Kurds

TeleSur | – – “Democracy Has ‘Absolutely No Value Any Longer’” The Turkish president made the comments in the context of the government’s fight against the Kurdish PKK resistance group. In the fight against the Kurdish insurgency in the country, there is no place left for democracy and freedom of speech in Turkey, President Recep […]

Featured

Syria’s Kurds to declare Federal Province

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Syria’s Kurds have decided to declare a federal province in the northeast of the country and along the northern border with Turkey. Many Arab states are unitary rather than federal and for the most part provincial governors are appointed by the central government and the central […]

Kurds

Can Turkish Democracy survive Bombings, Ethnic Polarization?

contributors

By Cengiz Gunes | (The Conversation) | – – Hours after Ankara was rocked by the second bomb attack in less than three weeks, killing at least 37 people and injuring 70 others, Turkish jets bombed PKK bases in the Qandil mountains deep inside the Kurdish region of Iraq. Turkish security officials told reporters that […]

Democracy

Turkey’s Elections no longer for Democracy but for Nationalist-Conservative Domination

contributors

By Umit Cizre | ( OpenDemocracy) | – – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s readiness to circumvent elections, illustrates that promises to end the conflict were contingent on securing a mathematically permanent conservative-nationalist electoral bloc. Two historic general elections were held in Turkey over the course of four months in 2015. The desperate losers in the first […]

Kurds

Arab Youth join socialist Syrian Kurdish militia to fight ISIL

contributors

TeleSur | – – The news comes amid rising tensions between the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia and Arabs in Syria. The “first group of Arab fighters” joined the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG, according to Kurdish media. The YPG has been known to include non-Kurdish forces, including Western, Turkish and Assyrian fighters, and it […]

Featured

Will Syrian Kurds defeat ISIL , helping Democrats win White House in 2016?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Bad news came out of Syria for Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) on two fronts Friday: Aleppo and, in Syria’s far east, Hasakah. This has been a war with a lot of seesawing, so it is premature to make any decisive pronouncements. But this is an election year, […]

Authoritarianism

Turkey: Erdogan’s Domestic War for a Presidential System

contributors

By Rosa Burç and Burak Çopur | TeleSur | – – The current war against the Kurds and oppositional voices is being waged to push an autocratic presidential system. The surprising electoral success of the pro-Kurdish HDP in last year’s June 7 elections denied the ruling AKP a majority for the first time since 2002 […]

Iraq

Confirmed: ISIL used Mustard Gas Against Kurds in Iraq

contributors

TeleSur | – – A chemical weapons investigator confirmed earlier reports that the extremist group used the banned chemical weapon. [ISIL] used chemical weapons against Kurdish militants last year, Reuters reported Monday. The August 2015 attack occurred near Erbil, the capital of autonomous Kurdish Iraq. About 35 Kurdish troops were attacked with mustard gas, according […]

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Why is ISIL still trying to Slaughter and Enslave the ancient Yazidi Minority?

contributors

By Brian Glyn Williams | (Informed Comment) | – – On February 3, the New York Times quoted the desperate plea of a Yazidi, a member of an ethnic-religious group facing communal extermination at the hands of ISIS jihadi terrorists. In simple, but moving terms he summed up the plight of his people, whose ancestral […]