Culture, Events, Film, Regions of Kurdistan, Turkey, Video

Duvar (Film, 1983) Director: Yilmaz Güney (Multi Subtitles)

Teens in a Turkish prison struggle to survive under hideous conditions. Made by dying Yilmaz Guney in France, after he escaped from a Turkish prison, enabling him to accept his award at Cannes for Yol (The Road).
When the Turkish superstar leading man turned human rights activist, Guney was convicted for pro-Kurdish political activity and murder, by the Turkish military regime. Director/writer Guney’s last film, Duvar (The Wall), was banned in Turkey for 17 years.
The incarcerated teens organise and fight back, brutalise each other, exult over the smallest triumph, while joking, suffering and learning from the inhumanity they wallow in. The prison also separately houses men and women, many played by other Turkish expatriates.
Chinese (simp), Farsian, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese(Br), Rusian and Turkish subtitles…
Video

UK anti-terror laws designed to punish international solidarity – Les Levidow CAMPACC

“The UK anti-terror laws have been designed and used to punish solidarity with national liberation movements such as the Kurdish Freedom Movement” Les Levidow. A co-founder of the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), is interviewed by journalist Erem Kansoy.

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Events, Regions of Kurdistan, Syria, Video, Women's Alliance for Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria

From Women’s Liberation Ideology Towards Free Women’s Organisations

The Kurdish women’s movement views women’s liberation as the guarantee for the struggle against patriarchy, state, and capitalism. Women’s autonomous self-organization in all spheres of life is at the heart of Kurdistan’s social revolution. But why women’s autonomy?

In this webinar, Nilüfer Koç will take us through the different stages that have led to Kurdish women’s autonomous self-organization. From the early theory of ‘breaking off’ from traditional, patriarchal gender roles, to the project to ‘killing the man inside’ as the struggle for men’s liberation from patriarchal structures. From the declaration of the women’s liberation ideology and the foundation of an autonomous Kurdish women’s party – to the effort of building up women’s democratic confederalism in Kurdistan.

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Events, Video, Women's Alliance for Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria

Öcalan and Women’s Liberation With Havin Güneser, Spokesperson International Initiative ‘Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan

The imprisoned Kurdish political leader and thinker Abdullah Öcalan has played a historic role in the development of the Kurdish women’s movement. His analyses of patriarchy, and its relationship to capitalism, the state, and the family have shaped the theory and practice of the Kurdish liberation struggle since the beginning. At the same time, his practice continues to be informed by his desire to be a genuine comrade to free women, with whom he wants to build free life for all.

In this webinar, Havin Güneser discusses Öcalan’s women’s liberationist ideas and practice over the course of several decades. Why and how does Öcalan view women’s revolution as a vital need in the quest for freedom? In what ways did he encourage women’s autonomous organisation? What is the Kurdish women’s movement’s relationship to Öcalan today?

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Events, Iran, Regions of Kurdistan, Video

Webinar Video: Iranian Kurds: Challenges, Existence, and Goals

Keynote Speaker: David L. Phillips-Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights:

“Iranian Kurdistan, also known as East Kurdistan or “Rojhelat”, is home to 12 million Kurds who are dispersed in parts of Kermanshah, Ilam, West Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan provinces. In return for supporting the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iranian Kurds were promised local self-government, and control over natural resources and economic decision-making. They were also promised cultural rights, including use of both Farsi and Kurdish in education.”

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Democratic confederalism, Events, Rojava/North East Syria, Video, Women's Alliance for Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria

Towards a Democratic Society with the Co-Chair System

The Kurdish Women’s Movement has played a pioneering role in the re-establishment of women’s position in political and social life. The co-chair system enables women to institutionalise the transformations in gender relations and make way for the democratisation of society and a free common life.

In this webinar, Ayşe Berktay (HDP, Women’s Assembly) will provide an insight into the origins and practice of the co-chair system and share experiences within the HDP.

Turkey, Video

The PKK: Criminalising Resistance, Resisting Criminalisation – An Interview with Jan Fermon

Connor Hayes speaks with Jan Fermon, lead solicitor in the case in which the Belgium Court of Cassation ruled the PKK is not a terrorist organisation, about the implications of the Belgian court ruling, the PKKs broader struggle for decriminalisation, and the future of resistance in the war on terror era.

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Democratic confederalism, Iraq, Video

Meral Çiçek, of the Kurdish Women’s Relations Office, on the Bombing of Makhmur

Dr. Jeff Miley interviews Meral Çiçek about the recent Turkish bombing of the Makhmur Refugee Camp and Sinjar, in Iraq.

Meral Çiçek was born in 1983 in a Kurdish guest-worker family in Germany. She started political and women’s activism at the age of 16 within the Kurdish Women’s Peace Office in Dusseldorf. While studying Political Science, Sociology and History at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt she started to work as reporter and editor for the only daily Kurdish newspaper in Europe, Yeni Ozgur Politika, for which she still writes a weekly column. In 2014 she co-founded the Kurdish Women’s Relations Office (REPAK) in Southern Kurdistan (Northern Iraq). She is also editorial board member of the Jineoloji journal.

Jeff Miley is a Lecturer of Political Sociology at the University of Cambridge, and a member of the Board of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) and a Patron of Peace in Kurdistan. He is co-editor, with Federico Venturini, of Your Freedom and Mine: Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdish Question in Erdogan’s Turkey (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2018).

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Events, Iran, Iraq, Regions of Kurdistan, Syria, Turkey, Video, Women's Alliance for Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria

A brief History of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in four parts of Kurdistan

At the latest since the historical resistance against the so-called Islamic State in Kobanê, the images of the Kurdish female fighters of the YPJ have been present everywhere.

But many people do not know that the Kurdish women in Rojava derive their strength for the construction of a democratic, multi-ethnic, ecological and gender-free social system from more than 40 years of resistance against the Turkish occupation and annihilation. In this seminar we want to learn about the manifold and enlightening history of the Kurdish women’s movement in all four parts of Kurdistan.

Democratic confederalism, Video

Sanal Mohan on the Response to COVID-19 in Kerala and the Rest of India

Dr. Jeff Miley interviews Dr. Sanal Mohan, the author of Modernity of Slavery: Struggles against Caste Inequality in Colonial Kerala (Oxford University Press, 2015), about the social and political consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kerala and in the rest of India.

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