The 6-year-old child who cried in front of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a global sensation. Erdogan spotted the weeping girl wearing a military uniform during an address at his party’s congress last week, brought her onto the stage, and told her that if she died as a martyr,…
When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with Turkish officials tomorrow, he’ll have plenty of unpleasant topics to discuss. At the top of Turkey’s list of grievances is American support for the YPG, or the People’s Protection Units, a Kurdish-Syrian militia that has wreaked devastation on ISIS…
Iraqi prime minister Haider Al-Abadi took to Twitter on October 13 to dispute rumors that his forces were mobilizing to take over areas under the control of Iraqi Kurds, particularly the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. “The fake news being spread has a deplorable agenda behind it,” he wrote. As with most…
Kurds in northern Iraq control their own land, maintain their own military, and share a common culture and language. They also have an overwhelming desire to separate from Iraq and become an independent state. But can a de facto nation become a real country if it isn’t recognized by the diplomatic…
Election officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government announced Wednesay that last weekend’s referendum on independence passed, overwhelmingly. With a turnout of 72 percent of more than 4.5 million eligible voters, nearly 93 percent voted in favor of realizing the Iraqi Kurds’ longstanding…
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior editor Lee Smith talks with host Eric Felten about the Kurdish independence referendum.
The people of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq voted today in a referendum on independence from Baghdad. It could take a few days to tally the votes, but there can be little doubt about the result. The Kurds have struggled for self-determination for a century. In January 2005, the non-governmental…
Social media seethed with outrage earlier this week after the American president made a phone call to congratulate the head of a NATO member on an important vote. On Monday Donald Trump reached out to speak with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the referendum that exchanges Turkey's…
Erbil, Iraq
Phew! "Turkey sends tanks into Syria ...," CNN headlined on Thursday. "The goal is to crush ISIS." It's about time Turkey joined the war against Islamist terror. Some had suspected Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of having a soft spot for ISIS, even of letting his country be used as a supply…
Radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Donald Trump Thursday and asked the Republican frontrunner some details on foreign policy. After Trump confused some terminology, he accused Hewitt of asking "gotcha questions."
Just after midnight on August 2, 1990, an invasion force of approximately 100,000 Iraqi troops crossed into Kuwait. As mechanized and armored Republican Guard divisions breached the border and sped southward across the desert, Iraqi Special Forces commandos launched airborne and amphibious assaults…
The hideous practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is neither an exclusively Muslim nor a principally Middle Eastern phenomenon. It exists among non-Muslims through wide areas of Africa.
The Kurds need heavy weapons in their fight (also our fight) against ISIS. And as Mitch Swenson of War is Boring reports:
Can the United States maintain a "limited" military force in Iraq to stop the Islamist militants targeting ethnic minorities in that country? At Politico, Philip Ewing notes how difficult that strategy may be for President Barack Obama:
The boss was on the set of MSNBC's Morning Joe Friday to discuss Iraq, the Tea Party, and the midterm elections. Watch the videos below:
On Friday, July 11, as reported at the Kurdish English-language news portal Rudaw [Events], combat fighters representing the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, known as Peshmerga, occupied oil fields in Hassan and Makhmour, near the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk that the KRG occupied in…
They came from the west through the Syrian Desert, across the Euphrates River, and down off the Nineveh Plain. Mosul, Baiji, Tikrit, Samarra—cities held by the U.S. military just two and a half years before—fell almost without a fight, absorbed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a…
Kobani, Syrian Kurdish Region
Once again, Muqtada al Sadr may help the United States snatch success from the jaws of defeat in Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdistan "There is today a strategic alliance between Iran and Turkey’s [ruling AKP party],” says Murat Karayilan, the de facto leader of the PKK. The Kurdistan Workers’ party’s actual number one, Abdullah Ocalan, has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999 for his war against Ankara dating…