Public Lecture by assoc. prof. Kamran Matin “Kurds and the Middle East Crisis”

Kurds’s heroic resistance against ISIS have brought them into the limelight of the world politics over the last couple of years. Kurdish freedom movement has however a much longer history. In this lecture Kamran Matin introduces the historical contours of the Kurds’ struggles for national and cultural recognition and their uneven evolution as well as Kurdish movements’ competing political projects set in the context of the complex geo-political and geo-strategic dynamics of the region. He argues that Kurds might have the key to the solution of the Middle East crisis and the cycle of violence and authoritarianism that has marked the region’s modern history.