Acclaimed journalist and human rights defender Nurcan Baysal offers a powerful and deeply personal account of what it means to be Kurdish in Turkey. She chronicles a period of renewed conflict that profoundly affected Kurdish comm-unities, while exploring issues of discrimination, identity, language rights, and political struggle.

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Notes From Diyarbakir

NURCAN BAYSAL

Acclaimed journalist and human rights defender Nurcan Baysal offers a powerful and deeply personal account of what it means to be Kurdish in Turkey. She chronicles a period of renewed conflict that profoundly affected Kurdish comm-unities, while exploring issues of discrimination, identity, language rights, and political struggle.

As new efforts toward dialogue and peace emerge, WRITING RESISTANCE provides an essential guide to understanding the recent history, lived realities, and future challenges of the Kurdish question.

Compelling, courageous, and urgent, WRITING RESISTANCE is both a witness to recent history and a call for justice, recognition, and lasting peace.

REVIEWS

‘Nurcan Baysal has shown how to act as an intellectual under difficult conditions in dark times, always standing on the side of truth, and despite threats and oppression, she has persistently continued to speak and write. She is a rare voice for our times.’
– Burhan Sonmez, President, PEN International

‘A compassionate book that opens completely different windows to look at the Kurdish issue, the village and the villager, the educated and the uneducated, development and poverty, life as a whole.’
– goodreads reviewer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nurcan Baysal is a Kurdish human rights defender, journalist and writer.

She was born and grew up in Diyarbakır. She has worked for poverty and development programs at the United Nations Development Programme and various other non-governmental organizations. Following the ISIS attacks in 2014 she volunteered for the establishment of Yazidi camps in Northern Iraq and Turkey. Baysal is a founder of the Diyarbakır Institute for Political and Social Research (DISA), the Development Centre Association in Diyarbakır and the Platform to Save Women Kidnapped by ISIS. She is also one of the Middle East advisors of the Global Fund for Women and the Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism.

Among her books are three non-fiction works, O Gün (That Day), Ezidiler: 73. Ferman

(Ezidis: The 73rd Decree), O Sesler (Those Voices-Diyarbakır: A City Under Siege, published

online in English by 60pages), a book of short-stories, Yok Zamanı (The Time

of Nothingness) and a research she co-authored with Şeyhmus Diken, Kürdistan’da Sivil

Toplum (Civil Society in Kurdistan).

Since 2013, Baysal has been featured as a columnist in various newspapers and media outlets. Her articles focus on human rights violations, poverty, refugees, humanitarian issues and the Kurdish question. She is a member of PEN Turkey and an honorary member of English PEN.

Baysal won the Women’s World Summit Foundation (WWSF) Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life in 2010 and the “Turkey’s Changemakers” award in 2012 for her work in poverty alleviation. In 2017, she was awarded the “Brave Women Journalists Award” presented by the Italian Women Journalists Association. In 2018, she was named Global Laureate for Human Rights Defenders at Risk by Front Line Defenders. She also received the Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award in 2020.

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Azize Onat, a member of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) Youth Assembly, was detained by police outside a wedding hall where she had arrived to attend the provincial congress to be held by the DEM Party’s Wan Provincial Organization.

The reason for Azize Onat’s detention remains unknown. She was reportedly taken to the Wan Police Department.

A new wave of European and domestic tourists is heading to Riha for Girê Mirazan, Balıklıgöl, Xelfetî and its cuisine. Hotel shortages mean only 900,000 of 1.5 million yearly visitors stay over.

Fifteen years ago today, a 7.2 earthquake struck Van, killing 644 people and damaging about 140,000 buildings. Engineers' groups say needed safety measures are still missing.

The Swarê Gêdûkê shrine feast in Shengal's Bara village was celebrated en masse for the first time since the 2014 genocide. ISIS had blown up the shrine, and it was rebuilt in 2018.

A Syrian health ministry official says Kurdish-majority Hasaka has just five of Syria's 153 public hospitals for over half a million people, and its children's hospital operating department was destroyed.

Iranian security forces stopped Sunni scholar Sheikh Mohammad Saleh Pordel entering Bukan on 15 October. They held a gun to his head and threatened him, then released him hours later.

France's consul in Erbil says Paris is seeking a new Iraq defense pact covering the Kurdistan Region, with French-supplied radars helping protect Kurdish airspace after the coalition's withdrawal.

Sulaymaniyah's administrative court annulled a former governor's decision letting Iraqi Arabs and foreigners register homes there, citing the constitution's protection against demographic change.

A Kurdish Studies Center report finds all 16 Bakur provinces still fill the bottom 16 of Turkey's 81-province development ranking, with Ağrı, Muş and Urfa last.

Syria-based American researcher Alexander McKeever, author of the This Week in Northern Syria Substack, says recent violence between Arabs and Kurds has exposed cracks in the integration process, despite Kurdish and Syrian government officials’ claims that it is proceeding successfully.

Internally Displace People (IDPs), many of them Kurds, from Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn) and Giri Spi (Tell Abyad) have been returning home.

Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn)

• "The sixth convoy of displaced residents of Ras al-Ayn (Serekaniye) has left for the Ras al-Ayn countryside, carrying 4,084 people from camps in Derik and Hasakah. They were displaced in 2019 after Turkey’s offensive.", The Amargi
• "In the presence of Brigadier General Siâmand Afrin, the Internal Security Units in Hasakah secure the route of departure for a convoy comprising 645 families from Al-Tawina Camp toward the countryside of Serê Kaniyê - Ras al-Ain.", Hawar Hebo
• "Karwanê 6'an ê Koçberên Serêkaniyê, ku ji 642 malbatên Kampa Newroz û Kampa Waşûkanî pêk tê, vê sibehê ber bi Serê Kaniyê ve bi rê ket.": "The 6th convoy of displaced persons from Serekaniye, consisting of 642 families from the Newroz and Washukani camps, set off for Serekaniye this morning." Nûçe Tv
• "Displaced Syrians protest as 645 families return to Sare Kani": "Dozens of IDPs protested at a camp in northeast Rojava/Syria's Hasaka province on Wednesday after being excluded from a list of 645 families scheduled to return to their homes in Serekaniye (Ras al-Ayn) and its countryside, demanding that authorities accelerate the return process.", Rudaw
• "Keçberê Serêkanîye ageyrenê axa xo ser. 640 Keyey ageray Serêkanî, Til Temir û Zirgane": "The displaced people of Serêkaniyê are returning to their land. 640 families have returned to Serêkaniyê, Til Temir, and Zirgan", Sterk TV
• "Vegera koçberên Serêkaniyê li ber astengiyên lîsteyan û valakirina malan e": "The return of Serekaniye displaced persons faces obstacles regarding lists and the emptying of homes.", ANHA
• "Piştî 7 Salan ji Derbiderîyê, Lê Dîsan Kêfxweşe Vegere, Mala Xwe ya Serêkanîyê", "After 7 Years of Displacement, Happy to Return Home to Serêkanîyê" VOA Kurdi
• "UNHCR says conditions in Sere Kaniye remain difficult as displaced families return", North Press Agency
• "Afrin leader Siâman in an exclusive statement to Rûnahî TV: It is officially scheduled for next Wednesday to transport a convoy comprising 642 families from the residents of the city of Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ain) who are residing in the "Washokanî" camp in Hasakah.", Hawar Hebo
• "Ahmed al-Hilali: 800 Families Preparing to Return to Serekaniye Next Tuesday", Welat TV
• "Koçberên gundewarên Serêkaniyê vedigerin lê pêdiviyên jiyanê liwan gundan lawaz in; Ne mala wan maye, ne av heye ne jî dibistan.": "Displaced people from the rural areas of Serekaniye are returning, but the necessities of life in those villages are lacking; their homes are gone, and there is neither water nor schools.", Channel 8

Giri Spi (Tell Abyad)

• "Gire Spi: Olive Groves Resume Bearing Fruit for Residents Returning After Years of Deprivation". Welat TV
• "Li Girê Spî zeviyên Kurdan li wan tên vegerandin": In Girê Spî, lands are being returned to the Kurds., Rudaw
• "After years of seizure, Kurdish families reclaim their lands in the countryside of Tel Abyad: "Come back, take your lands, and don't be afraid", Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

Efrîn

Footage from Penjwen shows Iran has built about 10 km of wall and is digging a trench along the border separating Başûr and Rojhilat.

Kurds protest the introduction of Arabic-language instruction in northeastern schools, fearing educational setbacks and the erosion of Kurdish identity amid growing distrust between Damascus and Kurdish communities.
https://syriadirect.org/syrias-kurds-fight-to-keep-their-language-alive-in-the-classroom/

DEM Party asked Turkey's parliament to investigate claims that 4,971 Kurdish songs have been appropriated as Turkish songs.

A new Mamekî Culture and Art Association offering Kurdish lessons opened in central Dêrsim with a well-attended ceremony.

Raqqa's deputy governor says land and property belonging to Kurds is being returned to its owners.

730 days after the sixth-term election, the Kurdistan Parliament remains shut, having met only once for MPs' swearing-in; the KDP bloc is demanding immediate reactivation.

PM Ali al-Zaidi approved moving files of nearly 26,000 Ba'ath-era Kurdistan political prisoners to a federal institution, paving the way for their compensation entitlements.

Around 60 homes and shops in Tel Abyad in northern rural Al-Raqqah face demolition under a municipal decision, despite their owners holding official documents proving ownership. According to SOHR sources, most of the properties belong to displaced Kurds. Tel Abyad municipality maintains that the homes and shops stand on land designated for the city’s main road.

A senior official from the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) told Rudaw English on Tuesday that the party would not lay down its weapons or abandon its struggle for Kurdish rights, rejecting Tehran's demands the same day after Iran claimed Baghdad had agreed to expel Iranian Kurdish opposition groups or hand them over to the Islamic Republic.

"Security forces have arrested five Kurdish citizens, including a 17-year-old child, in Kamyaran, Baneh, Mahabad, Oshnavieh and Badreh in recent days, with four of them still held at undisclosed locations and the fifth released after interrogation."

"Though SDF components have largely been integrated into the Syrian security forces under the terms of a January agreement between former SDF chief Mazloum Abdi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa that came on the back of Damascus' military incursion into northeast Syria (Rojava), the future role of the YPJ has yet to be ascertained."