In her essay “On Revolution”, political theorist Hannah Arendt analyzes and compares the French, American and other revolutions to determine the “outstanding characteristics of the revolutionary spirit”. She recognizes these within the possibility of starting things with a new beginning, as well as in people’s collective action. Arendt is especially concerned with the question of…
We need solutions for the crisis in the Middle East. The chaos in the region has been ongoing since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire one century ago. Since the first Gulf War in 1991, the region between the Maghreb states and Pakistan has been in a deep state of seemingly endless crisis. Outside of…
Mexmûr (Makhmour) located in the triangle between Mosul, Kerkûk and Hewler in Northern Iraq/South Kurdistan, is a place where over 10.000 Kurds from Southeastern Turkey/North Kurdistan, especially from the Botan Region, found refuge. The people, who fled the war of the Turkish state in the early 90s, stayed in different camps temporarily before reaching Mexmûr…
In an extensive interview, Besê Hozat and Cemil Bayik, co-Chairs of the Executive Council of the Kurdistan Democratic Communities Union (KCK), talk about what true independence means for Kurdistan, noncapitalist economic policies, the situation in Rojava, the achievements of the PKK in all four parts of Kurdistan, the attitude of the Freedom Movement towards other…
On July 30-31, 2021, the 2nd Conference of Women from the Middle East and North Africa was held in the Lebanese capital Beirut. Nearly 100 women from Lebanon, all four parts of Kurdistan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco participated in the conference under the slogan “With the unity of…
Many people and movements recently struggled to make sense of the United States’ tactical alliance with the Kurdish people in the fight against ISIS. “How could a revolutionary movement allow itself to be co-opted by imperialism today?”, they wondered. Much of these analyses however derive from dogmatic approaches with little concern for the people and…
