Kurds

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Robert Burns of AP reported on the visit inside Syria of the head of the US Middle East Command (Centcm), Army Gen. Joseph Votel, to assess the progress in US training of the Syrian Democratic Forces division. It is said to comprise 25,000 Kurdish fighters of […]

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Americans may see ISIL as No. 1 Threat, but Turkey & the Kurds have other Priorities

contributors

By Abbas Djavadi | ( RFE/RL | – – For a long time the Turkish government was accused of assisting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) group. These accusations were heard especially since the battle Syrian Kurds fought with ISIS over the town of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border almost a year ago. […]

Kurds

Syrian Kurds: True Revolution must Liberate Women

contributors

By Rahila Gupta | ( OpenDemocracy ) In less than four years, the women’s umbrella organisation, Kongira Star, has set up an autonomous, grassroots, democratic structure which has resulted in shifting patriarchal mindsets and reversing gender discriminatory laws . . . On day three of my trip to Rojava, Nuvin and Essam from the media […]

Featured

ISIL Endgame: Obama to send 250 more US Troops into Syria

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama is announcing Monday morning in Hanover, Germany, that he will send another 250 US troops, likely mostly special operations, into Syria, bringing the total to 300. The 50 troops already there are embedded with the YPG or People’s Defense Units of the leftist Democratic […]

Featured

Turkey’s Erdogan exports Press crackdown to US as his guards manhandle Journalists in DC

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Turkish President Erdogan visited Washington DC this week to participate in the deliberations on nuclear weapons. He brought with him some bad habits and some bad actors in his security detail, according to WaPo’s Ishaan Tharoor. Some pro-Kurdish protesters gathered to protest Erdogan’s visit. Then when […]

Authoritarianism

Turkey’s Erdogan: Democracy Has ‘Absolutely No Value Any Longer’ given war on PKK Terrorism

contributors

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 […]