Photo: Kurdistan Photo / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 This was a speech given by Dr. Joost Jongerden during the Launch Event of The Amargi on 20th September 2025. Introduction Food is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about politics. Yet the political does not always present itself explicitly as political (Day 2022). […]

In the aftermath of the WWI, a significant proportion of Kurdish elites preferred the establishment of a joint Turkish-Kurdish state over participation in the nascent Kurdish independence movement. This position can largely be explained by the circumstances and prevailing attitudes of the late Ottoman period. Kurds, particularly the Sunni majority in Turkey, as the situation […]

Recently, Tom Barrack, the US ambassador in Ankara and President Trump’s special envoy to Syria, said after a tumultuous meeting between Ahmad Shara, the Syrian president, and Mazlum Abdi, the co-leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces, that federalism is not suited to Syria and the region, and that all efforts should be focused on the […]

Across the globe, we are entering what historians may one day call another Age of Danger – an era marked by elite disarray, collapsing trust in institutions, economic precarity, and thxe rise of authoritarian populism. In this climate, people are increasingly abandoning faith in political solutions and turning instead to direct economic action: strikes, rent […]

For over a decade, public servants in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) have borne the brunt of political dysfunction, economic mismanagement, and elite self-preservation. Teachers, doctors, engineers, and administrators who once seemed to hold the promise of building a stable future for Kurdistan are now drowning in debt, working without fair compensation, and living […]

In Kurdistan and Iraq, while social and religious institutions are thriving, political institutions continue to remain weak. As the latter set of institutions is not embedded in popular culture or people’s daily lives, it continues to remain enigmatic and inaccessible to both the general public and local elites. Earlier this year, I embarked on a […]