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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
Internationalist Commune of Rojava. The threat of yet another war looms over northern Syria once again. Turkish troops and their Islamist mercenaries are massing on the borders of…
Maysam Behravesh. US President Donald Trump’s abrupt announcement last week of the withdrawal of American troops from Syria caught many people off guard, including his own administration officials. It…
Dr Hawzhin Azeez If you want freedom you have to take it! You cannot appeal to the conscience of the imperialists, the colonialists, the oppressors, and the creators…
Bianca Britton and Gul Tuysuz. Syria’s army said Friday it had entered the northern city of Manbij for the first time in years after Kurdish fighters called on…
Douglas Gerrard. Of the four countries into which Kurdistan is divided, the region spanning Iran is the least prominent in western consciousness. Rojava is well known amongst leftists due…