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Kurdistan: Birth of a Nation?

A COMEDY OF ERRORS: AMERICAN-TURKISH DIPLOMACY

The Safe Haven in Iraq – What does Safe Haven

The Superpowers and the Iraqi Kurdish Safe Haven

What Future for the Kurds?

The Denial, Resurrection, and Affirmation of

Green Money, Islamist Politics in Turkey

Was Abraham a Kurd?

Serbestî-English Summary: NATO’s New Spot of

The Resolution's Weakness

What future for the Kurds?

How to Get Out of Iraq

Let the Kurds be

Standing up for Syrian Kurds

The U.S. Is Brewing Up a Disaster for the Kurds –

The Kurds Must be Allowed Responsibility for

2004 Local Elections in Turkey and the Kurds

THE KURDS BETWEEN THE DESIRE FOR FREEDOM AND THE

Reflections On A Sovereign Iraq

Kurds show their grit

BOMBING FREEDOM

A Hole in the Heart of Kurdistan

The Kurds' Best Hope

A TEST OF VISION

The Kurdish Question

Iraqi Kurdish claim for federalism – A Kurdish-Ara

The Meaning of Self Determination and the Kurds

Bakh Dargali: Iraqi Kurds should get their own

THREE IRAQS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

The Three-State Solution

An Identity Crisis

Diyarbakır Military Prison Number 5: A Turkificati

WISING UP IN IRAQ

Victory in Iraq, One Tribe at a Time

Diyarbakır Military Prison Number 5: A Turkificati

Of Kurds and Madrid

Three Iraqs, not one

BUSH'S BETRAYAL

Turkey Is Joining Up

The Turkish Card

The Turkish Card

Iraq and the Kurdish dilemma – An Identity Crisis

Why Are We In Iraq? (And Liberia? And Afghanistan?

Iraq: In the Triangle of Terror

The Re-establishment of the University of Kirkuk

Federalism – For and Against

Responsibility of the international community

Transforming the Middle East

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Turtles Can Fly – Children teetering on the border

[14/4 2005] — I wish everyone who has an opinion on the war in Iraq could see "Turtles Can Fly." That would mean everyone in the White House and in Congress, and the newspaper writers, and the TV pundits, and the radio talkers, and you -- especially you, because you are reading this and they are not.

FRIENDS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS

[2/10 2004] — I first heard of Michael Chyet while listening to the weekly Kurdish broadcast on Voice of America. I still remember the initial shock I felt after hearing a Western person speaking impeccable Kurdish. I remember very well how excitedly I waited until the next Saturday for his weekly programme “Zimanê Me”. The next week, the programme started with the unforgettable music of Yilmaz Guney’s “Yol” film, then Michael began his programme at which point I made sure that his name was really Michael and that he was an American. I was astonished and extremely proud that a non-Kurdish person could speak such beautiful Kurdish while many Kurds preferred to speak in any other language but their mother tongue. I wanted to know who Michael Chyet was and how it came to be that he learned Kurdish so flawlessly.

Kawa and the Story of Newroz

USA, 15/5 2003 — A long time ago in between the two great rivers Euphrates and Tigris there was a land called Mesopotamia.

Above a small town and tucked into the side of the Zagros Mountains, there was an enormous stone castle with tall turrets and dark high walls. The castle was cut out of the mountain rock. The castle gates were made from the wood of the cedar tree and carved into the shapes of winged warriors.

The Kurdish language and literature

By: JOYCE BLAU
Kurdish is the language of more than twenty million Kurds living in a vast unbroken territory. Kurdish belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and to the Irano-Aryan group of this family.

THE NAQSHBANDI SHAIKHS OF HAWRAMAN AND THE HERITAGE OF KHALIDIYYA-MUJADDIDIYYA IN KURDISTAN

By: FARHAD SHAKELY
The history of the Naqshbandi order has been, to a great extent, recorded and studied by Western scholars as well as by the leaders of the order and their followers. Studies in this context are not, understandably, in proportion to various periods of the history of the order or its geographical expansion. As far as Kurdistan and the Kurdish Naqshbandis are concerned, almost all the studies have tended to focus too much on Mawlana Khalid Sharazuri (1193/1779-1242/1827), the eponym and founder of the Khalidiyya suborder, and the early years in the development of Khalidiyya.

My soul is intoxicated and my body is ruined by a goblet of love

By: FARHAD SHAKELY
In the early 1970s I studied in the Kurdish Department of the University of Baghdad. Whenever I travelled back to Kurdistan from the bus terminal of Al-Nahda, I felt that I left behind homelessness and nostalgia. This was merely a feeling. Devoid of geographical as well as psychological roots, it could not reflect itself in my writing. The Kurdish Department was a small Kurdistan in the heart of Baghdad. I could never believe that one day I would leave the homeland and spend the greater part of my life in exile. I did not know that life in exile would be too long and mingle my thoughts, writings and dreams with the colours of sorrow that could not be removed even by death.

Farhad Shakely: Poems

WITH THE FLOW OF THE TIGRIS

How long will your weeping eyes shed tears of sorrow?
How long will not the shimmer of a star
become a necklace
for the silent night of your looks?
In the night of exile
I write a letter to my wounded country.
The agencies
are bored with news of my country,
all the post offices of all cities
are bored with my homeland’s letters.
In the night of my anger
I write a letter to my friends
in which I tell of our love…

Reflections of a Kurdish poet – An interview with Farhad Shakely

Farhad Shakely visited Iranian Kurdistan in 1990. In a meeting with the editors and writers of the Kurdish magazine Sirwa, journalist Aziz Kaikhosrawi, who was earlier a teacher of Persian language and literature, asked to interview him. Shakely suggested that he submit questions in writing and he did so. Then came the turmoil of the Gulf war. Shakely’s family was among the more than a million Kurds who fled Iraqi Kurdistan. It was not until the Spring of 1992 when he was in residence in England under a research scholarship at the School of Oriental and African Studied in the University of London that he was able to take the time to answer the question.

Modern Kurdish Artistic Prose

By: FARHAD SHAKELY
A. Earlier Prose: Poetry has been the dominating form of expression in Kurdish literature in several centuries. It is only in the beginning of nineteenth century that Kurdish prose emerged. The most important earlier prose texts were written by Mawlânâ Khâlid Naqshbandî (1779-1827), Shaikh Husain Qâzî (1790-1869) and Mullâ Mahmûd Bayazîdî (1797-1858).

Classic and modern kurdish poetry

By: FARHAD SHAKELY
Poetry has always been the main pillar of Kurdish literature. By tracing the history of Kurdish poetry through its manifold themes and forms of expression and through its various periods of expansion and stagnation one also gets an interesting picture of the role and conditions of literature in an oppressed nation.

Kurdish dictionary — Kurmanji-English

This dictionary focuses on modern use of the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, which is spoken in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and parts of the former Soviet Union. It is the most comprehensive Kurmanji-English volume ever composed. Michael L. Chyet, renowned for his extensive knowledge of the major dialects of Kurdish, provides a thorough documentation of the current state of knowledge about the lexicon of the language.

From Kalashnikov to Keyboard: Iraqi Kurdish journalism comes down from the mountains. But where is it going?

Journalism has played a central role in the Kurdistan struggle for independence since the first journal, Kurdistan, was published from the Arab city of Cairo in 1898.

Kurdish literature

Unlike their rulers, the Kurds were not able to preserve their written literature or what existed has been destroyed during many wars between many empires in Kurdistan. Furthermore the Kurdish scholars were employed by the courts of the shahs and sultans and were obliged to write in the official languages of the courts be it Persian, Arabic or Turkish. During the 20th century due to policies of assimilation and denial of existence, again the Kurds were not able to develop their literature.

The influence of adab on the Muslim intellectuals of the nahda as reflected in the memoirs of Muhammad Kurd 'Ali (1876-1953)

Exactly fifty years ago (1948), in the Egyptian cultural magazine al-Thaqafa, there appeared a review of a newly published work of memoirs. [1] The author of these memoirs was the Syrian Muslim intellectual Muhammad Kurd 'Ali and the reviewer was his Egyptian colleague Ahmad Amin.

The Emergence of a Kurdish Rug Type

For most of us a rug type exists only after it has reached international markets and has been seen and classified by collectors and scholars. Until then rugs and other weavings can be present in considerable numbers in their natural habitats without attracting the attention of the outside world.