The armed conflict between the Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party has killed thousands of people.
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Kurds have had a history of discrimination perpetrated against them by the Turkish government.
Under pressure: Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers an economic briefing, January 30 2024.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo
Facing a parliamentary election in March, the Islamic Republic is trying to distract attention away from its economic woes with a show of strength.
A minaret from which Turks fired upon Christians in 1909 in Adana stands amid the town’s ruins.
Bain News Service via Library of Congress
Recent studies on mass violence have turned the spotlight on the resilience of targeted individuals and communities.
Pinar Selek at a conference in Paris in 2010.
Streetpepper/Wikimedia
A refugee in France, the Turkish sociologist has been persecuted in her country for 25 years. Her case is emblematic of the repression of academics in Turkey – and elsewhere.
Tens of thousands of members of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority are now living in shelters and camps.
AP Photo/Seivan Salim
In 2019 a scholar visited the Iraqi Kurdistan, where Yazidis have been resettled. He explains their religious beliefs and their current conditions.
Hopes for a better future?
Maxim Guchek/BELTA/AFP via Getty Images
Belarus has created a migrant crisis at its border in an apparent move to punish the European Union for its opposition to the country’s leader.
Beset on all sides: a soldier of the SDF looks out at the Turkish frontline during the 2019 invasion of Kurdish territory in Syria.
EPA_EFE/stringer
Joe Biden has been quick to calm Kurdish fears that the US will abandon them to their fate.
Flag of Kurdistan on military uniform.
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Despite many attempts, the Kurds have never won and kept their own nation – though, after World War I, they came close.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces at al-Omar oil field in Deir Al Zor, Syria, at the announcement that they had ended the Islamic State’s control of land in eastern Syria, March 23, 2019.
Reuters/Rodi Said
Kurdish women have fought on the front lines of military battles since the 19th century. A scholar explains the origins of Kurdistan’s relative gender equality in a mostly conservative Muslim region.
Kurdish fighters in Syria say the U.S. is abandoning its allies and potentially empowering the Islamic State by withdrawing from northeastern Syria and allowing a Turkish assault, Oct. 7, 2019.
AP Photo
Since defending northern Syria from the Islamic State, Kurdish people have established an egalitarian society where women are equal, democracy is direct and religious freedom is guaranteed.
In this December 2009 file photo, a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, trains on a weapon at their camp in the Qandil mountains near the Turkish border with northern Iraq.
(AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)
Why did negotiations between the Turkish state and the Kurds, aimed at mitigating ethnic conflict and bringing about peace, fail in Turkey?
Kurdish women serve on the front lines of the conflicts in Syria, Turkey and Iraq.
Rodi Said/Reuters
Kurdish female fighters are on the front lines of conflicts in Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and they bring their particular brand of radical feminism with them.
Turkish tanks near the Syrian border.
EPA/SEDAT SUNA
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party is under mounting pressure.
EPA/Mohammed Badra
Outside observers are keen to declare the Syrian conflict almost over. It is anything but.
Many of the Iranian dead in the Nov. 12 Iran earthquake lived in the Mehr Housing, state-built affordable apartments that crumbled when other buildings stayed up.
AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
On Nov. 12, a 7.3 magnitude quake killed some 500 and injured 7,000 along the Iran-Iraq border. This Kurdish area has also been crushed by war and, after a recent separatist vote, militarily attacked.
Read it and weep: the constitution in draft form, 2005.
EPA/Karim Sahib
A decade and a half after it was invaded in the name of spreading democracy, Iraq turns out to have been set up to fail.
EPA/Gailan Haji
It seems almost inevitable Iraqi Kurdistan will separate from the rest of Iraq – but going it alone will be hugely difficult.
Time for a redesign?
Slava Bowman/Unsplash
Catalonia and Kurdistan are both holding referendums on independence this year. But is it that simple to break free?
Central square in the Iraqi Kurdish capital, Erbil.
Eng. Bilal Izzadin
Iraqi Kurds will vote Yes to independence in September – and it could lead to trouble.
EPA/Sedat Suna
A second bomb in the Turkish capital in three weeks raises the question of who are the main players in the violent struggle.