Stymied by Protests, Iran Unleashes Its Wrath on Its Youth

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Farnaz Fassihi One girl, a 14-year-old, was incarcerated in an adult prison alongside drug offenders. A 16-year-old boy had his nose broken in detention after a beating by…

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The revolutionary ambitions of Iran’s Generation Z

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Narges, a young Iranian protester, walks confidently through ranks of riot police on her way to work with long, black, wavy hair clearly on…

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How Iran’s Hijab Protest Movement Became So Powerful

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Isaac Chotiner Last month, Iran’s morality police arrested Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish Iranian who was visiting Tehran and apparently revealed some of her hair. She was sent…

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Breaking the international silence on Turkey’s aggression

Monday, June 28, 2021

Elise Boyle Espinosa An international delegation comprised of 150 politicians, academics, activists and journalists from across Europe intended to travel to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq this week…

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Turkey at the Crossroad

Monday, April 5, 2021

Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…

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Turkey at the Crossroads?

Friday, February 26, 2021

Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…

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After ISIS

Friday, February 5, 2021

Patrick Cockburn Alend Shoresh​ is a Kurdish farmer and teacher from north-east Syria who was conscripted into fighting Islamic State in 2018: he joined the Syrian Democratic Forces…

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Turkey’s Missing WPS Agenda and Implications for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Friday, July 3, 2020

Nisan Alıcı, Güley Bor, Güneş Daşlı By December 2012, when the peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to end the decades-long armed…

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The Role of Diasporic Structures in Crisis Governance During the COVID-19 Global Pandemic

Friday, June 5, 2020

Veysi Dag As the world reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, and states attempt to, more or less successfully, navigate through the crisis, stateless diasporas—particularly the case of Kurds—have demonstrated…

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Iranian feminist political prisoner’s open letter defends Kurdish women political prisoners

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee Golrokh Iraee’s letter from inside the Varamin-Qarchak prison; the pressures on #Zeynab Jalalian continue. Zeinab Jalalian is one of the longest serving political prisoner in…

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Rojava: statelessness in a time of pandemic

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Anya Briy The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), commonly known as Rojava, has illuminated the plight of the stateless—even though statelessness in the AANES’s case…

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Four poems by Kajal Ahmad, translated from the Kurdish

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Were I a Martyr Trans. Darya Ali andAlana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse I want no flowers, no epoch of union, no dawn of disunion. I want no flowers for I…

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Erdogan’s Ethnic Cleansing of the Kurds is Still Happening

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Patrick Cockburn Mass expulsion or the physical extermination of an entire ethnic or religious community – ethnic cleansing – is usually treated by the media in one of…

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“Turkey Is Reviving Islamic State in Rojava”

Sunday, November 17, 2019

An interview with Rosa Burç and Kerem Schamberger The death of Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi isn’t the end of the Syrian bloodbath — even in…

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Three poems from Kurdistan

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Zêdan Xelef, translated by David Shook and Bryar Bajalan Non-Broadcast News Today a fire broke out in two tents The families shouted, the children cried and ran bare-assed…

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No to the invasion and occupation of northeastern Syria by the Turkish army

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

The Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists condemn Turkeys invasion of Northeastern Syria and its deadly assault on the Kurds. Last week, after U.S. president Trump…

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Erdoğan gets green light

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Esen Uslu The months-long bargaining for a tit-for-tat deal with Turkey has eventually reached its culmination, with Donald Trump withdrawing his token forces from the Turkish-Syrian border area….

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Defend the women’s revolution in northeastern Syria

Friday, October 11, 2019

ROAR collective Since 2012, with the leading role of women, the people in North and East Syria have been building a social system that enables a peaceful, radical-democratic,…

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Erdogan: Main enemy is at home … and abroad

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Esen Uslu. As the temperature rose to an unprecedented high at the beginning of August, the Turkish army was poised to invade Rojava in Syria. While this was…

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Kurdish poems in English by Cigerxwin (Sheikmous Hasan)

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Cigerxwin (“The bleeding heart”), is a pseudonym for Sheikmous Hasan. He came from north Kurdistan and was mainly known as a poet. He made a great impact on…

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Syria: “More Tribal, More Sectarian, More Crony Capitalist Than Ever” An Interview with Joseph Daher

Monday, August 26, 2019

Bashar al-Assad has started confiscating the homes of Syrians who fled during the Civil War. For decades, his clan has purged the state of all but the most…

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Abdullah Öcalan’s Strategic Success on prison Island of Imralı

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Civaka Azad and Mahmut Şakar. Mahmut Şakar talked to Civaka Azad about his experience as Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan’s attorney. On May 2, 2019, Öcalan’s lawyers had…

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Turkey’s Erdoğan: A vizier or a jester?

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Esen Uslu. The Turkish airforce base at Mürted near Ankara had an interesting history. The name means ‘renegade’, and it has been associated with the Battle of Ankara…

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Turkey’s arms industry is on a war footing – High-risk foreign adventures

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Esen Uslu. In the aftermath of the defeat of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Istanbul mayoral elections, the survival instincts of his…

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The difficult relationship between the Kemalist CHP and the Kurdish HDP

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Gülistan Gürbey. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) was able to win the mayoral election in Istanbul (31 March and 23 June 2019) and at the same time experienced…

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Istanbul elections major blow to Erdoğan

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Esen Uslu. The results of the March 30 local elections across Turkey were a blow to the ruling coalition of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the…

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Turkey after the elections: Expect the unexpected

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Esen Uslu. Turkey is no longer a dark space, about which the British public occasionally gets scraps of information – it has become a centre of news fed…

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Don’t believe the hype, Isis has not yet been defeated

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Robert Fisk. After all the headlines about the supposed defeat of Isis, anyone who doesn’t believe a word of it may seem a bit of a spoilsport. But whenever…

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Hunger striking for peace in Turkey

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Dougie Gerrard. By any measure, Leyla Güven is in a bad way. She is assailed by painful cramps, the result of a protein breakdown in her muscular tissue….

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Voices above the chaos: female war poets from the Middle East

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Ed Vulliamy. The Syrian city of Aleppo crumbles into rubble, assailed by Russian bombs, government artillery and chemical weapons. In the heat of battle, Turkish troops and Kurdish…

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