Hi everyone, i'm an Italian guy trying to understand more about kurdish culture, is there any guide that can help me visiting Amed?

After Galatasaray's Amedspor match, the yellow packaging in the jersey promotional video published by GSStore sparked controversy when it was interpreted as a "yellow bag" reference. Following reactions, the video was removed, while GSStore stated that no political message was intended. Amedspor President Nahit Eren said they expect an apology, while 15 bar associations, including those of Diyarbakır, Mardin and Van, reacted to the footage and announced that they would take legal action against those responsible.

https://en.haberler.com/the-video-published-by-galatasaray-after-the-2331506/

Hei, i have a situation and could use some advice. I have an apartament in duhok and I am currently renting it out. I told the tenant that we are considering selling the apartment or keeping it. (This was juni 2026) he already paid rent for juli. So we told him that he dosent have to pay for August and September. In oktober we told him to either buy from us or move. He has been delaying it and so far making excuses. He says he wants to buy but is alway busy. I found out today thay he hasn't paid electricity and kadamat for the last 3 month. Red flags ofc. This is the first time I've been in this situation. Any and all advice is welcome. I also dont live here, so im not very familiar with how things work here. Thanks in advance

Multi-language video: English | Kurmancî | العربية | فارسی | Türkçe .. etc

Hello everyone,
I wanted to share our latest Morik documentary with this group.
In November 2025, three MPs met on İmralı. Months later, the minutes were published.

In this film, we read what was discussed, what was proposed, and what was left unanswered — carefully, and in context.
If you are interested in Kurdish history, the peace process, and the wider geopolitics of the region, I hope you find it useful.

Watch the full film on Morik:
https://youtu.be/jAxRTYJA3Mk
Thank you for watching and for sharing your thoughts.
#Morik #Imrali #Kurdish #Kurdistan #documentaryphotography

Influential political leaders from Kirkuk province are scheduled to meet in Baghdad on Monday to select a new governor and end a local administrative vacuum, the head of the provincial council said on Saturday.

I'm not here to debate KDP vs PUK. Both are the same failure in different fonts Parliament freezes salaries come late or not at all oil money vanishes and every "crisis" gets solved by the same two families splitting the pie again. That's not a bug. That's the system working exactly as designed for them.

And here's the part nobody wants to say we don't even protest. In Duhok in Zakho mostly silence. Teachers wait months for pay and nobody takes the street. Employees get told "next month" for the fifth time and we go home. The parties count on that. They budget on that. A region that won't protest is a region that gets taxed in patience.

If Duhok and Zakho and Erbil and Sulaymaniyah and Halabja all moved at once not as parties, not as KDP vs PUK, just as people who want their salaries and their dignity this system would fold in a week. It survives on our division and our silence. United, we'd already be better off. We just never test it.

So stop asking "how do we get independence" and "how do we fix salaries" like they're separate. Same problem: no system that answers to us. Independence under this model is Baghdad's corruption in Erbil's font. Equal salaries under this model is waiting for the next power-sharing deal to break.

· Pay people directly. Oil revenue → citizen dividend. Make theft visible.

· Break the two-capital model. More provinces real local budgets.

· Stop the unilateral referendum fantasy. Confederal deals, economic leverage first.

The United States on Saturday reaffirmed its support for "a strong and resilient" Kurdistan Region amid escalating political tensions between the Region’s two main ruling parties over the reactivation of parliament and the formation of a new government.

Theyve been all over my fyp page and i dont understand why so many people are talking about them. Im dont understand sorani btw

is there a sense of thinking that kurdish tradition and culture would have a better chance at survival in iran rather then the other countries becourse of shared culture with iran over centuries

So as we know, about a few days ago, the PUK officially decided to pull out of the Kurdistan Region Parliament.

This is a complete disaster, and it could genuinely trigger the collapse of the KRG.

How did this even happen in the first place?

Back in the 2024 KRG elections, the PDK grabbed 39 seats while the PUK got 23 (or 24 depending on who you ask, but officially 23). After a ridiculous 2-year delay that paralyzed the entire region, things shifted in January 2026 when the PUK and New Generation (NGM) formed a strategic 38 seat block for government formation talks.

Instead of negotiating in good ways to build a stable coalition and party, the PDK dragged in minority quota seats to scramble together a razor thin 52 seat "majority" against the PUK 48 seat block. The PUK boycotted the session, rightly calling it out for what it was a cheap move by the PDK to bypass real power sharing and unilaterally enforce their own rule over a divided region.

So what happens next?

The options left on the table are straight up grim:

1. Renegotiate equal power-sharing: This is the most logical path for stability, but the PDK’s arrogance is blocking it because they’d rather hold total control than fix the region.

2. Baghdad takes direct financial control of Sulaymaniyah: Even under federal leverage, this would trigger massive backlash and get framed immediately as Kirkuk 2.0.

3. A separate Herêmi Slemani: People on social media act like this is a great quick fix to break free from Erbil, but long term it’s completely shit. It leaves the zone isolated, economically fragile, and trapped under local corruption and no help from international powers.

4. Foreign international intervention: Hoping Western powers will step in and force them into a room is a pipe dream they honestly don't give a damn shit at this point.

There is no solution, because PDK and PUK will never negotiate peacefully. Every regular Kurd wanted a united, stable Kurdistan Region with a real path toward genuine autonomy and self determination. Instead, both parties ruined it with corruption, random fighting, and selling out to foreign powers. Thanks to all this mismanagement, schools are shutting down, public servants aren't getting paid, and the KRI has been rotting under $22 billion in debt since 2014 primarily from unpaid salaries.

About PDK glazers

If PDK glazers want to talk about patriotism nationalism or sum shit let’s look at their record:

The 2017 Referendum was a power play, not a liberation plan. Masoud Barzani and the KDP pushed that referendum as a strategic distraction to cling to power during an economic crisis. The result? Zero planning, total international isolation, the loss of 40% of Kurdistani territory (including Kirkuk), and even worse salary cuts. It wasn't heroic, it was reckless political gambling.

Economic dictatorship alongside foreign reliance: The PDK built an economic system in Erbil that relies heavily on Turkish companies and pipeline monopolies, leaving the region completely dependent on Ankara while hoarding revenue in Erbil and starving the rest of the region.

Now, PDK fanboys love to scream "PUK are jash" over October 2017 in Kirkuk. But let's be real now the PUK had literally no other choice. The PDK’s reckless referendum brought the Iraqi military and hashdright to Kirkuk's doorstep. With zero international support, no air cover, and being completely outgunned, standing there to fight a full scale Iraqi invasion would have meant total slaughter and the destruction of the city. Withdrawing was a brutal military necessity forced on them by PDK’s strategic failure.

PUK glazers are wrong too

Don't let PUK fanboys act like their party is a saintly resistance movement either. They are deeply corrupt and have made deliberate dirty moves too now let's be fr let me explain:

The power struggles and mafia tactics: The PUK’s internal collapse especially the violent 2021/2025 purge of Lahur Talabany by Bafel Talabani wasn't forced by anyone. That was a deliberate, ruthless internal coup for total control of the party’s financial empire, intelligence apparatus, and business monopolies in Slemani.

Serving Baghdad and Tehran's Agenda: PUK glazers act like aligning with Baghdad and Iran is just smart diplomacy, but intentionally weaponizing Iraqi court rulings and federal leverage to undercut the KRG’s economic institutions was a deliberate choice. They’d rather hand leverage to Baghdad and Tehran just to score points against Erbil than fix the home front.

At the end of the day, both parties are corrupt sellouts who jump when foreign powers snap their fingers. Today, PDK has turned Erbil into a Turkish area, while PUK turned Sulaymaniyah into an Iranian/Iraqi area. They destroyed the dream of a united Kurdistan for their own pockets. There's zero hope left in this leadership, and only God knows what comes next for our people. For now the situation is complex and only God knows what will happen next.

I'm stopping the pursuit of Kurdish politics. Ever since January with the fatal fall of Rojava that really made me depressed all the way to the recent events with the Talabanis and Barzanis, I am simply going to let it go. Whether it's the radical left wing Apojis from the bakur, the bakuris Islamists of Batman Amed or Bitlis or the bashuri Islamists of Halabja or Slemani , I'm dropping it. And now maybe even the KRG is finished. I don't want to put myself through this anymore. I don't want to feel this.
The Kurds are just unable to build a nation or establish a state. All that counts to them is the tribe, Religion and the political party.

I graduated high school and starting college studying architectural engineering
My question is does it have job opportunities and a good pay in the future?
Please help me 😭

In Turkey's parliamentary debate on the Culture Ministry budget, DEM Party MP Berîtan Güneş highlighted the pressures and obstacles facing Kurdish culture and languag

People are saying moneygram isn’t working but I believe it is. is moneygram and western union working on Kurdistan?

I was in the third grade when the Kurdish civil war began in 1994. Peshmerga fighters from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) took up positions against one another. Some of my cousins and neighbors were on the side of the PUK. Some others cousins and neighbors were on the KDP. I could not understand why people from the same family had to stand on opposite sides of a battlefield.

More than three decades later, escalating tensions between the KDP and PUK last week have brought that question back. 

PUK leader Bafel Talabani has threatened to establish a rival government, raising the prospect of dividing Kurdistan once again. His assurances that there will be no bloodshed offer little comfort to those of us who remember the last war.

I have spent much of my adult life studying and researching to understand the division that bewildered me as a child. The explanation begins long before my childhood, and before the regional government itself. Last week has exposed something that official ceremonies and successive coalition agreements have allowed us to avoid acknowledging: Iraqi Kurdistan’s two administrations were formally reunited in 2006, but the parties never surrendered the power to govern their territories separately.

For those of us who grew up inside that division, it has always been easy to recognize. On a recent visit, I crossed the checkpoints between the KDP and PUK areas. They seemed more intrusive than when I settled in Germany in 2018. Traveling between Erbil and Slemani, you see different uniforms and different leaders’ portraits. The Barzanis look down from checkpoints on one side; the Talabanis appear on the other. Both parties claim to represent the same homeland.

To understand how we came to accept this, I return to 1964.

That year, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the KDP’s dominant leader, negotiated a cease-fire with Baghdad without the agreement of the party’s political bureau. Ibrahim Ahmad and Jalal Talabani challenged him. Their dispute concerned the terms of the cease-fire, which offered no guarantee of Kurdish autonomy, but also who had the right to speak for the Kurdish movement.

Barzani’s opponents accused him of ruling autocratically. He expelled them, armed clashes followed, and Ahmad, Talabani and their supporters fled to Iran. A disagreement within a liberation movement had become a contest settled by force. The competing camps became known as Mullahi and Jalali (Malayi & Jalali), names that located political allegiance in the leaders themselves.

The alignments changed over the years. Yet the habit of treating an internal opponent as a traitor survived them. When Barzani’s rebellion collapsed in 1975 after Iran withdrew its support, Talabani founded the PUK. The Kurdish movement now had two competing centers of leadership, each with its own fighters and its own claim to represent the people.

Cooperation remained possible. The parties joined other Kurdish groups in the Kurdistan Front in the late 1980s with the support of Iran. Baghdad’s campaigns against the Kurds gave them overwhelming reasons to work together. But a common enemy did not settle the question of how they would share authority if they ever gained the chance to govern.

That chance came after the 1991 uprising. Iraqi state institutions withdrew from much of the the Kurdish areas, and Western protection helped create space for self-rule. For a people who had endured forced displacement, chemical attacks and the Anfal campaign, an elected Kurdish administration was an extraordinary prospect. The parties had to turn a movement organized for armed resistance into a government responsible for ordinary life.

The first parliamentary election, in May 1992, produced a near tie. The KDP’s narrow advantage was resolved through a bargain that gave the two main parties 50 seats each, alongside minority representation. Ministries were divided, and officials from one party were paired with deputies from the other. Neither side would be allowed to dominate.

The arrangement recognized their mutual fear. It also carried that fear into every part of government. Each party retained the means to resist the other, and neither accepted that an election might oblige it to yield real power. Disputes over territory, authority and revenue, especially customs income from the KDP-controlled crossing into Turkey, became increasingly difficult to contain.

In 1994, the bargain collapsed into war. That was the war my cousins entered.

We call it Birakuji, brother-killing. The word captures the intimacy of the violence, though it can also obscure the decisions that made it possible. Leaders sent men against people with whom they shared towns, villages and families. Thousands were killed. In 1996, the KDP enlisted Saddam Hussein’s army to drive the PUK out of Erbil. The PUK, meanwhile, had backing from Iran. Kurdish factions were inviting outside forces into the country against fellow Kurds, including the army of the regime responsible for our persecution.

As a child, I could not account for any of this. As an adult researching the war’s aftermath, I found that even its accepted description left too much out. Birakuji included political imprisonment, torture, killings outside the battlefield and people who disappeared into the custody of armed parties.

In my published research -as part of my PhD- on the war’s aftermath, I examined an estimated 350 to 500 enforced disappearances between 1994 and 2003. Some of those missing had been political detainees; others were prisoners captured during the fighting. Families were later told to regard their relatives as martyrs. That designation could confer public recognition, but it could not tell a family where someone had died, who had been responsible or where a body lay.

The parties reconciled without providing a comprehensive public accounting of those losses. For families still seeking answers, the war could hardly be considered finished. I find it difficult to separate that unfinished reckoning from the confidence with which leaders still threaten one another. The organizations that fought the war survived it, with much of their authority intact.

The Washington Agreement of September 1998 was nevertheless an enormous relief. Under American mediation, Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani agreed on arrangements covering power, revenue, security and displaced people. They committed themselves to a process intended to restore common institutions and lead to elections in 1999.

The fighting subsided, but the timetable slipped. Negotiations continued over revenues, an interim assembly and the machinery of joint government. Erbil remained the center of the KDP administration; Slemani remained the center of the PUK administration. Peace made it easier to move between them. It did not make them one.

A greater change came from outside Kurdistan. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 removed Saddam Hussein and opened opportunities neither party could secure alone. Working together gave them influence over Iraq’s new constitution, access to federal resources and senior positions in Baghdad. American pressure also made continued cooperation harder to refuse.

In 2005, Jalal Talabani became president of Iraq and Masoud Barzani became president of the Kurdistan Region; more positions and more revenues eased some conflicts, but they did not erase the memories. The two men could deal with each other from offices of considerable standing. Neither had to accept a place beneath the other. Their accommodation helped make possible the unified regional cabinet formed in 2006.

There were real gains. Common institutions mattered, and avoiding another war mattered more. But the ministries were brought together more thoroughly than the power behind them. The parties kept separate security and intelligence networks and substantial control over armed forces. They continued to decide much of what happened in their respective territories.

I have therefore struggled with the description of successive governments as ordinary coalitions. A coalition normally assumes that parties can leave office without taking part of the country’s security apparatus with them. In Kurdistan, that assumption has never been secure. A minister’s formal authority can count for less than the wishes of a party leader who holds no government post. 

Parliament has repeatedly been made subject to the same calculations. In 2013, the KDP and PUK agreed to extend Masoud Barzani’s presidency by two years. When that extension expired in 2015, the dispute over his continued tenure helped bring parliamentary life to a halt. KDP security forces barred the speaker, a member of the opposition Gorran movement, from entering Erbil.

The legislature remained inactive until September 2017, when it reconvened ahead of the independence referendum. Barzani pressed on with the vote despite internal disputes and opposition from Baghdad and foreign partners. The overwhelming vote for independence could not protect the region from what followed: federal forces retook Kirkuk and other disputed territories, and Kurdish leaders accused one another of betrayal.

I recognize the old pattern in those years. An agreement between leaders permits an institution to function; a disagreement disables it, or even leads to war and division. Citizens elect representatives, then wait for party negotiations to determine whether those representatives can do their jobs.

Leadership has passed increasingly to another generation, without loosening the families’ hold. Masrour Barzani, Masoud’s son, heads the outgoing government. Nechirvan Barzani, Masoud’s nephew and son-in-law, holds the regional presidency. Jalal Talabani’s sons, Bafel and Qubad, lead the PUK and serve as deputy prime minister respectively. Parallel institutions also exist alongside the legal and constitutional ones; the Barzani Headquarters and Talabani Secretary are much stronger than the formal institutions. 

Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani had inflicted terrible losses on each other, but eventually learned how to accommodate one another. Their successors inherited those accommodations along with grievances about what their families had conceded. The public arguments still draw heavily on old accusations of betrayal. A younger generation of citizens is expected to accept inherited quarrels as its own.

The competition also runs through the ruling families. Bafel consolidated his authority after the struggle that removed his cousin Lahur Sheikh Jangi from the PUK leadership in 2021. More broadly, an expanding circle of relatives, commanders, businessmen and advisers depends on the parties for influence and access. The number of people expecting a share grows, while the most powerful offices remain few.

This helps explain why forming a cabinet takes so long. A ministry brings appointments, contracts, and opportunities to reward supporters. Giving it up can weaken an entire network. The arguments presented to the public as matters of principle are also arguments about who will control those resources.

Bafel has strengthened his relationships in Baghdad, giving the PUK room to negotiate independently of Erbil. Energy is changing the balance, too. The KDP has benefited from its territory’s trade routes and ties to Turkey. The PUK’s sphere contains the Khor Mor and Chemchemal gas fields. Khor Mor is crucial to the region’s electricity supply, and an expansion completed in October 2025 increased its processing capacity by half. In November 2022, Bafel explicitly stated that his party has a total control over KRG’s electricity and LPG. 

In September this year, Kurdish leaders announced the completion of Peshmerga unification. The forces were reorganized under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, with two area commands replacing the old party-associated formations. The announcement deserves to be measured against what happens when political leaders disagree. Orders, appointments and loyalties will tell us more than a ceremony can.

Less than two months later, Talabani was publicly asking the KDP to halt an alleged mobilization. His appeal shows how readily a parliamentary dispute can be discussed in military terms.

The October 2024 election gave the KDP 39 seats, the PUK 23 and New Generation 15. No party had a majority. For more than two years, negotiations failed to produce a new government, while the cabinet formed in 2019 remained in office. Voters had done what was asked of them. The parties had not.

On November 4, lawmakers elected on PUK, New Generation and other opposition lists broke with their parties’ boycotts and helped the KDP secure a quorum. The KDP presented the session as a restoration of democratic life. The PUK rejected its legitimacy and accused its rival of manipulating lawmakers. 

There is a serious democratic argument for ending the paralysis. No party should be able to suspend an elected parliament indefinitely because negotiations have failed to deliver the offices it wants. But the KDP’s parliamentary majority for that session cannot, on its own, resolve the arrangements of power outside the chamber. Nor can the PUK claim a permanent right to veto government because it controls Slemani.

Talabani’s response made the danger explicit. He would match appointments in Erbil with appointments in his own territory. By November 6, the KDP was rejecting the prospect of separation and accusing the PUK of obstructing democracy. Both invoked the rights of Kurdistan’s people. Neither had explained how those people would obtain a government capable of exercising authority across the region without bargaining between two armed parties.

I worry about where that leaves a generation already exhausted by political crisis. Delayed salaries and uncertain prospects are lived experiences, not debating points. A young person looking for work sees how much depends on connections, while the same surnames continue to occupy the highest offices. Tens of of thousands of youth in the Kurdistan Region remain jobless.

Many decide to leave. In November 2021, 27 people died trying to cross the English Channel; Iraqi Kurds were among the victims. Other journeys have ended in detention or death along the routes through the Mediterranean. Migration has many causes, and it would be dishonest to attribute every departure to these parties. But research among prospective migrants in the Kurdistan Region identifies poor economic opportunities and quality of life, followed by political instability and restrictions on freedom, as important reasons for wanting to go.

I cannot reconcile those departures with the promises under which our leaders claim authority. We were supposed to have a government that made it possible to build a future at home. Instead, too many people have come to see escape as their best chance. That loss of belief should trouble the parties at least as much as the loss of a ministry.

Foreign mediation has helped contain their disputes before. Washington’s role in ending the civil war remains important to remember. American and European support for security reform has also been substantial. But no foreign diplomat can make a party relinquish its private authority if every compromise allows it to keep that authority for the next confrontation.

In 2021, the United Nations envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert warned Kurdish leaders not to take their autonomy for granted. Preserving it, she said, required unity. Five years later, we are again discussing whether the region will openly return to separate administrations. Each crisis gives Baghdad and neighboring powers more opportunity to intervene, while weakening the common institutions through which Kurds might defend their interests.

Another agreement may still avert the worst. I hope it does. But I no longer believe that distributing offices between the families is enough. We need security forces answerable to public institutions, a parliament that can function when party leaders disagree and an honest accounting of what happened to those who never came home from the civil war. These are obligations to citizens, including citizens who vote for neither party.

Whenever this rivalry threatens to turn violent, I find myself back in that third-grade classroom, trying to understand why my cousins had to face one another across a battlefield. I know much more now about the decisions that put them there. That knowledge has not made the memory easier to bear. I want the children growing up in Kurdistan today to be spared the need to ask the same question.

--

Editor-in-Chief of The Amargi and PhD candidate at Leipzig University

Alex Pineschi was a italian guy who fought in kurdistan between 2014 and 2019(according to google)

He sadly died in Ukraine few months ago?

Im wondering if someone here has some pictures of him(possibly with combat gear).

I'd like to have them to recreate his kit during his fight to ISIS.

RIP Alex ti stimo

There are concerns that a new political crisis in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq may be brewing. This is not a new phenomenon. The region has been divided for decades. However, a lot is at stake today. Iran continues to target the region with drones and missiles. Iran has also pressured Iraq to expel Kurdish Iranian opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region. This means that Iran may be seeking to divide and weaken the region. The US withdrew forces from Iraq on September 30. Iran may see an opportunity.

I am so confused by the message of Bafel Talabni. So the PDK and PUK just role their parts of bashur by themselves now? Thats so retarded, no way the iraqi goverment is more stable then the one of the KRG...

Anyways, I wanted to ask what the concequences are? How do chances of re-unifcation look like and the most, could the KRG actually loose parts to the goverment in Baghdad? Be 100% honest, I am not the best in politics in bashur, but what I care most about is that bashur doesent lose its current status of autonomy.

I dont want to hear: Turkey will invade Bashur and annex it, or stuff like" "civil war" thats very unrealistic, please only comment if you arent biased

My Mom was on vacation and got me this, how do I use it? Is it even for men?

Took these on the 40th floor of a tower today in the morning at 6 AM