The process called “a Turkey without terror” by the authorities and “peace process” by the pro-Kurdish DEM party took an important step forward with the establishment of a special parliamentary commission tasked with drafting proposals to provide a legal framework.
It is composed of 48 deputies: 25 from the governing coalition (President Erdoğan’s AKP and its far-right ally, the MHP), ten from the Republican People’s Party (CHP, center-left), four from the pro-Kurdish DEM party, and nine from other opposition parties.
This cross-party commission must “propose and prepare legal regulations that will make peace permanent and ensure complete disarmament,” declared the Speaker of Parliament at the opening of its work on August 5, celebrating “the beginning of a new era.”
According to Numan Kurtulmuş, who will chair the proceedings, the commission will hear from “all segments of society”: intellectuals, academics, jurists, and representatives of civil society. “It will not only draft reports, but will also monitor the disarmament process on behalf of the people,” he added.
For him, “the commission gathered here (…) is a historic delegation that demonstrates the courage to rebuild our future and the will to strengthen social integration.” The peace process, he stressed, is “a matter of survival concerning the shared future of citizens of all backgrounds, both Turkish and Kurdish.”
The creation of this commission was a demand of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who had called last February for the dissolution of the PKK and an end to the armed struggle. In his view, this commission should propose a legal framework for the disarmament of the PKK and the integration of its thousands of fighters. It should also propose democratic reforms to guarantee recognition of Kurdish identity and the free expression of Kurdish language and culture.
Responding to their founder’s call, the PKK convened a congress last May that decided on its self-dissolution. In a widely publicized symbolic gesture, about thirty fighters, during a televised ceremony near Suleimaniah, placed their weapons into a basin and burned them. But the organization’s leaders also stated that there would be no complete disarmament without legal guarantees.
Drafting those guarantees is a key mission of this commission, whose work could continue at least until the winter, according to its chairman.
So far, President Erdoğan’s ruling bloc has conceded little ground. Tellingly, Speaker of Parliament Numan Kurtulmuş warned that “this is not a negotiation process,” signaling that Ankara views the commission not as a forum to address Kurdish political demands but simply to manage the PKK’s surrender. Such attitudes underscore Kurdish fears that the state seeks capitulation, not reconciliation. Far-right rhetoric remains unchanged: even as Kurds attempt good-faith engagement, Turkey’s foreign minister reiterated in August that Syrian Kurdish YPG units (which Ankara equates with the PKK) must show “confidence-building measures” or be treated as terrorists. Critics say this anti-Kurdish posture in regional policy reflects Ankara’s persistent “Kurdophobia” and bodes ill for genuine peace.
Nothing illustrated Ankara’s bad faith more than the treatment of the “Mothers of Peace,” a group of Kurdish mothers who lost children in the conflict and advocate for peace. On August 20, these women were invited to address the cross-party parliamentary commission, only to be banned from speaking in Kurdish. The official record blandly noted “the speaker used a language other than Turkish,” while the commission’s chair cut off anyone not speaking Turkish. One mother, Nezahat Teke, pleaded that she could best express her pain and hopes in her mother tongue: “I was born of a Kurdish mother, raised with Kurdish lullabies, suffering in Kurdish, crying in Kurdish,” but she was denied this right.
Similarly, the government has made no gesture regarding Kurdish political prisoners, including former MP and presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş, jailed for ten years for opinions. Dismissed Kurdish mayors, replaced by state-appointed administrators, have still not been reinstated.
The government is using this period of “dialogue” with the pro-Kurdish DEM party to attack the main opposition force, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), whose elected mayors are being prosecuted and arrested one after another under the pretext of “fighting corruption” in a country tightly controlled by regime-aligned oligarchs, with impunity. The CHP’s leading figures, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and party leader Özgür Özel, are pursued under various and often implausible charges by a politicized judiciary subservient to Erdoğan, tasked with eliminating potential opposition candidates ahead of the next presidential elections, where Erdoğan intends to run for another term.
On the foreign front, Turkey increasingly poses as the patron of Hamas, whose exiled leaders are regularly received in Ankara as “resistance fighters.”
Between Israel and Turkey, a war of words is raging, with open speculation that it could escalate into armed conflict in Syria.
On August 14, Turkey signed a memorandum of military cooperation with Damascus, promising weapons systems, training, and logistical support to the Syrian army. The move has been widely interpreted as a signal that Ankara is prepared not only to exert diplomatic pressure on the Kurds but also to bolster Damascus militarily to dismantle Kurdish autonomy.
At the end of July, Syria, France, and the United States announced an agreement to organize discussions in Paris “as soon as possible” on the implementation of the accord signed on March 10 between interim president al-Charaa and General Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The two co-signatories of this agreement—providing for the integration of the SDF and the institutions of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria—had been invited by President Macron to Paris to discuss the modalities and timetable for implementing the accord, in order to consolidate the new Syrian regime while also taking into account Kurdish demands for decentralization and pluralism.
A conference held in the Kurdish-controlled zone and attended by General Abdi brought together some 400 delegates representing Kurds and Syria’s ethno-religious minorities. The delegates formulated a series of demands for Syria’s future, including a democratic constitution guaranteeing political pluralism, human rights, gender equality, and the rights of ethno-religious minorities within a decentralized system.
The Alawites and Druze—who have suffered massacres at the hands of pro-government militias and are deeply concerned by the Islamist, centralizing, and authoritarian direction of the new regime—joined the Kurds in defending this democratic alternative proposed by the Hassakeh conference: an alternative rejected by the Damascus regime and its Turkish backers.
U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, Ambassador Tom Barack, who had already exerted strong pressure on Kurdish leadership to sign the March 10 framework agreement, appeared to recognize the difficulty of reaching a compromise given the Kurds’ deep mistrust in light of the regime’s treatment of Alawites and Druze. Hence the idea of involving France, which enjoys excellent relations with Kurdish leaders in Syria and Iraq. During his visit to Erbil last April, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot met General Mazloum Abdi to hear directly about the situation of Syrian Kurds, “brothers-in-arms of French forces,” and to convey “France’s support, which will never abandon them.”
This explains how much Syrian Kurdish leaders relied on French diplomatic mediation to counterbalance Turkey’s hostile, anti-Kurdish influence over the Islamist regime in Damascus. Yet on August 9, Damascus announced that it would not participate in the planned Paris talks on integrating the Kurdish semi-autonomous administration into the institutions of the central state, demanding that any future negotiations be held in Damascus (AFP, August 9).
The Syrian government “invites international mediators to transfer all negotiations to Damascus, the only legitimate and national venue for dialogue between Syrians,” a Syrian official told AFP. According to him, the Damascus government opposes the internationalization of Syrian affairs and rejects all foreign interference—except, of course, that of Turkey. On the eve of this defiant declaration, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan paid an unscheduled visit to Damascus to “advise” President al-Charaa not to travel to Paris and to avoid any internationalization of the Kurdish question in Syria.
On August 12, at the request of the Syrian government, a meeting was held in Damascus between Foreign Minister Assaad al-Chaibani and Ilham Ahmed, head of Syrian Kurdish diplomacy.
Their discussions focused “on finding an appropriate formula for decentralization,” with no specific timetable for implementation, “according to a Kurdish source quoted by AFP” (August 12). The same source said the talks aimed to revive “the continuation of the negotiation process through Syrian-Kurdish committees under international supervision.” Both parties agreed there is no military solution.
The next day, August 13, the Turkish foreign minister met with his Syrian counterpart in Ankara. At their joint press conference, the Turkish minister attacked the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units), saying they “do not integrate into the system and spoil the game in Syria.”
“Members of the organization, originally from Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Europe, have not left Syria (...). We have seen no development in Syria indicating that the organization has eliminated the threat of armed action,” he added, before warning: “Turkey seeks neither occupation nor domination of the region. But in a context where its security demands remain unmet, we have no chance of remaining quiet. We say this openly.”
The new Syrian regime is preparing to establish a “transitional parliament.” In June, a presidential decree created a ten-member electoral commission tasked with overseeing the formation of local committees that will designate 140 people between September 15 and 20 to sit in this 210-member “parliament.”
The remaining 70 “deputies” will be appointed directly by the interim president. The process will be “postponed” in the provinces of Raqqa and Hassakeh, under Kurdish control, and in Suweida, the Druze-majority province in the south of the country—a delay attributed to “security challenges in these provinces.”
Seats will be “reserved” for the three provinces to be filled at a later date, a member of the electoral commission told AFP (August 23). According to the constitutional declaration, the Parliament will have a renewable two-and-a-half-year mandate. It will exercise legislative functions until the adoption of a permanent constitution and the holding of new elections.
Meanwhile, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued fighting remaining ISIS cells throughout August 2025. Fighting was especially intense in Deir ez-Zor province, where ISIS sleeper cells persist. In mid-August, the Deir ez-Zor Military Council of the SDF concluded a sweep operation around Gharanij, capturing several ISIS militants. Despite these gains, ISIS attacks inflicted losses on SDF fighters and civilians. On August 6, two SDF fighters were killed when ISIS ambushed a patrol in eastern Deir ez-Zor. Later in the month, ISIS gunmen assassinated a local school principal.
International coalition forces also struck ISIS during this period. On August 20, a U.S.-led coalition raid in northwestern Syria targeted a senior ISIS official, capturing an Iraqi jihadist commander in a pre-dawn helicopter assault. This was the second major U.S. raid since Syria’s new interim government took power, signaling the coalition’s sustained commitment to tracking ISIS. U.S. Central Command officials stressed that ISIS “remains a threat” regionally and that jihadists have shifted their focus to destabilizing Kurdish-held areas.
Finally, on August 28, around 850 Iraqi nationals affiliated with ISIS or family members detained in the al-Hol refugee camp in Rojava were repatriated to Iraq. Since the start of the year, some 11,000 Iraqis have been repatriated, and the remaining few thousand detainees in camps administered by Kurdish forces are expected to be repatriated before year’s end.
Stronghold of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and cultural capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, the city of Sulaimaniyah was the scene of a series of violent disturbances in August.
On August 13, police arrested the head of the main parliamentary opposition party New Generation, Shaswar Abdulwahid.
This businessman, owner among other things of a Kurdish television channel, was arrested at his home in connection with a judicial case.
A judicial source told AFP (August 13) that the arrest followed a conviction in absentia to six months in prison for failing to appear at court hearings in a defamation case brought by a former female MP. He is also said to owe more than $80 million to the public treasury.
This populist opponent, who regularly denounces corruption, poverty, and unemployment in Kurdistan on his TV channel, reportedly refuses to pay taxes owed by his companies, believing that his status as party leader and media owner should grant him some form of immunity, if not protect him entirely from judicial proceedings—which he considers political persecution. His party, New Generation, won 15 out of 100 seats in the Kurdistan Parliament during the October 2024 elections. His supporters took to the streets to protest what they consider “political persecution.” The judiciary is expected to organize his trial in the coming weeks.
On August 22, it was former ousted PUK co-president Lahur Talabani who was violently arrested. Forced out of PUK leadership by his cousin Bafel Talabani, the eldest son of former Iraqi President and PUK founder Jalal Talabani, Lahur had created his own party, the Popular Front, which obtained only a marginal result, far from winning any seats in the October 2024 elections.
The former head of Sulaimaniyah’s counterterrorism services is said to have retained many loyalists within these forces. He is accused of preparing a coup aimed at eliminating the current PUK leadership.
In the early hours of August 22, security forces surrounded the Lalezar Hotel in Sulaimaniyah to arrest Lahur and his associates under a warrant issued by a local court. Fierce clashes broke out around 3 a.m. and lasted nearly four hours, with Lahur’s armed supporters exchanging fire with security units. The clashes caused numerous casualties on both sides. According to official figures, three members of the security forces were killed and 19 wounded in the confrontation. Lahur is being prosecuted under Article 56 of the Iraqi Penal Code, covering criminal conspiracy. Judicial authorities in Sulaimaniyah stated that the arrest warrant included charges of attempted murder and attempts to destabilize security. Following his detention, prosecutors added further serious charges, including premeditated murder and armed sedition.
The Kurdistan Regional Security Council released footage of several men, presented as members of Lahur’s armed group, confessing to the plot. In the video, six armed guards described plans to rent an apartment in a tower near Bafel Talabani’s headquarters and showed how silenced sniper rifles had been set up at a window overlooking the PUK leader’s office. They claimed Lahur himself had given the order to assassinate his cousin Bafel. The Kurdistan Regional Security Council, a key security body, accused Lahur’s faction of plotting to destabilize the region by eliminating key leaders. The conspirators had also reportedly targeted Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister and Bafel’s younger brother, in their assassination attempt.
These troubles come just months before Iraq’s parliamentary elections, in a tense regional context where the Iran–Israel conflict and ongoing political and financial disputes between Baghdad and Kurdistan weigh heavily on stability. The population, hit by economic crisis and political uncertainty, is increasingly anxious.
In Arab Iraq, the situation is even worse. Despite more than $120 billion allocated since June 2003 to establishing a modern electrical system, the country continues to suffer from severe power shortages.
On August 11, following a massive blackout, Iraq was almost entirely without electricity—except for Kurdistan, which has its own power plants. The outage was reportedly caused by overconsumption due to the heatwave. In Baghdad, Basra, and Karbala, temperatures often reach 50°C, and residents increasingly rely on air conditioning.
Because of widespread corruption among the political class, much of the funds allocated for building new power plants have been embezzled. Iraq, already importing electricity from Iran—which itself suffers shortages—may also turn to Turkey for supplies, at steep cost.
On the security front, as agreed, the Americans evacuated their military bases in Arab Iraq and redeployed their forces to Kurdistan, where their presence is expected to last at least another year.
Washington will nonetheless maintain “strategic cooperation” with Baghdad and will ensure that Iraq does not fall entirely into Iran’s orbit. Under U.S. pressure, a draft law aimed at strengthening the role of the pro-Iranian paramilitary units of Hashd al-Shaabi, granting them financial independence similar to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, has been indefinitely postponed. Washington considers that adopting such a law would “institutionalize Iranian influence and consolidate terrorist armed groups, thereby undermining Iraq’s sovereignty.”
The conflict between Erbil and Baghdad over the budget and oil exports from Kurdistan continues. Baghdad has not paid salaries of Kurdistan’s employees and civil servants for July and August. Oil exports, announced every week as resuming “very soon,” have still not restarted. Their suspension since March 2023 has already cost Kurdistan and Iraq more than $30 billion.
The parliamentary elections scheduled for November 17, 2025, risk taking place in a tense climate, and popular discontent could translate into a vote for populist parties, producing an even more fragmented parliament. One year after the elections, Kurdistan has still failed to form a new governing coalition.
Iran’s nuclear program continues to jeopardize the country’s future, its economy, and its foreign relations. Just weeks after the 12-day war in June—during which key nuclear facilities were severely damaged by Israeli and American bombings—the Europeans of the so-called E3 group (France, Germany, the United Kingdom) are attempting to revive broken lines of dialogue in order to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis through diplomatic means. Time is pressing, as the nuclear deal signed in July 2015, endorsed at the time by a UN Security Council resolution, expires in October.
That deal has not been respected. The United States, under Donald Trump’s first term, withdrew in 2018 and reimposed its own sanctions. Iran, for its part, abandoned some commitments, particularly on uranium enrichment, while still allowing inspections by UN nuclear agency officials. The Europeans, meanwhile, upheld their obligations, including the suspension of economic sanctions targeting Iran. The question now is whether those sanctions will be reinstated in October when the 2015 agreement expires.
On August 26, representatives of the E3 met with their Iranian counterparts to revive dialogue and explore the possibility of a diplomatic deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program to purely civilian uses. Under such an arrangement, Iran would be authorized to enrich uranium up to 5% for nuclear power plants and around 20% for medical isotopes. But Tehran appears to reject any limitation of its enrichment program, framing it as a matter of “national pride.”
As a minimal gesture of openness, Iran allowed UN inspectors to visit its Bushehr nuclear plant—a first since the 12-day war. Against this tense backdrop, the E3 triggered on August 28 the so-called “snapback” mechanism, which enables sanctions against Iran to be reinstated. The three European powers are thus giving Iran one month to negotiate and avoid the reimposition of sanctions that were suspended ten years ago.
A closed-door UN Security Council meeting on the issue took place on August 29 in New York. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also left the door open to negotiation for one more month: “We are entering a new 30-day phase (…) that we must truly use to find diplomatic solutions,” she said (L’Express, August 30). Even U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared on August 29 that Washington remained open to direct talks with Tehran.
The snapback mechanism—different from standard Security Council decisions—stipulates that sanctions will be reinstated at the end of 30 days unless the Council adopts a resolution confirming their suspension, an unlikely scenario given the certainty of one or more permanent-member vetoes. Russia, a co-signatory of the 2015 accord, urged Europeans “to revise their erroneous decisions before they lead to irreparable consequences and a new tragedy.”
The reinstatement of sanctions would have a devastating impact on Iran’s already ailing economy. The rial, the national currency, is in freefall. On August 3, Iran’s parliamentary economic commission approved a bill to cut four zeros from its currency. That same day, one U.S. dollar traded on the black market for 925,000 rials (Le Figaro, August 3).
Poverty is spreading everywhere. In an oil- and gas-rich country, the population suffers daily electricity, gas and water cuts. Drought is making matters worse. Water reservoir levels in dams are at record lows. The situation is critical in Tehran province, where the four main reservoirs supplying the capital are only 12% full, compared to 60–70% normally (Le Monde, August 6). Faced with widespread discontent, the authorities are resorting to unrestrained repression.
According to the UN, 841 people have been executed by the regime since the start of the year. The UN denounces “a systematic pattern of using the death penalty as a tool of state intimidation.” In July alone, Iran executed at least 110 people, double the number of those executed in July 2024 (Le Monde, August 29; Le Figaro, August 30).
In Kurdistan, Iranian security forces carried out waves of arbitrary arrests in August, targeting civilians, activists, and even journalists. Detainees were typically taken without warrants or legal process, often amid violence, and transferred to undisclosed locations. In many cases, families were left in anguish, with no information about their relatives’ fate.
On August 19 in Saqqez, four Kurdish villagers—Omid Rahimzadeh (47), Mehdi Kamali (41), Zakaria Moradi (35), and Mohammad Aminpour (30)—were arrested without a judicial warrant by intelligence agents and taken to an undisclosed location. Three days later, their fate and conditions remained unknown, with no charges announced.
On August 20 in Tehran, security forces raided the homes of two Kurdish brothers from Kermanshah province, Ramin and Ehsan Rostami (38). Ehsan Rostami, a well-known Kurdish cultural activist in publishing, was detained at his home without any charges. Both men were taken to undisclosed locations, and their family has received no information—illustrating how Kurdish activists routinely disappear into Iranian detention centers for peaceful cultural activities such as literary work.
On August 9 in Urmia, in one of the month’s most alarming cases, IRGC intelligence agents violently arrested nine Kurdish villagers—all from two related families—under the pretext of “collaborating with Israel.” Among the detainees were several members of the Golestani and Mostafazadeh families, who were severely beaten during the arrests and transferred to a detention center in Tehran. Four days after the raid, no information was provided on their condition or location, and family inquiries were futile. The broad accusation of espionage is baseless and reflects a pattern of scapegoating Kurds under the guise of external conflicts.
On August 7 in Sanandaj, IRGC intelligence arrested Roghayyeh (Zhino) Karimi, an 18-year-old Kurdish woman from Marivan, holding her without charge. She was kept incommunicado in a Sanandaj facility with no access to a lawyer or family visits throughout her interrogation. Later in the month, Karimi was transferred to a juvenile detention center, but her legal status remained unclear.
One of the most blatant aspects of Iran’s anti-Kurdish repression is the targeting of kolbars—Kurdish cross-border porters who transport goods between Iran and Iraq out of economic desperation. Iranian border guards and security forces continue to treat these unarmed civilians as combatants, using lethal force and brutal abuses with impunity. August 2025 saw multiple shootings and killings of kolbars.
On August 17, Rahman Rasoulzadeh, a 40-year-old kolbar from Baneh, was shot dead by Iranian border forces using a DShK heavy machine gun. Hit by large-caliber rounds, he died instantly at the Hengejal border post. Eyewitnesses confirmed that Rasoulzadeh was directly targeted and posed no threat. His body was then dragged to a local hospital. The use of battlefield weapons against a simple porter illustrates the extreme brutality of Iranian border policy. Additionally, in Sawlawa, Iranian border guards opened fire without warning on a young kolbar, 27-year-old Milad Tabad, in the Tete mountains near Marivan. Tabad was critically wounded on August 25 and rushed to Sanandaj’s Kosar hospital, where he remains under medical supervision after emergency treatment.
Kurdish human rights organizations have documented that this pattern of violence is systematic. In July 2025 alone, at least 12 Kurdish kolbars were killed or injured by direct fire from Iranian border guards—a figure August appears to match.
Beyond arrests and shootings, August 2025 also witnessed numerous violations of the cultural, political, and economic rights of Kurds, underscoring the pervasive nature of the regime’s oppression.
In August, Iran’s Ministry of Education intensified its purge of Kurdish teachers involved in union activism. An appeals commission upheld or increased disciplinary measures against at least seven Kurdish teachers, imposing penalties ranging from permanent dismissal and forced early retirement to multi-year exile far from home. Among those targeted were prominent union activists who had led teacher protests for better conditions. For example, union leader Omid Shah-Mohammadi was permanently expelled from the education system, while others were dismissed or suspended solely for peaceful activism.
A long-time defender of the Kurdish cause, Gérard Chaliand—poet, writer, and geopolitical expert—died on 20 August at Hôpital Broca in Paris’s 13th arrondissement, where he had been treated for several months for kidney failure. He had celebrated his 91st birthday on 15 February.
Born in 1934 in Etterbeek, Belgium, to a family of Armenian exiles who survived the genocide, he grew up in Paris’s Latin Quarter, where his father ran a pharmacy. A pupil at Lycée Henri-IV and an avid reader, he was deeply impressed by Bourlinguer, a memoir by the writer Blaise Cendrars. He decided in turn to set off to see the wider world—traveling to discover new countries, cultures, and civilizations.
At the age of 16 he left for Algeria, where he survived on odd jobs and discovered the harsh realities of colonialism. This formative stay later led him to join support networks for the Algerian National Liberation Front and, later, various revolutionary movements in the Third World.
After the baccalauréat, he studied at the École nationale des langues orientales (Langues O’), where he learned Turkish and took courses on Eastern civilizations, particularly Iran, India, and China. There, at 22, he met Juliette Minces, 19—secretary of the Communist Party section and a student of Chinese language and civilization—who became the great love of his life.
He set out with her on a long journey through Turkey, Kurdistan, Iran, and on to India, where the country’s profound poverty, the archaic caste system, discrimination, and violence left a lasting mark on him.
In Istanbul, he moved among left-wing Turkish intellectuals such as Atilla Tokatli, who were beginning to translate Marxist classics into Turkish. They introduced him to Turkish folk poetry, some of which he translated into French. These, together with Kurdish folk poems translated with the help of Emir Kamuran Bedir Khan, were published in 1961 by Éditions Maspero under the title Anthologie de la poésie populaire Turcs et des Kurdes.
His encounter at Langues O’ with Emir Bedir Khan, who taught Kurdish language and civilization there, prompted him to publish, the same year, a pamphlet entitled La question kurde, which—at a time when Kurds were still little known in France—made a valuable contribution to public awareness.
Committed militants on the side of Algerian independents, Gérard Chaliand and Juliette Minces lived for a time in independent Algeria, where they worked for the journal Révolution africaine. Following Boumédiène’s coup d’état, militants who had pinned their revolutionary hopes on “socialist” Algeria became disillusioned and left.
Chaliand then reappeared in international revolutionary activism around the Tricontinental, whose heart beat in Cuba and whose ideas in France were carried by the review Partisans, published in Paris by François Maspero, to which Chaliand was a regular contributor.
With Juliette Minces, he translated La guerre de guérilla et autres textes militaires by Che Guevara (1961).
Later, he went to Africa, to Guinea-Bissau, where he met Amílcar Cabral and observed the organization of the country’s war of independence—an experience he documented in La lutte armée en Afrique (Maspero, 1967).
He then spent a long period in Vietnam to follow closely the Vietnamese resistance to the American war, and published Les Paysans du Nord-Vietnam et la guerre (Maspero, 1968).
He also spent several months in the Middle East alongside various Palestinian movements, publishing La résistance palestinienne in 1970 (Seuil).
After so many years spent among guerrillas and insurgent movements on several continents, he defended a doctoral thesis in 1975 at the University of Paris V on the Mythes révolutionnaires du tiers-monde, which appeared as a book in 1976 (Seuil).
This mature, critical work marked a turning point in his thought, commitments, and oeuvre, increasingly oriented toward strategy, irregular warfare, and geopolitics, with the publication of a series of atlases, anthologies of writings on guerrillas, and key texts by strategic thinkers, etc.
Alongside these editorial activities, his research trips to many countries, and his reporting on ongoing insurgencies and guerrillas in Eritrea, Afghanistan, Angola, and South America, he devoted part of his time to the Kurdish cause.
In 1973 he joined Kendal Nezan and ethnologist Sabine Hargous in founding the association France–Kurdistan to promote knowledge of the Kurdish people, their culture, history, and national liberation struggle.
Sponsored by prestigious French intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Laurent Schwartz, and Maxime Rodinson, the association published a bulletin entitled Solidarité Kurdistan and reissued the reference work Les Kurdes, étude historique et sociologique by Basil Nikitine with Éditions d’Aujourd’hui.
Then, under his direction, a collective volume Les Kurdes et le Kurdistan (Maspero, 1978) was prepared and published, with contributions from Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, Kendal Nezan, and Ismet Cherif Vanly.
It was Chaliand who, thanks to his connections in publishing, oversaw translations of this work—written by Kurdish intellectuals presenting their people’s own account of their history—into English (People without a Country, Zed Press, 1984), German (Kurdistan und die Kurden, 1984), Greek (Οί Koύρδoι, 1988), and other languages.
With the support of Cultural Survival Inc. (Boston), he organized a series of lectures at major American universities to spark debate around People Without a Country and introduce Kurds to American students.
Secretary-General of France–Kurdistan until 1982, Gérard Chaliand took part in the creation of the Kurdish Institute of Paris in 1983, remaining an active member until the end of his life.
He participated in most of the conferences and symposia organized by the Institute, found publishers for its publications, and for books by Kurdish authors or about Kurds, such as Le Génocide en Irak, William Eagleton’s La République kurde, or Hélène Krulich-Ghassemlou’s Une Européenne chez les Kurdes.
He republished with Éditions de l’Aube his excellent Anthologie de la poésie populaire kurde, and, during the mass exodus following the Gulf War, brought out Le malheur kurde (Seuil, 1992; English translation The Kurdish Tragedy, UNRISD, 1994).
He regarded the Kurdish epic Memê Alan, in Roger Lescot’s fine translation, as one of the most beautiful texts in the universal literary heritage, and insisted on including passages from it in his anthologies Trésors des textes épiques de l’humanité (Plon, 1995) and Mon anthologie universelle de l’amour (Les Belles Lettres, 2023).
Over the course of his long companionship with the Kurds, Gérard Chaliand met most Kurdish leaders and intellectuals.
He formed friendships with A. R. Ghassemlou, Nechirvan Barzani, and Yılmaz Güney—whom he greatly admired for his cinema and for his physical and moral courage. Güney was the first renowned personality from Turkey to testify publicly, in 1984 before the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Paris, about the genocide perpetrated in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian people.
His stance provoked strong reactions in Turkey and contributed to debate over the Turkish state’s responsibility—a denialist policy that continues.
Chaliand made numerous trips to Iranian, then Iraqi and Syrian (Rojava) Kurdistan.
He taught for several years at the University of Kurdistan in Erbil, and each year spent nearly four months in the Kurdish capital, where he knew virtually everyone. He was loved and appreciated there.
His last visit to Kurdistan dates from May 2023, when he took part—alongside the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, Bernard Kouchner, Joyce Blau, and Kendal Nezan—in the inauguration of the Barzani Museum.
With him, a great voice passes—a loyal champion of the Kurdish cause.
Having donated his body to science, like Emir Bedir Khan, there was no funeral.
The Kurdish Institute is organizing a tribute evening on 3 October 2025 at 7 p.m. at the Maison d’Amérique latine in Paris, with the participation of his relatives and friends.
Writings by Gérard Chaliand on the Kurds
Gérard Chaliand published nearly one hundred books, including collections of poetry, atlases, anthologies, and works on geopolitics and strategy. Many of his books have been translated into English and other languages.
