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By Yara Kamaran Ismael: News of the assassination of the prominent Kurdish lawyer, Tahir Elci, made it to the headlines. Although similar incidents happen occasionally in Kurdish areas in Turkey, this incident looked different, because Elci was openly calling for peace. He was shot dead after a press conference in Istanbul on November 18th. On that date, there…
By Dr. Norman Bruce Garber: Most Americans have been painfully observing for decades the terribly chaotic conditions reverberating throughout the Middle East, involving the countries of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. And besides not being able to perceive clearly many of the interconnected but shifting reasons for all the violence and chaos between and within…
By Dr Jan Best de Vries: There are a lot of players on the battle fields of Syria: the Assad regime with its allies Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, the FSA, Rojava, the Gulf States and a Western coalition under the guidance of the USA. What they all want to disappear are their enemies of the…
By Dr. Saman Shali: The history of contact between the United States and the Kurds goes way back to President Woodrow Wilson. In January 1918, for the first time the US supported the Kurds’ rights within the Ottoman Empire in the 14 points by President Wilson. But because the US did not have an important…
By Dr. Amir Sharifi: The June 7 elections in Turkey and the electoral victory of the Kurdish Democratic Party (HDP) brought the world a new awareness of the Justice and Development Party ‘s (AKP) character and intentions in regards to the settlement issue and the global campaign against Islamic State. For over a decade before…
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: On July 25, 2015, Turkey launched simultaneous missile attacks into Syria against Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) targets and into Qandil, Kurdistan, against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who have been the leading force fighting ISIS. Turkey stated its attack in the Qandil region was to destroy arms and munitions storage…
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…
By Dr Amir Sharifi: Rojan, Live in Concert, August 2, 2015, 7:00 PM Wilshire Ebell Theater 4401 W 8th St, Los Angeles, CA 90005 Rojan, the folk diva of Kurdish music, an impassioned singer, and explorer of different styles and genres of Kurdish and classical Persian music, and an advocate for women’s rights returns to Los…
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….
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….
By Dr. Rashid Karadaghi: While the Kurds applaud wholeheartedly the vote by the fifty-five Senators who supported arming the Kurdish Peshmerga directly in their courageous fight against one of the biggest evils facing humanity today, they deplore the vote by the forty-five who voted against the measure due to some totally indefensible reasoning. One wonders…
By John Hunt: Hundreds of Kurds gathered in the ravaged centre of Kobani last Thursday to honour US citizen Keith Broomfield who died on 3rd June while fighting in the ongoing war between the YPG forces of Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) and Daesh (ISIS). Women, men and children stood around his coffin or above it on…
By Dr. M. Koohzad: The website of the so-called International Crisis Group, ICG, claims that it “is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.” Yet, it is fair to observe that their conclusions will only lead to further crisis and conflict. The company is neither “independent” nor non-profit. Instead, it…
By Yara Kamaran Ismael: In the warfare with the exceedingly forceful and well-equipped ISIS, the minorities in Iraq are demanding to be armed in order to safeguard their areas that were neglected by the official Iraqi military. Arming those forces through the Iraqi government is muddling the affair even more. The weapons and ammunition that…
By Dr Amir Sharifi: Legend has it that a king in Kurdistan ordered his men to go to Asia and Europe to find the most beautiful women and bring them back so that he could marry them. Upon their return many years later, they learned that the king had died. The men had fallen in…
