Najmaldin Karim Webinar Series
Webinar Date: Tuesday, June 8, 2021
Time: 10:00 AM EDT / 4:00 PM Brussels / 5:00 PM Erbil
Turkey is sliding deeper into authoritarianism, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan escalating state repression of the Kurds and all real and perceived forms of opposition within the country. Outside of the country’s borders, he utilizes a large vast network to intimidate, threaten, and silence exiled Kurds, and continues to intensify Turkish military aggression in the Middle East and beyond, with the Kurdish people as his primary target. The Turkish military periodically attacks the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria and is now openly working to expand its zones of occupation in each of these countries, bringing war and mass displacement to areas that were once among the most stable in the region, ethnically cleansing these regions in an attempt to minimize or eliminate Kurdish presence and exacerbating an ongoing refugee crisis. Against a backdrop of war and existential threats from all sides, the Kurds, who played a leading role in eliminating the so-called caliphate of the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization in cooperation with the US-led global coalition, enjoy relative autonomy in both Iraq and Syria.
The US and others have benefited greatly from the resistance of the Kurds against ISIS and the stability of their autonomous areas in Iraq and Syria and, while the Turkish state responds to the hard-won achievements of the Kurdish people with increased hostility, international reaction to these unprovoked attacks remains muted. As Erdogan continues to threaten and attack these regions, the US will eventually need to address this destabilizing Turkish military aggression. The Biden Administration knows the Kurds well, and has demonstrated a willingness to break with the foreign policy of its predecessors, but has yet to decisively respond to Erdogan’s belligerence or, more broadly, clarify its vision for the Middle East. Our distinguished speakers will discuss the regional and global consequences and policy ramifications of the Turkish state’s war on the Kurds, the emerging Kurdish dynamic in the Middle East, and possible policy approaches for Washington.
Opening Remarks
Sierwan Najmaldin Karim, President of Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI)
Zainab Morad Sohrab, Co-chairperson of Kurdistan National Congress (KNK)
Panel Discussion
US foreign policy in the Middle East and the role of the Kurds – Dr. Henri Barkey
Turkish military aggression as a destabilizing force in South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) and North & East Syria/Rojava – Hiwa Osman
The geostrategic importance of Turkey & Kurdistan and the new Kurdish dynamic – Nilüfer Koç
Does the Biden Administration have a Kurdish policy? – Amb. Peter Galbraith
Speakers’ remarks:
Nilufer Koc
Participant Biographies:
Mr. Sierwan Najmaldin Karim, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), was previously security director and senior advisor to the late governor of Kirkuk, Dr. Najmaldin O. Karim, Founder and past President of WKI. From a young age, under the tutelage of his father, Mr. Karim has been involved in Kurdish activism, serving in various roles with several Kurdish organizations, promoting a united free Kurdistan representing Kurds from all areas. In his professional life, Mr. Karim has extensive experience as a real estate asset manager and land developer, and provides consulting services to commercial real estate investors. He holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Maryland and is a master’s candidate at Georgetown University, where he was recently elected as Chairman of the Student Advisory Board of Real Estate. He is a resident of Florida, where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Ms. Zainab Murad Sahrab, born in Baghdad, Iraq, has served as co-chair of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) since 2019. Ms. Sahrab, a Faily Kurd, left Baghdad for Erbil, South Kurdistan, in 1991 and studied Media and Public Relations at the Polytechnic University of Erbil. She is an experienced journalist, serving as a correspondent for al-Mutamar newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Iraqi opposition, from 2001 to 2003, and as a correspondent and analyst for German radio and television network Deutsche Welle in Baghdad following the fall of the Saddam regime until 2006. Since 2006, she has lived in Sweden and served as a news editor for SR International, Sweden’s official international broadcasting station. Ms. Sahrab has decades of experience in activism with organizations advocating for women’s rights, the rights of minorities in Iraq, and the rights of Kurds at the international and local levels.
Dr. Henri J. Barkey is an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Chair in International Relations at Lehigh University. At CFR he works on the strategic future of the Kurds in the Middle East. Previously he was the Director of the Middle East Center at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (2015-2017). Dr. Barkey served as chair of the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University for thirteen years. He served on the State Department Policy Planning Staff (1998-2000) working on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and intelligence-related issues. He was a non-resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2008-2011). Dr. Barkey currently also serves as the chair of the Academic Committee on the Board of Trustees of the American University in Iraq, Sulaimani. He has written extensively on Turkey, the Kurds and other Middle East issues.
Amb. Peter W. Galbraith is an author, commentator, policy advisor, and former diplomat. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the first US Ambassador to Croatia, where he negotiated and signed the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian War of Independence. From 2000 to 2001, Amb. Galbraith was the Director for Political, Constitutional and Electoral Affairs for the UN Mission in East Timor and a cabinet minister in East Timor’s first transitional government. In 2009, he was an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations serving in Afghanistan. From 1979 to 1993, he was a staff member for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he managed the State Department authorization legislation and wrote laws to protect the global environment, prevent nuclear proliferation and promote human rights. Galbraith has more than three decades of on-the-ground experience in Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava, having documented Iraq’s destruction of Kurdish villages and use of chemical weapons for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1980s. He was in Iraqi Kurdistan during the 1991 uprising and was an advisor to the Iraqi Kurdish leaders during the negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on Iraq, Syria and the Kurds including the best seller, The End of Iraq. He has been a regular visitor to Rojava, most recently reuniting young Yazidi women kidnapped by ISIS with their children.
Ms. Nilüfer Koç, born in Ardahan, northern Kurdistan, is a member of the Executive Council and spokesperson for the Commission on Foreign Relations of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK). Ms. Koç came to Germany in 1976 as the child of Kurdish migrant workers and studied Biology and Political Science at the University of Bremen. Her current primary political focus is the improvement of national dialogue amongst political parties and civil society organizations in Kurdistan, and she spent most of the period from 2013 to 2018 in southern Kurdistan (Kurdistan-Iraq) and Rojava/North and East Syria. Parallel to national unity efforts, Ms. Koç is also active in the international arena in raising awareness of the right to self-determination for the Kurdish people and all ethnic and religious components of Kurdistan, and she is interested and engaged in the active and autonomous participation of women in all fields of society and politics.
Mr. Hiwa Osman is an award winning Iraqi Kurdish journalist and commentator and CEO of mediawan.me, a media and communications services agency in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. He previously served as Iraq Country Director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) and media advisor to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani from 2005 to 2008. Mr. Osman was also previously a writer and producer with BBC news, and is a prominent commentator and analyst on the politics and media of Kurdistan and Iraq.