A remarkable and heated exchange on Nuce TV, a pro-PKK Kurdish channel, between Riham Hassan, a representative of the pro-PKK Yazidi women’s movement in Sinjar, and Remezan Kerim, a Kurdish nationalist from Erbil. Hassan insists that Yazidis are a distinct ethnic group, separate from Kurds. Kerim rejects this, repeatedly calls her Kurdish and accuses her of national treason. Most notably, Kerim invokes the epic of Dewresh Evdi, a legendary Yazidi warrior who, in one documented version of the oral tradition, declares: "I am neither Kiki nor Milan. I have been Yazidi for seventy generations." Kerim then renders the line as: "I am Yazidi and I am Kurd." Academic research firmly establishes Dewresh's Yazidi identity but does not record Kerim's formulation as a direct quotation from Evdi. However, the epic survives in many oral variations, some of which explicitly place Yazidis within a broader Kurdish identity. A 2022 academic study comparing six versions found that those preserved by Yazidi communities often emphasise both a distinct religious identity and a shared Kurdish identity, while versions among Muslim Kurdish communities focus more on tribal relationships. The epic is therefore more complicated than either side suggests. Dewresh's Yazidi identity is well established, and his association with Kurdishness also has a basis in the wider tradition. The exchange is particularly revealing because Hassan herself belongs to the PKK-aligned network and embraces the ideology of jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, while asserting a distinct Yazidi ethnic identity. This may reflect a strand of Ocalan's thought that emphasises plural identities and the right of communities to define themselves, leaving room for Yazidis to identify as a distinct people rather than necessarily as Kurds. Kerim represents the more conventional Kurdish nationalist position, which regards Yazidis as an integral part of the Kurdish nation regardless of how individuals identify. The confrontation exposes a basic difference in how the two approach identity: Hassan insists on the right to define her own, while Kerim insists on defining it for her. Even a shared epic becomes a vehicle for competing claims.

İzzet Altınmeşe, a Turkish actor & composer, received an award for adapting nearly 5000 Kurdish songs into Turkish. That's purely cultural integration into the central system, part of the smart movement—which the totalitarian Turkish ideology has been using as a soft weapon to 👇🏼