For all of the latest Kurdish news, see these sources:
ANF English: https://anfenglishmobile.com/
Hawar News: https://www.hawarnews.com/en/
Rojava Information Center: https://rojavainformationcenter.com
Women Defend Rojava: http://womendefendrojava.net/en/
Rojhelat: http://rojhelat.info/en/
Rojava Centre for Strategic Studies: http://nrlsrojava.com/en/
Komun Academy: https://komun-academy.com
Peoples’ Democratic Party: https://www.hdp.org.tr/en/
KCK-Kurdistan Democratic Communities Union: https://kck-info.com
NEWS
- Women take to the streets today as Turkey leaves the Istanbul Convention
- Turkey: Parliament to denounce continuous repression of opposition
- KDP and MIT tried to block Defend Kurdistan members in South Kurdistan
- Belgian Parliament recognizes Yazidi Genocide
- Artists: “Intra-Kurdish war is a poisonous dagger that the enemy seeks to stab us with”
- Journalist Barış calls for help for Kurdish poet in prison for 27 years
- Car bomb kills three in Kurdish city of Afrin in northern Syria
- UN urged to act as Kurdish officials accuse Turkey of using refugee camp ‘as target practice’
- Turkey: Woman killed in attack on pro-Kurdish party office
- Turkey jails Kurdish journalist on terror charges
- UK PM says ‘will study’ Turkish attack on Kurdish refugee camp
- Syrian Kurds pause conscription for people displaced from Turkey-held areas
- Turkey promoting reactionary Islam among Yazidis in northern Syria – report
OPINION, COMMENTARY, ANALYSIS
- KJK Coordination says 1 July “not the end for women, but the beginning of a new struggle”
- KCK publishes brochure on the history of German-Turkish relations
- Buldan: It is a historical responsibility to endorse the HDP’s struggle
- RiseUp4Rojava evaluates current political developments in Kurdistan
- Aleppo people: Leader Öcalan turned Imralı prison into an academy
- Aziz Mamlê: If Qandil is lost, South Kurdistan will be lost
- State of the Occupation: A New Quarterly Report on Rights Violations in Turkish-Occupied NES
- Walid Bakr: National unity is a necessity in standing up to attacks
- Turkey attacks Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq
- Progressives urged to rally amid new HDP closure threat as Turkish state moves against opposition party
- Erdoğan Will Never Defeat the Fight for Democracy in Turkey
- Turkey Is Waging a Brutal Campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan
- What is Turkey’s real goal in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region? – analysis
- A Turkish gang leader’s revelations are shocking Turkey. I reported the truth six years ago.
STATEMENTS
- PYD: arrest of our comrades is targeting of our party; they must be released immediately
- Amnesty: Kurdish Iraq Must Stop Harassing Journalists, Activists
VIDEOS
- Baroness Christine Blower: Isolation and detention of Öcalan is against international law
- “The isolation of Ocalan is torture” – Dr Gianni Tognoni
- Öcalans Paradigm: Sociology of Freedom
- Abdullah Öcalan and Social Self-Defense – An Interview with Nazan Üstündağ
- ‘The Turkish State’s War is a Genocide against the Kurds’ – Connor Hayes
- Melanie Gingell: Turkey must halt its genocidal assault on Kurds
BOOKS
- Poets, fighters and dreamers: Kurdish women tell their own stories
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NEWS
- Women take to the streets today as Turkey leaves the Istanbul Convention
1 July 2021|ANF English
The Istanbul Convention Ankara Campaign Group called on all women to be on the streets on 1 July, the day in which Turkey officially withdrew from the Council of Europe Convention on Prevention and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence”, known as the Istanbul Convention.
- Turkey: Parliament to denounce continuous repression of opposition
1 July 2021|European Parliament News
MEPs will discuss the Turkish government’s crackdown on the opposition, specifically the main pro-Kurdish party, on Tuesday 6 July and vote on a resolution on Thursday 8 July 2021. In a debate with High Representative Josep Borrell, MEPs are set to condemn the long-standing crackdown on the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). This is the Turkish parliament’s third-largest party, with thousands of its members tried mainly on terrorism charges.
- KDP and MIT tried to block Defend Kurdistan members in South Kurdistan
1 July 2021|ANF English
The Defend Kurdistan initiative members said that the KDP and Turkish intelligence service (MIT) attempted to interfere with them in Southern Kurdistan, while they observed that the KDP could not integrate with the people.
- Belgian Parliament recognizes Yazidi Genocide
1 July 2021|ANF English
Belgian lawmakers also asked the government to “use all domestic and international legal means so that the crime of genocide committed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria does not go unpunished.”
https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/belgian-parliament-recognizes-yazidi-genocide-53168
- Artists: “Intra-Kurdish war is a poisonous dagger that the enemy seeks to stab us with”
30 June 2021|ANF English
In Hewler, Kurdish artists held a press conference in protest at the Turkish state’s invasion attacks and hostile attempts to provoke an intra-Kurdish war, calling it “a poisonous dagger that the enemy seeks to stab us with.”
- Journalist Barış calls for help for Kurdish poet in prison for 27 years
28 June 2021|Turkey Purge
Arat Barış, a journalist from the Gazete Davul news portal, took to Twitter on Sunday to raise awareness of what İlhan Çomak, a Kurdish man who has been held in prison since 1994, and his family have had to go through and demand action.
- Car bomb kills three in Kurdish city of Afrin in northern Syria
26 June 2021|Kurdistan 24
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing in Turkish occupied Afrin. But Turkey quickly blamed the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which has in the past denied any responsibility for bombings in Afrin that have killed civilians. Since Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Afrin in 2018, the area has been plagued by regular attacks on groups aligned with Turkey and indiscriminate bombings that have also killed civilians. The area sees frequent infighting between rival factions that also lead to civilian deaths.
- UN urged to act as Kurdish officials accuse Turkey of using refugee camp ‘as target practice’
24 June 2021|Kurdistan 24
Kurdish officials called on the United Nations today to ensure the immediate end of a nearly two-year embargo on a refugee camp in northern Iraq, and an end to Turkish military aggression. The Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) said that it was essential to lift the blockade to allow food and medical aid to reach the 12,000 residents of the UN-administered Makhmour refugee camp.
- Turkey: Woman killed in attack on pro-Kurdish party office
17 June 2021|Deutsche Welle
A man in his late 20s has stormed a provincial office of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party, and shot dead an official. The HDP identified the victim as Deniz Poyraz, saying she was a party official covering a shift for her mother at the office. The party’s national co-leader said a planned meeting of 40 officials at the office had been called off for unrelated reasons just before the attack. “The plan here was clear,” the HDP’s Mithat Sancar told reporters. “What they wanted was a massacre.” The HDP wrote, “The instigator and abettor of this brutal attack is the AKP-MHP government and the Interior Ministry, which constantly targets our party and our members.”
https://www.dw.com/en/turkey-woman-killed-in-attack-on-pro-kurdish-party-office/a-57943794
- Turkey jails Kurdish journalist on terror charges
17 June 2021|Turkey Purge
Kurdish journalist Lokman Sezgin has been sent to prison to serve the remainder of his prison sentences handed down by Turkish courts last year. According to Mezopotamya news portal, Sezgin was arrested by the police as he was getting a Covid-19 vaccine at a hospital in Turkey’s Van province. Sezgin was charged with terror offences.
https://turkeypurge.com/turkey-jails-kurdish-journalist-on-terror-charges
- UK PM says ‘will study’ Turkish attack on Kurdish refugee camp
17 June 2021|Kurdistan 24
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday said he “will study” a Turkish attack earlier this month on a Kurdish refugee camp near Iraq’s disputed Makhmour town that killed three civilians.
Johnson’s statement during the weekly Prime Minister’s Question Time event in the UK parliament in response to a query from Labour Party lawmaker Navendu Mishra.
- Syrian Kurds pause conscription for people displaced from Turkey-held areas
10 June 2021|Kurdistan 24
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria this week suspended military conscription for military-aged men from areas occupied by Turkey in the northeast amid worsening economic conditions. There is a growing frustration over worsening economic conditions and forced military service in northeastern Syria. Last week authorities in Manbij decided to halt military conscription (known locally as the duty for self-defense) in the town after violent protests.
- Turkey promoting reactionary Islam among Yazidis in northern Syria – report
1 June 2021|Society for Threatened Peoples
Turkey’s top religious body, the Religious Affair Directorate (Diyanet), has built mosques in Yazidi villages to promote Islamization in the northern Syrian region of Afrin, Germany -based Society for Threatened Peoples International (STPI) said on Tuesday. The STPI said that Turkey is promoting a particularly radical interpretation of Sunni Islam as Diyanet also disseminates its religious views to local schools in Germany through the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, one of Germany’s largest Islamic organisations.
https://www.gfbv.de/en/pm/tuerkei-baut-moscheen-in-afrin0-10523/
OPINION, COMMENTARY, ANALYSIS
- KJK Coordination says 1 July “not the end for women, but the beginning of a new struggle”
3 July 2021|ANF English
The KJK (Community of the Women of Kurdistan) Coordination said in a written statement: “Turkey officially withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, signed in 2011 and approved by the Council of Ministers Decision on 10 February 2012, on 1 July 2021. However, a woman is killed every day in Turkey by men.
- KCK publishes brochure on the history of German-Turkish relations
2 July 2021
The Kurdistan Democratic Communities Union (KCK) published a brochure on the history of German-Turkish relations, internationalism and the establishment of a global Democratic Confederalism. Duran Kalkan, member of the KCK Executive Council, discusses all these issues in an extensive interview.
- Buldan: It is a historical responsibility to endorse the HDP’s struggle
2 July 2021|ANF English
HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan met women in the Bursa Women’s Platform as part of the “No to Women’s Impoverishment” campaign saying that, “It is a historical responsibility to endorse HDP’s struggle, to join forces and protect democracy”.
- RiseUp4Rojava evaluates current political developments in Kurdistan
1 July 2021| RiseUp4Rojava via ANF English
On April 23, the Turkish occupation army launched an all-out assault on the guerrilla-controlled regions of Metîna, Zap and Avaşîn. RiseUp4Rojava evaluates current political developments in Kurdistan.
- Aleppo people: Leader Öcalan turned Imralı prison into an academy
1 July 2021| ANF English
The invading Turkish state continues to impose an aggravated isolation on Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan who is also denied meeting with his family members and lawyers. As the international community maintains its silence over Öcalan’s solitary confinement, people from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood of Aleppo condemned his isolation and called upon people far and wide to struggle for the physical freedom of Öcalan.
- Aziz Mamlê: If Qandil is lost, South Kurdistan will be lost
1 July 2021|ANF English
“Once a part of Kurdistan weakens, regardless of which one, other parts will also be harmed,” said political observer Aziz Mamlê, calling for a united stance against Turkish occupation of Kurdistan lands.
- State of the Occupation: A New Quarterly Report on Rights Violations in Turkish-Occupied NES
29 June 2021|Rojava Information Center
RIC presents a new periodic report highlighting rights violations in the Turkish-occupied territory of NES. This first issue tracks crimes across the first quarter of 2021. In addition to a background section outlining Turkey’s control over its zone of occupation, and a short history of the groups within the SNA, this report includes maps showing where these factions operate, as well as important prisons & bases.
- Walid Bakr: National unity is a necessity in standing up to attacks
27 June 2021|Hawar news Agency
The head of the Rojavai Kurdistan Intellectuals Union, Walid Bakr, pointed out that Turkish State seeks to eradicate the Kurds by creating intra fighting, saying: “We, the intellectuals and the Kurdish people in general, reject the outbreak of such a war.”
- Turkey attacks Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq
25 June 2021|Green Left
The 1982 massacre of around 3,000 Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut, by Israeli-backed Christian Lebanese phalangists remains notorious. Today, another large refugee camp in the Middle East is facing the same prospect. This time, the attackers are Turkish armed forces and the camp is the UNHCR-recognised Makhmur refugee camp in northern Iraq/South Kurdistan. About 13,000 Kurdish refugees from south-eastern Turkey live there, in poor conditions, after fleeing in 1998.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/turkey-attacks-kurdish-refugee-camp-northern-iraq
- Progressives urged to rally amid new HDP closure threat as Turkish state moves against opposition party
22 June 2021|Morning Star
Late on Monday, Turkey’s Constitutional Court announced that it had accepted a file, from the AKP-run government, demanding that the progressive Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) party be shut down on grounds that it is splitting national unity and is an arm of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
- Erdoğan Will Never Defeat the Fight for Democracy in Turkey
21 June 2021|Jacobin
Sebahat Tuncel is an MP for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who has spent almost five years in Turkish jail on fabricated terrorism charges. She writes from prison on how President Erdoğan is using the courts to suppress dissent — and why Kurdish and democratic forces will never give in to his regime.
- Turkey Is Waging a Brutal Campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan
18 June 2021|Jacobin| Elif Sarican
In its latest assault against the Kurds, Erdoğan’s Turkey is targeting civilians and refugees along the Iraq border — a brutal campaign to stamp out democracy and self-determination in Kurdistan.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/06/turkey-is-waging-a-brutal-campaign-in-iraqi-kurdistan
- What is Turkey’s real goal in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region? – analysis
16 June 2021|The Jerusalem Post
Turkey, which frequently slams Israel for conflict with the Palestinians, is engaged in one of the most disproportionate wars, using massive firepower and drones and illegal occupation under international law to strike at Kurdish fighters, in some cases where the alleged “terrorists” do not even exist.
- A Turkish gang leader’s revelations are shocking Turkey. I reported the truth six years ago.
14 June 2021|The Washington Post
Turks are bracing for the next round of revelations from a mafia boss who has shaken President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime to its core. Sedat Peker, a onetime Erdogan confidant now living outside the country, has stunned the country with a series of videos alleging crimes committed by people close to the president. I’ve been following the story with particular interest — since my own life has been directly affected by Peker’s past dealings. In 2015, I published a news article revealing that Turkey’s main intelligence agency was helping to secretly send weapons to jihadists in Syria. Erdogan, who denied the allegation, ominously declared that I would “pay a heavy price.” I was soon arrested and imprisoned on charges of revealing state secrets.
STATEMENT
- PYD: arrest of our comrades is targeting of our party; they must be released immediately
27 June 2021|Hawar news Agency
The Democratic Union Party (PYD) released a statement on the kidnapping of its members by Kurdistan Democratic Party’s forces in Erbil as “a targeting of the party and in implementation of the policies of the enemies who failed in all their attempts to liquidate the Kurds”, calling for their immediate release again.
- Amnesty: Kurdish Iraq Must Stop Harassing Journalists, Activists
15 June 2021|Amnesty International
The semi-independent government of the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq has since March 2020 been harshly cracking down on critics, arresting and even disappearing journalists and activists, Amnesty International claimed in a report last week.
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1442332021ENGLISH.pdf
VIDEOS
- Baroness Christine Blower: Isolation and detention of Öcalan is against international law
1 July 2021|Peace in Kurdistan via ANF English
Baroness Christine Blower, Co-Convenor of the Freedom for Ocalan campaign UK and a patron of Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, spoke about the isolation and condition of detention of Abdullah Öcalan.
- “The isolation of Ocalan is torture” – Dr Gianni Tognoni
1 July 2021|Peace in Kurdistan
Dr. Gianni Tognoni, Secretary General of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples Tribunal interviewed by journalist Erem Kansoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWdYOP-3Tg
- Öcalans Paradigm: Sociology of Freedom
16 June 2021|Women Weaving Future
This webinar covers Abdullah Öcalan’s perspectives on power and freedom. It addresses how Öcalan conceptualizes power and hierarchy and how he proposes a sociology of freedom to rethink these concepts. During the webinar, the participants also foreground how freedom is defined and lived in the Kurdish Freedom Movement both as a utopia and as a way of being and becoming here and now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1X57Uvt6cg&t=4s
- Abdullah Öcalan and Social Self-Defense – An Interview with Nazan Üstündağ
15 June 2021|Peace in kurdistan
Connor Hayes speaks with Dr. Nazan Üstündağ, a fellow with the Gerda Henkel Stiftung Patrimonies Program, about the concept and practice of social self-defense, in particular as developed by Abdullah Öcalan, and how it relates to questions of autonomy, violence, women, and self-determination.
- ‘The Turkish State’s War is a Genocide against the Kurds’ – Connor Hayes
2 June 2021|Peace in kurdistan
Connor Hayes is an activist, researcher, and independent scholar working in the areas of philosophy, sociology, and political theory. He is a member of the steering committee of the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, and participated in the 2019 international peace delegation to Imrali.
- Melanie Gingell: Turkey must halt its genocidal assault on Kurds
27 May 2021|Peace in Kurdistan
Melanie Gingell, human rights lawyer and member of the steering committee of Peace in Kurdistan speaks to journalist Erem Kansoy about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s war on the Kurds, the ongoing attacks against the HDP and the state of democracy in Turkey.
BOOKS
- Poets, fighters and dreamers: Kurdish women tell their own stories
17 June 2021|Middle East Eye
‘Kurdish Women’s Stories’ gives voice to women who ‘kept the momentum of political struggle in Kurdistan alive’ but whose experiences are often overshadowed. 24 harrowing stories in the anthology Kurdish Women’s Stories, released in English translation earlier this year.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/kurdish-women-stories-book-review-poets-fighters-dreamers
Peace in Kurdistan
Campaign for a political solution of the Kurdish Question
Email: estella@gn.apc.org
https://www.peaceinkurdistancampaign.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaceinkurdistan1/
Contacts Estella Schmid: 07846 666 804 & Melanie Gingell: 07572 430903
Patrons: John Austin, Baroness Blower of Starch Green, former GS NUT, Prof Bill Bowring, Julie Christie, Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Prof Mary Davis, Lord Dholakia, Simon Dubbins, UNITE International Director, Jill Evans, former MEP, Desmond Fernandes, Lindsey German, Convenor STWC, Melanie Gingell, Christopher Gingell, Prof Dr. Michael Gunter, Secretary-General, EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC), Rahila Gupta, journalist, Nick Hildyard, policy advisor, Dafydd Iwan, Former President Plaid Cymru, James Kelman, Bruce Kent, Jean Lambert, former MEP, Dr Les Levidow, Open University, Elfyn Llwyd, John McDonnell MP; Aonghas MacNeacail, Scottish Gaelic poet, Mike Mansfield QC, David Morgan, journalist, Doug Nicholls, General Secretary, GFTU, Dr. Jessica Ayesha Northey, Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy, Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Kate Osamor MP, Margaret Owen OBE, Ali Gul Ozbek, Former Councillor and Mayor of Haringey; Gareth Peirce, Dr Felix Padel, Maxine Peake, actor, Dr Thomas Phillips, Liverpool John Moores University, Trevor Rayne, writer, Joe Ryan, Tony Simpson, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Stephen Smellie, PIK Trade Union Liaison Officer, Jonathan Steele, journalist, Steve Sweeney, journalist, Gianni Tognoni, General Secretary Permanent People’s Tribunal, Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Dr Federico Venturini, Associate Researcher, University of Udine, Italy; Dr Tom Wakeford, Dr Derek Wall, Julie Ward, former MEP, Kariane Westrheim, Chair, EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC); Hywel Williams MP.