
The Fall of Afrîn
Turkey has toppled the Kurdish-held city of Afrîn. But Erdoğan’s drive to crush the Kurdish liberation movement could backfire.

Turkey has toppled the Kurdish-held city of Afrîn. But Erdoğan’s drive to crush the Kurdish liberation movement could backfire.

Donald Trump’s presidency was bad news for the Kurdish movement, as Washington abandoned Rojava and gave NATO ally Turkey a free hand in the region. But Joe Biden continued to allow Turkish impunity — and Kurds fear Kamala Harris will do the same.

Michael Brooks’s ability to understand and analyze the similarities among authoritarians across the globe meant that he had little time for narratives that sought to portray non-Western culture as the source of barbarism and authoritarian rule.

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are producing a new TV series about female Kurdish fighters. We can expect a sanitized production that somehow fails to mention that YPJ forces in Rojava are leftists who oppose everything the Clintons represent.

Will the most promising democratic experiment in the Middle East be allowed to survive? The answer increasingly depends on the geopolitical whims of the Trump administration.

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.

In 2016, 14 health workers tried to help civilians trapped in Turkey's besieged town of Cizre. Today, Erdogan's government wants to jail them for this act.

The Turkish government is using the massacre in Suruç to wage war — not on ISIS, but on the Kurdish liberation movement.

A new collection of photography captures the Kurdish struggle against ISIS — and their efforts to build a radically egalitarian society based on principles of peace and democracy.

After 43 months without outside contact, jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan has been allowed to meet with left-wing MPs. He has encouraged calls for a peace process — but there’s little sign that Turkish authorities are serious about the idea.

Turkey’s war on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party has seen it build a permanent military presence in Iraq. But its de facto occupation is also about building the “Development Road” — a megaproject meant to strengthen Turkey’s power across the region.
Whatever their limits, Murray Bookchin's ideas should be studied by today's left.
Chaos, violence, and authoritarian rule reign in Turkey. Is there any opening for the Kurdish liberation movement?

The bombing of a Peoples’ Democratic Party rally in Diyarbakir shows how threatened Turkey’s rulers have become.

Democratic forces have always been the main target of the Assad regime.

David Graeber will remain for me a model for how to live to the fullest a scholarly and activist life.

Faced with criticism of the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders cynically ask why the world worries about the Palestinians and not the Kurds. Israel’s supposed pro-Kurdish stance is empty posturing — and risks damaging the Kurdish fight for liberation.

Months after dictator Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, the country’s Kurdish population faces continued uncertainty — and Turkish air strikes. A photo series by Angéline Desdevises portrays the hardships of Kurds adapting to an ever-unstable reality.

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.