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Kurdish Leader Declares Truce With Turkey

The New York Times – The jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan on Thursday called for a cease-fire and ordered all his fighters off Turkish soil, in a landmark moment for a newly energized effort to end three decades of armed conflict with the Turkish government…

Iraq War 10th Anniversary: A Symposium

New Republic – Ten years ago this week, the U.S. began its invasion of Iraq, ostensibly in search of “weapons of mass destruction.” Today, the American war in Iraq is over, but the argument about it still hovers over our foreign policy. We asked eight writers—some of whom supported the war, others who opposed it—to reflect on what the past decade has meant…

New Day for the Kurds: Will Ocalan’s Declaration Bring Peace with Turkey?

Time – Newroz, means “New Day” in Kurdish and traditionally it was a great celebration heralding the start of spring for the Kurdish people. Because of its centrality in that culture, the government of Turkey banned ethnic Kurds from celebrating it for decades—and so the beginning of spring was often marked by street battles and bloodshed as Kurds used the holiday to protest for their rights and to assert their identity…

Is Kurdistan an Iraqi success story?

The Washington Post – The 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war this week is a fitting occasion to consider the current status of religious and ethnic minorities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Though Iraq is a majority Muslim country, it is also home to some of the world’s oldest Christian communities. Concerned about their welfare and the KRI’s capacity to absorb hundreds of thousands of Christian refugees pouring into the Kurdistan Region from Syria and southern Iraq, an interdenominational delegation representing Catholic; Orthodox; Episcopal, and Evangelical Protestant Christianity, led by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, traveled there late last year to see for ourselves how this majority Muslim region treats religious and ethnic minorities. The group was organized by The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law as part of its Iraqi Kurdistan Religious Freedom Project…

Turkey’s Kurdish Question: A New Hope?

Brookings Institution – Turkey’s approach to dealing with its Kurdish minority—the Kurdish question—at home and in the region is once again at a critical juncture. From the prospects for a new constitution to Ankara’s Syria dilemma, virtually all the pressing issues facing Turkey have a Kurdish dimension. After the failure of the “Oslo process,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has initiated another round of negotiations, this time called the “Imralı process” and directly involving the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan. The process has been challenging, but extremely cautious expectations and hopes are growing that the rejuvenated process will not succumb to the fate of the previous efforts at solving the Kurdish problem in Turkey….