Kurdish women fighters of the Women’s Protection Unit, YPJ (Yekîcneyên Parastine Jin) received considerable attention in Western Europe and the United States. They made the headlines of mainstream newspapers and magazines. The emergence of an all-women, secular military force in the Middle East initiated a multi-layered process of conditional recognition of the Kurdish struggle – a ‘recognition’ in the sense of wide media coverage, but ‘conditional’ since it sought to divorce the feminist approach from its very specific political narrative and then reconnect it with Western liberalism. This paper critically delves into questions of a gendered geopolitics that portrays the Kurdish (feminist) struggle in the US popular discourses while silencing the voices of women and ignoring its historical roots and development. Based on an analysis of articles published in The Washington Post, New York Times, and Newsweek about the struggle for Kobane, we discuss the ways in which geopolitics, Orientalism and gender are interrelated in reports about this struggle. One of our main conclusions is that not despite, but rather through, the portrayal of Kurdish women fighters as heroines–even as angels–the idea of the Middle East was reproduced as a geography of fear, backwardness, and violence. The images of Kurdish women fighters may have superficially appeared to suggest a recognition of their struggle, this is a recognition that works through the presentation of images (portrait) at the expense of silencing the voices of the actors engaged in a struggle for a project that envisages a non-statist democracy. Although the portrayal of this struggle in Western media, in which the image of struggling women is disconnected from their politics, does not contribute to a recognition of their struggle, the women’s enunciation of their struggle in historical and political terms pushes the door for the audibility of Kurdish women’s voices.

On 25th September 2017, the eligible voters of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq were given the opportunity to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question, posed in Kurdish, Turkmen, Arabic and Assyrian: “Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the administration of the Region to become an independent state?” The aim of this note is to give an empirically focussed account of the independence referendum. The note has been written by four members of a delegation which spent one week in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) with the purpose of observing the referendum. The key point that we draw from these observations is that the referendum and associated aspiration for independence, which potentially could have unified the different political factions in the KRI, has in fact cruelly exposed divisions.

On 25 September 2017, voters in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and disputed areas controlled by Kurdish forces were given the opportunity to respond ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the question ‘Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the administration of the Region to become an independent state?’ Functioning as an expression of the desire to construct an independent state, the referendum signalled a break with the formal Kurdistan Regional Government position of constructive engagement for greater power and autonomy within a unified Iraq. Meanwhile, on 22 September 2017, the neighbouring population in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria elected co-chairs for the approximately 3,700 ‘communes’, which form the basis of what is claimed to be a non-state governmental system. In this region of the northern Middle East, therefore, divided by the Iraqi-Syria border and under the influence of two distinct Kurdish movements, two quite different and competing government systems have emerged. One is based on the idea of the nation-state, the other on societal self-organization. The main questions addressed in this contribution is how these two systems of governance differ and what the societal implications are of these differences? Data on the political-administrative practices has been collected on basis of field work in both regions in the period 2015–2017. A main conclusion is that the systems differ strongly in terms of political outlook, with profound implications for the nature of citizenship and inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations.

Based on original data, this article discusses rural‒urban mobilities and the contemporary employment‒migration relationship. Starting with the observation of reduced rural population but maintained family-farm numbers, it engages with multiple issues, including rural employment, the process of urban migration, settlement in the city, the relation of migrants to the rurality and (return) counter-migration. It supports the thesis that migration is not so much about a ‘movement from one place to another’, the classical migration definition, and more about a coupling of practices (related to mobilities, residence, employment, etc.) with places over time. Thus, migration and counter-migration are conceptualized as socio-spatial strategies, conceptualized as ‘multi-place living’ or ‘dual life’, which are based on variable engagements with rural farming, urban wage labour and return movements (for retirement, refuge, etc.). The newly emergent and growing dual/multi-place structures that result from this are re-shaping village life in particular, expressed in various ways, such as in a changing village demography and function.