Abuse of power and abuse of authority over armed militias have taken a level that public shootouts are not uncommon in PUK-governed Sulaimani. Ten members of the security forces were wounded during a shooting incident late on Monday night (June 21) in Sulaimani’s Sarchinar neighborhood, which allegedly involved members of a variety of units affiliated […]

Washington Kurdish Institute   Since the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Kurds have suffered various forms of persecution including massacres and destruction of Kurdish villages and cities as part of a systematic, ideologically-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing. Mainly the wars on Kurds, not only in Turkey but in Iran, Iraq, and Syria […]

Nechirvan Barzani demanded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party to distance its war from the people of Kurdistan. This came in a speech by Barzani, during a graduation ceremony for students of the American University of Kurdistan in Duhok. Regarding the PKK and Turkey’s conflict, the region’s President said, “enough disrespect for the will of the people […]

Security forces belonging to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has forcibly closed the regional bureau of Kurdistan 24 in northeast of Syria, a statement by Kurdistan 24 Company for Media and Research Ltd said on Sunday. “This act directly undermines our reporting and the hard work of our journalists, who give a voice to the […]

by Farhang Faraydoon Namdar for nationalinterest. Turkey has failed to contain the PKK despite having the second most powerful military in NATO. This, in turn, has had Ankara adopt a three-phased strategy of building a narrative that can facilitate Turkish objectives through nonmilitary means.   After four decades of fighting, almost 40,000 casualties, and billions of […]

Repub of report issued by Amnesty International. Over the past year the authorities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KR-I) have ruthlessly cracked down on journalists, activists and protesters exercising their right to freedom of expression, including by arbitrarily arresting and forcibly disappearing them, Amnesty International said today. The crackdown which first began in March […]

Femicide, or murder of women, is unfortunately an all too familiar phenomenon in Kurdistan. Despite various legislations and criminal approaches, in 2021 the number of murders of Kurdish women in Iran, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan is again steadily increasing. By Hedwig Kuijpers, translated from Dutch. Iranian Kurdistan is buzzing with rumors of the latest victim […]

By Karwan Faidhi Dri, republished from Rudaw. In the early hours of a May morning, a drone dropped a bomb on Turkey’s Diyarbakir airport. It was an audacious attack by a band of armed Kurdish fighters who have been fighting the Turkish state from the mountains for decades, using mostly AK-47s, and is part of […]

Local and media sources in Iranian Kurdistan reported last night (June 16th) that an armed team affiliated with Kurdish militant groups clashed with Islamic Republic security forces in the town of Sarvabad in Kurdistan Province. Considering the history of this region, it seems that this group is a terrorist group of PJAK and has tried […]

Kurdish-friendly sociologist-author Beşikçi said, “The PKK’s attack on the Peshmerga Forces has no legitimate basis. This means not recognizing the status of the Kurdistan Regional Government, or even trying to demolish it,” he said. Sociologist-author İsmail Beşikçi evaluated the PKK ‘s recent attacks on the Peshmerga Forces upon questions from K24 . Beşikçi said, “ There is no legitimate basis for the PKK ‘s attack on the Peshmerga […]