On 8 December 2024, the Assad regime in Syria was overthrown by a rebel alliance led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The collapse of the family dictatorship was made possible by shifts in regional and international power dynamics. Key factors included Turkish support for the rebels, the...

On 8 December 2024, the Assad regime in Syria was overthrown by a rebel alliance led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The collapse of the family dictatorship was made possible by shifts in regional and international power dynamics. Key factors included Turkish support for the rebels, the...

With the background of the Syrian crisis, irregular migration, and authoritarianism - strengthened by the collapse of the Peace Process of the Turkish state with the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK) in 2015 and the 2016 coup attempt - the Turkish government has amended the Citizenship Law,...

With the background of the Syrian crisis, irregular migration, and authoritarianism - strengthened by the collapse of the Peace Process of the Turkish state with the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK) in 2015 and the 2016 coup attempt - the Turkish government has amended the Citizenship Law,...

This interview with Professor Craig Calhoun expands on issues of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in relation to the question of statelessness. Since the 1990s, Calhoun has worked on nationalism, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism. For Calhoun, nations still matter despite post-national and...

Almost a century ago, Memduh Selim wrote in the Kurdish magazine Jîn, which appeared in Istanbul, about the importance of festivals and commemorations for national awareness, and he urged the Kurds to follow the example of other nations and cultivate their national days. The mobilising...

Kurdish Studies has no intention to regularly cover and comment on recent events. However, we are definitely interested in publishing studies, based on serious research and critical reflection, that provide important background or new insights relevant to understanding these events. We would...

Book reviews

This study is a comparative analysis of the role of diaspora communities in the political and cultural activities of the Kurds and the Berbers (Amazigh) - the two most prominent cases of ethno-national “imagining” among the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region's two main...

Within international law, the concept of self-determination has evolved over the years so as to reveal an external dimension, often associated with secession, and an internal dimension, entailing participatory democracy, minority protection in the context of pluralist co-existence within the...

Kurdish Studies inaugural issue editorial and acknowledgements.

In recent years, the persecution of the Kurds in the Middle East under ISIS in Iraq and Syria has drawn increasing attention from the international media. In this book, Veli Yadirgi analyses the socioeconomic and political structures and transformations of the Kurdish people from the Ottoman era...

Iraq is one of the world’s major oil suppliers, and over ninety percent of its government revenues come from oil exports. Developing an oil management strategy that politicians from all sects and ethnic groups can agree on is therefore paramount to the future political and economic health of...

В статье рассмотрена миграция курдов на примере Российской Федерации и одного из ее субъектов Республики Адыгея. От того, насколько успешно будет проходить не...

Turkey has often been projected as a model by the US-based think tanks and Western media for enlargement of market democracies in its surrounding regions to contain the surge of radical Islam. The appropriateness of the Turkish democracy as a model is, however, contested by many from within the...

This article addresses a historical puzzle: Why did the insurgent PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan), which was militarily defeated, which renounced the goal of secession, and whose leader was under the custody of the Turkish state, remobilize its armed forces in a time when opportunities for the...