From being merely a sleepy unimportant backwater in the Kurdish struggle, Syria has suddenly graduated to being not only a burgeoning center of the Kurdish national movement and even an important flashpoint in the regional geopolitical situation. How did this occur? The Arab Spring revolt that broke out against the long-ruling Assad family in March 2011 quickly involved not only the many different groups within Syria, but also most of the surrounding states and parties as each perceived the Syrian outcome as potentially bearing a most important impact on its own future. Turkey feared that the violence would spill over into its borders and further inflame its own Kurdish problems especially as the PKK-affiliate Democratic Union Party (PYD) headed by Salih Muslim Mohammed in Syria began to gain influence. To meet this threat, Turkey supported the oppositional Syrian National Council (SNC). However, such Turkish support scared the Kurds in Syria away from backing the opposition as Turkey clearly had no interest in empowering the Syrian Kurds in a post-Assad Syria. The PYD especially argued this point. Furthermore, the Syrian Kurds did not trust any prospective Sunni Arab government that might succeed Assad to grant or protect Kurdish rights. On the other hand, Assad’s earlier anti-Kurdish record had been abysmal. Moreover, even the Kurds in Syria were divided among themselves between the much stronger PYD-supported People’s Council of Western Kurdistan (PCWK) and the Kurdish National Council (KNC), which consisted of most of the other 12-15 odd Kurdish parties in Syria. Such Kurdish divisions in Syria, however, were not novel. With this incredibly complicated and evolving scenario in mind, the main substance of this paper article will analyze specifically three recent developments that have contributed to the Syrian Kurdish ascent: 1.) the assassination of Mishaal Tammo on October 7, 2011; 2.) the rise of Salih Muslim Muhammed (SMM) and his PKK-affiliated PYD; and 3.) the emergence of a de facto Syrian Kurdish autonomy in northeastern Syria in. This paper will be based on primary sources gathered through field work in Syria, interviews with important actors including PYD leader Salih Muslim Mohammed, and secondary sources. The tentative conclusion will reinforce the paper’s title that the Syrian Kurds are ascending.

The 1991 Gulf War followed by the 2003 Iraq War accorded Iraqi Kurds an opportunity for the first time in their recent history to mold the building blocks of a de facto state called the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The Kurds were able to fill the administrative, security and political vacuum left behind by the central government's departure from the region in 1991. The KRG used its Kurdish peshmarga fighters to create a safe and secure environment, which encouraged external and internal investments. The political and diplomatic cadres assembled by the KRG attracted numerous foreign diplomatic and commercial missions to the region. They wanted to take part in developing the region's rich resources, especially oil and gas, and a fast growing economy. Through diplomatic exchanges and frequent travel to foreign capitals, KRG increased the anxiety of the newly emerging Shiite rulers in Baghdad, who feared that the Kurds might be on their way to splitting from Iraq. As they consolidated their political and military powers, the new Shiite rulers tightened the screws on the KRG, especially after the departure of US forces from Iraq at the end of 2011, in order to bring them under central government control. The objective of this study is to identify and analyze the various measures undertaken by the central government to reverse territorial, political, security and economic gains made by the KRG since 1991.

In Europe, notions of Kurdishness are expressed through numerous types of activities including economic, social, cultural, and political practices. The Kurdish diaspora is increasingly diverse, yet continues to agree on challenging rigid definitions of membership, citizenship, and belonging. Euro-Kurds frequently articulate political ideas that are similar to those advanced in Turkey and Iraq, yet in the European context they reflect a re-envisioning of a cultural Kurdistan. While Euro-Kurdish communities have long demanded recognition as a separate ethnic group, their claims had not included the physical act of relocating to a territorialized Kurdistan. Instead many Kurds in the Diaspora imagined a cultural space that would be formed and shaped by members of their own community. How are European Kurds adjusting their perspectives of belonging and their perceptions of citizenship rights in an era of weakening nation-states, and at a time of Syrian state disintegration? This paper is based on interviews and secondary sources that explore how radical democracy in Turkey shapes European Kurdish views of a cultural Kurdish project during a period of political ascendance in the Middle East.

Today, looking at the Middle East and assessing the Kurds ascending, through and beyond the dust and smoke of war, new forms of politics and democracy are being shaped in social practices and by social experimentation. Notable expressions of these practices and experiments are the people’s councils that have been established in various places in the Kurdistan region, such as in Derik (in Syria) and Diyarbakir (in Turkey). Through these councils people are taking greater responsibility for and control of their daily lives and the places where they live. Those involved indicate that these councils are not simply to be considered as local initiatives, but also contribute to a larger project or idea and way of thinking about and doing politics, a politics of connectivity of places and people. The overall aim of this paper is to explore and explain how the Kurdish movement is developing new ways of thinking and doing politics. We will discuss this in connection to literature on performative practices, which offers an analytical approach for the study and an understanding of social experimentation. Acknowledging the complexities and ambivalences immanent to this experiments, this paper will put forward that the social practices and social experimentation initiated by the Kurdish movement is a way in which the Kurds are ascending in the era of a crisis of the nation-state, re-imagining democracy and developing citizenship rights. This paper will be based on field work, interviews, and secondary sources.

Iranian nationalities have played an integral part in the country’s century-long anti-authoritarian, anti-imperialist, and pro-democracy movements. The Kurds of Iran have certainly been an integral part of this struggle, and they have largely framed their demands for recognition of their sociopolitical and cultural rights within the broader context of a democratic and decentralized Iran. The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that have inhibited the realization of Kurdish demands since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. In particular, the paper seeks to analyze the role played by the Iranian Kurds in the reformist and pro-democracy developments in the country. Finally, the paper will examine the pros and cons of federalism, which many Kurdish groups have promoted, in the context of a more democratic and inclusive Iran. I will rely on both secondary sources and primary sources (including the Kurdish ones) to analyze factors that have impeded Kurdish ascendancy in contemporary Iran and place my discussion in the context of the ascendant Kurdish factor in the politics of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.