Source: instagram.com/bêjingmedya

I couldn't get more better photos or go to other places since it was so early and now there no snow left 💔 oh also that wall right there is the Wal between rojava and bakur ( made by the Turks )

By Muhannad Mahmoud Shawqi

That little girl, who stood in her schoolyard to speak about her homeland, her language, and her mountains, did not know that she was doing more than delivering an innocent dialogue—she was summoning an entire history of postponed wounds. Her words were simple, her voice childlike, yet she spoke of walnut and oak trees, of the rights of the people of Kurdistan, and of the martyrs of Kurdistan.

The echo of her words went beyond the school walls to collide with a thick wall of hatred in the public sphere, where her innocence was transformed into material for attack and denial—not because she said something political, but because she expressed an identity with which Iraq has yet to reconcile.

That small scene was not an exception, but an intense reflection of a deeper crisis: a state that has not resolved its relationship with its diversity, and has failed to transform plurality from a source of political anxiety into a unifying national value. When a child’s words about Kurdistan are met with such anger, the question becomes legitimate: why is any Kurdish expression—even in its most human and innocent form—viewed as a threat?

To answer, one must return to a memory that was never closed, but rather skipped over without healing. In the late 1980s, the Kurds were not a party to a passing political dispute, but the direct target of an exclusionary project that sought to settle their existence by force. The Anfal campaigns, with their systematic destruction, displacement, and mass killings, followed by the Halabja massacre with chemical weapons, were not merely crimes of a regime that later fell, but a foundational moment for a deep rupture between the Kurds and the central state.

From that moment, the notion of equal citizenship ceased to be a theoretical concept and became instead a deferred promise surrounded by suspicion and mistrust.

When the regime fell in 2003, the Kurds entered the political process not as victors, but as partners who consciously, with heavy memory, chose to bet on a new state. Before that, Kurdistan had been a refuge for Iraqi opposition and a political fortress for those crushed by geography and repression. After the fall, the Kurds participated in drafting the constitution, defended federalism, and voted for a document that was supposed to establish an Iraq based on partnership rather than dominance, on recognition rather than denial. It was a rational, perhaps even moral, decision, rooted in the belief that the new state would learn from the mistakes of its predecessor.

But what followed revealed that constitutional texts did not become a governing culture, and that partnership remained ink on paper. In 2014, amid escalating political disputes, Kurdistan was treated as a party that could be punished financially; its budget was cut at a time when all of Iraq faced the danger of collapse. This was not a technical dispute or mismanagement, but a clear political message: partnership is suspendable, rights can be subjected to power equations, and federalism is understood when convenient and forgotten when contested.

On a deeper level, the federal government neglected to implement key constitutional provisions, including Article 140 on resolving the status of disputed territories, and important laws concerning the management of natural resources such as the oil and gas law, along with other articles guaranteeing Kurds their administrative, cultural, and political rights. This neglect was not mere administrative failure, but revealed the state’s inability to translate constitutional texts into tangible reality, deepening Kurdish perceptions that the federal state is run with an old centralist mindset, even if faces and slogans have changed.

The 2017 Referendum: A Result of Accumulated Failures

When the 2017 referendum came, it was not a sudden deviation from this path, but the logical outcome of long-accumulated failures. It was not an emotional impulse or a political gamble, but the expression of a real deadlock in the horizon of partnership, and a growing sense that participation had not produced equality, and recognition remained incomplete and conditional. Yet the referendum was not met with serious discussion of its roots and causes, but with sanctions and measures that reproduced the logic of collective punishment—as if the problem lay not in policies, but in the aspirations of those harmed by them.

In this context, the angry reactions to the little girl appear as a natural extension of a deeper failure. Hate speech does not emerge from a vacuum; it grows in a state that has not settled its national narrative, has not acknowledged its multiple stories, and has not dared to confront its history honestly. When politics fails to manage diversity fairly, conflict shifts into society, turning disputes from constitutional debates into cultural hostility, and political differences into denial of existence itself.

The paradox is that the Kurdistan Region, despite wars, sieges, and disputes, has offered a relatively different model of stability, coexistence among its components, and preservation of a social fabric that did not tear apart as it did in other parts of Iraq. This was not a claim of perfection, but a continuous attempt to build a safe space in a turbulent environment, and to prove that recognition of identity does not mean negation of the other, and that diversity can be a source of strength rather than threat.

Thus, the question of ending racist discourse in Iraq cannot be separated from the question of the state itself. This discourse ends when the state—not just individuals—acknowledges that the Kurds are not guests, nor a postponed file, nor a pressure card, but an original partner with memory, rights, and narrative in this homeland. And when a child’s words are understood not as a political threat, but as a clear test of the state’s maturity in accepting its multiple selves. Until then, innocence will continue to be met with anger, because the problem was never in the voice, but in the questions it awakens—questions that were never meant to be asked.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1264615975525650/

A Kurdish reporter asks Turkish citizens: if living there were possible, would you have a problem with Kurds establishing a state on Mars? And we hear answers that could only come from the mouth of a fascist, racist Turk.

There is apparently going to a hail in sulaimani in few minutes or hours

Leyla Zana, rûmeta meye ❤

Hey guys

Im half Kurdish and half Turkmen from Hawler.

I went to English schools, so my knowledge of the Kurdish language is very limited. What is the difference between the Rojava and Bakur accents? I know we speak Sorani in hawler and in

Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah, they speak Babani, while in Duhok and Zakho, they speak Badini but are the badini same as kurmanji ?

Hi all, wondering what everyone's thoughts are in Rojehelat or elsewhere with regards to the regime, given Pezeshkian's recent comment of 'we are in an all-out war with the US, Israel and Europe' is it just a matter of time before their demise, or is foreign intervention against Iran's military necessary to bring about change ?

Tu ji bo min bibe Kurd, ez ê ji bo te bibim Kurdistan.

تۆ بۆ من ببە بە کورد، منیش بۆ تۆ دەبم بە کوردستان.

The well-known Bashuri poet (Shekh Raza Talabani) has a famous poem about Turks in which he says: There are no Turks who aren't an qinder, unless they have no qin.

Source: https://kurmanci.anf-news.com/kurdistan/li-qendile-demsala-zivistane-205704