Hasakah: After the Territory, the Fight Over Coercive Power

The Latest on SDF-Damascus Integration: • The region is in a transitional period, and security has been deteriorating steadily but…

Turkey’s Kurdish Peace Process Reaches Its First Legislative Test

Speaking at an Eid al-Adha gathering in Van on 28 May, Pervin Buldan, a lawmaker for the DEM Party, Turkey’s…

Bahceli Calls for Ocalan Coordinator Role as Turkey’s PKK Endgame Takes Institutional Shape

Devlet Bahceli, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader whose political intervention in late 2024 set the current peace process in…

The Demographics That Doomed a Kurdish National Project in Syria

A micro-level look at the demographics of northern Syria reveals how much Kurdish nationalist expectations have diverged from ground realities, and why the broader territorial collapse of the SDF polity…
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Why Turkey’s PKK Peace Process Has Stalled

More than a year after Abdullah Ocalan called for disarmament from his prison on Imrali island, Turkey’s peace process with the PKK has reached its first genuinely hard question: which…
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For the KDP, Mansour Barzani’s U.S. Bribery Case Comes at the Worst Possible Time

On April 22, the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil forfeiture complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California seeking to seize a Beverly Hills mansion…
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How a Cross-Sectarian Bloc Led by Iraq’s Next Generation Is Reshaping the Country

Across-sectarian bloc led by five of Iraq’s next-generation political leaders has pushed a presidential vote through despite a boycott by Masoud Barzani and Nouri al-Maliki, and is now positioned to…
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Kobani’s new administrative formula shows what post-SDF integration looks like

The new administrative lineup in Kobani is beginning to reveal the kind of formula emerging in the district after the late January SDF-Damascus integration agreement. What is notable is not…
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Exposed and Disposable: Why Iranian Kurdish Groups May Be the War’s Biggest Losers

As the United States and Iran are reported to have reached a tentative two-week ceasefire, attention is already turning to the likely winners and losers. Most of that discussion is…
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Why Iran’s Sunni Kurdish Islamists Are Not Joining the Anti-Regime War

One of the misleading assumptions on the Iran war is that the Sunni Kurdish belt should naturally drift toward any project aimed at weakening the Islamic Republic. On paper, that…
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