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By Dr Jan Best de Vries: Hawler (Erbil) is the international capital of Bashur, public life is well organized, both streets and offices of American and many other foreign oil companies are well protected by the police, and, notwithstanding the permanent threat of IS at the borders of this part of Kurdistan, the atmosphere is…
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: Winter has arrived in Kurdistan and many babies born in the cold tents of the fugitives from the killers of the “Islamic State” will die. My bodyguard Azad Kardoi and I visited in Erbil a camp of 62 tents within a church compound and are sure that the inhabitants…
By Rebwar Rashed: The birth of the state of Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 meant major changes. Mustafa Kemal, the Ataturk, as a president had the opportunity to put his ultra-nationalistic project into practice by forcing large political changes on the people of the area; for example, by waging a…
Dr. Jan Best de Vries: For some unknown reason in the Western world a distinction is made between “moderate” (f.e. Mr. Erdogan) and “radical” (f.e. Mr. Al-Bagdhadi) islamists. As long as “allah akbar” is shouted to legitimize rape, murder and destruction by jihadists both in West Asia (Kobane) and Europe (Paris), this distinction is rather…
By Dr Jan Best de Vries: In memory of my soulmate Nanny The compound’s walls are thick and high lying on a hill overlooking the plain from where islamic fanatics are expected to come just one gate in them is guarded day and night by two Peshmergas on the roof of the large building inside…
By Vian Faraj: Part 1 The first division of Kurdistan was made between the Safavid Empire and Ottoman Empire, after the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 and was later formalized in the Zuhab treaty, 1639, according to which Yerevan, the wide area covering the Iranian part of Kurdistan, eastern Georgia, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan was taken…
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: One hour a day access to electricity and water and insufficient food – that’s the daily fate of two million inhabitants of Aleppo in wintertime. Meanwhile the bombardments by the Assad regime’s fighter jets continue, his weak army being incapable after three years of controlling the city, notwithstanding the help…
By Rebwar Rashed: Kurdish Oil and Gas and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The so called ‘Resolution process’ which was launched by the Turkish AKP government and was announced by then Turkish Prime minister Mr. Erdogan on 28 December 2012, has up to the present day not resulted in anything positive for the Kurdish people. The…
Dr. Jan Best de Vries: Sunday afternoon 30 November, Salih Muslim, the male co-president of the PYD (the largest party in Rojava), who normally lives in Kobane, flew in from Stockholm to attend at The Hague a Kurdish feast in celebration of the anniversary of the foundation of the PKK, which is regarded by the government…
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: Mersin University student Şiwan Bayar was given a martyr’s funeral in his hometown of Şirnak, Turkey, on November 23, 2014. Şiwan (also Şivan) was studying history education when he decided to leave university and join the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISID) to defend the Syrian Kurdish town…
By Vian Faraj: After numerous defensive activities by the YPJ (Womens Protection Units) in Kobani, evidently equality concepts are going to be reborn from under the sleeveless jackets of guerrillas in a small city-state located at the man-made border between two colonialists, Turkey and Syria. What the egalitarian Kurdish female fighters in Al-Jazira, Al-Hasakah, Afrin,…
Dr. Jan Best de Vries: In Northwest Syria, between 1700 BCE and 1630 BCE existed the state of Yamkhad with its capital Haleb (Aleppo), in which Yarimlim reigned as king. In Alalakh (Tell Atchana), on the Mediterranean coast at the time, now belonging to Turkey (and not yet to Rojava), reigned his vassal king Ammitaku,…
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: The social and administrative structure in the three cantons of the secular, democratic state of Rojava in North Syria is based upon the participation of all its inhabitants, Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian (Yezidi), Kurds and Arabs alike. The difference with Mr. Erdogan’s nearby Turkey is that the latter is an Islamic…
Dr. Rashid Karadaghi: Not many people outside Rojava (Syrian-occupied Kurdistan), except for Kurds, had heard of Kobani two months ago. Today, anyone who can see, read, or hear knows something about Kobani — and what they know honors the women and men of the legendary city, the heroic defenders of freedom on behalf of us…
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: The wars in Syria and Iraq are in reality just being waged for oil and gas. In 2011 Sunni Turkey and Qatar had agreed to build a gas pipeline which would bring natural gas from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey to Europe. However, Shiite Iran and the Alawite…
