Free Republic

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and Turkey, penned an open letter in English rebuking President Trump's comparison of the group to ISIS amid a fight between Kurds and Turkish forces in northern Syria. The PKK said in Friday's letter that it “refused comparisons” to ISIS after Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday that the Kurds were “no angels” and that the PKK is likely “more of a terrorist threat” than ISIS. “We refuse comparisons being made between our movement and the inhumane thugs of ISIS,” the PKK’s...

A Kurdish-led force backed by a US-led coalition on Wednesday suspended operations against the Islamic State group and said they would not resume until Turkey halts its attacks on Kurdish militia posts in northern Syria.The Syrian Democratic Forces, joint Arab-Kurdish units under Kurdish command, announced a "temporary halt" to their operation, launched in eastern Syria on September 10, and condemned Turkey's "provocations".On Wednesday, Turkish shelling of Kurdish positions in the Kobane sector of northern Syria killed four fighters, according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency.The SDF condemned what it called the "coordination" of Turkey's attacks with a fightback by jihadists...

This November will mark 40 years since the founding of an organization that has gained greater geopolitical prominence than most non-state actors ever will. Millions of Kurds— the world’s largest nation without a state, oppressed by the autocratic states that occupy their lands— support it and consider it their political representation on the world stage. In the struggle against occupation and denial of Kurdish identity, it has evolved an ideology based on direct democracy, ecology, pluralism, and women’s liberation that poses answers to questions asked by political movements around the world for generations. This is the PKK— Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan...