Republic and replaced the Ottoman dynasty….
Kurdistan’s Independence: From 4 to 1-State Solution – The Case for a United States of Kurdistan, USK
By Dr. M. Koohzad: PART 1 of 2 Introduction: The Kurdish political leadership in Erbil, the capital city of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG, in Northern Iraq, was about to carry out a referendum to declare independence when Daesh, meaning Donkeys in Arabic, Jihadist terrorists – the so-called ISIS, showed up at their doorsteps….
Rojava, Back to the Future
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: Around 3200 BPE, the agricultural, matriarchal cultures in West Asia and Europe were overthrown by nomadic, patriarchal tribes from the Russian and Siberian steppes. The members of peaceful communities were slaughtered and raped in the same way as the beasts of IS operate with their victims these days in…
The Weeping Snow
By Abdulkadir Saeed Sarchinary: Extracts from ‘The Weeping Snow’, a novel by Abdulkadir Saeed Sarchinary, translated by Yasin Aziz. This story is about the victims of the Halabja chemical attack. A child loses all his family and is taken to Esfahan, East Persia and grows up with a Persian family. After many years he goes…
The Dersim Massacre: Turkish Destruction of the Kurdish People in the Dersim Region
By Shakhawan Shorash: There are many accounts of mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against defenseless minorities committed by state authorities and military forces in the multiethnic states in the twentieth century. Long term ethnic tensions and conflicts during the colonial period and after the end of colonialism continued in many countries, including Turkey, Iraq,…
In Eastern Turkey, Walking in the Shadow of Genocide
By John Lubbock: This article was first published by Global Voices In the week leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, British-Armenian historian Ara Sarafian led a group of students, academics and journalists on a mission to engage with local Kurds and the descendants of Armenians in the Kurdish region of Turkey. It…
Armenian-Kurdish Alliance for the Recognition of the Ottoman Genocide in Turkey
By Dr Amir Sharifi: Nothing is as mortal to the morals of the Turkish politicians as the recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915. When many in the world were mourning and commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide with sorrowful indignation, the Turkish government paraded its usual April 23 pompous celebration of National Sovereignty…
A Few Days’ Life of Revolution in Halabja
By Yasin Aziz: Published on Amazon, 24th April 2015 This is the story of my generation’s experience from the time of the 1961 September (Aylul) Revolution. As a child in Halabja I witnessed most of what was happening when the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown, with the hope of a democratic government and equality for all…
