Many people never have to face their past, and even run away from it. People don’t want to confront the complexities and mistakes they made. Sadly, Turkey’s citizens are now suffering due to President Erdogan’s blunders. I mentioned in previous blogs about his censorship in the name of national security, but now these actions have put Turkey in a dangerous… Read more →
Category: Turkey, Syria (Kurdistan)
Kurdistan’s Response to Coronavirus Pandemic
In Kurdistan, the reported number of cases of COVID-19 is remarkably low due to precautions taken in late February to block off access to the region for non-residents. This is especially notable considering the high number of cases in Iran, Kurdistan’s neighbor to the east, that did not handle concerns over the virus as seriously and now has at least 70,000… Read more →
Syrian Refugees and Covid-19
Reagan Brill Professor Levenson GDS 3030 / ENGL 3610 April 10, 2020 Syrian Refugees in Turkey Blog 4 The rise of Covid-19 has been devastating to populations all over the world, and refugee populations are no exception. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Turkey currently houses more registered Syrian refugees than any other country in the world. Turkey… Read more →
Kurds in the Time of Coronavirus- Elizabeth Harrington
Kurds in the Time of Coronavirus by Elizabeth Harrington (eph6bx) An ethnic group divided by lines on a map, living under dramatically different governments and regimes, in the middle of a global pandemic. I expected to find only articles about how badly the region was doing these days. There’s still fighting and with the history the Kurds have endured, my… Read more →
The Push for a Kurdistan
Slade Sinak Blog #4 – There have always been Kurds living in and around the intersection of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and for as long as almost anyone can remember they have been trying to gain sovereignty as a state. There are about “35 to 40 million Kurds” in this region,1 but their division into these three larger countries makes… Read more →
The future of Syria’s global civil war
In March of 2011, a group of young schoolchildren were arrested in the southern city of Daraa, Syria. Their spray-painting of political graffiti on the walls of a school was deemed a crime by authorities, who beat and tortured the boys in jail. The community’s outrage became a flame for the first pro-democracy protests across the country, and calls for reform… Read more →
The Role of Media in Turkey’s Border Bombing
At least 33 Turkish soldiers were killed this past Thursday by an airstrike on the Syrian border. These soldiers were positioned near Syria’s Idlib province to defend against both Syrian invasion and the various terrorist organizations that reside there. This province has been the source of much strife between the two nations and, despite this tension, Turkey has maintained that… Read more →
Female Syrian Refugees in Turkey – Reagan Brill
Reagan Brill Professor Levenson GDS 3030 / ENGL 3610 February 28, 2020 Syrian Refugees in Turkey Blog 3 As a general update on the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey, in my first blog I found that as of January 9, 2020 there were 3,576,659 registered refugees (UNHCR). That number has increased by about 10,000 people as of… Read more →
American Abandonment by Elizabeth Harrington
Elizabeth Harrington Blog 3 American Abandonment Instability in the Middle East centered around the Kurds has been exacerbated by the military and political actions of the United States. In this new form of neocolonialism, America uses the Kurdish soldiers to help fight their battles and achieve their goals. Major global powers have always done this, most prominently seen in the… Read more →
Yazidis in Syria: Persecution of an Ethnoreligious Minority
The Yazidi people are a small, monotheistic ethnoreligious minority who have lived primarily in the Nineveh Province of Iraq and the Al-Jazira region of Syria for centuries (MERI). Although the Yazidi people practice monotheism, their religion has been long misunderstood by members of other religions. One of the central figures in the Yazidi faith, Melek Taus, or the “Peacock Angel” in… Read more →