Reflections on 2023 Turkish Elections, Post-Earthquake Bakur and the Kurdish Movement

The following is an interview we conducted with Katka and Hazel, who both live in the UK and were recently back from Bakur, the portion of Kurdistan within the borders of Turkey. For 2 hours the guests speak about the political violence from Erdogan’s ruling AKP, suppression of the Kurdish movement, electoral strategies, democratic confederalism, political prisoners and the F-Type prisons in Turkey, the earthquakes from earlier in the year, widespread corruption and other topics. We hope you enjoy this conversation,. A transcript of this interview will be available in the near future.

A few links related to the chat:

• Heyva Sor a Kurdistanê - Kurdish Red Crescent : https://www.heyvasor.com/en/
• The Kurdish Women’s Movement by Dilar Dirik (we interviewed in 2014: p1, p2)
• The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics book
• 14th July film about resistance in Turkish prisons (requires youtube signin): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw64OUb2pkU

Announcements ACABookfair Audios Available Soon

f you missed the ACABookfair or any of the workshops, we’ve got a happy surprise for you. Give a gander in the next week to ACABookfair.noblogs.org for the media page that will soon be populated with audio recordings of some of the presentation events on various topics. More likely than not, some of those will end up in future episodes of The Final Straw, fyi.

Latest BAD News Out Now!

Also, the latest episode of Bad News from the A-Radio Network is also now up at their website, but also linked in our show notes. You’ll hear from contributing members of the A-Radio Network sharing perspectives at the 2023 St-Imier gathering in Switzerland on the importance of the audio medium like radio and podcasts to the building of anarchist movement. You can also find links in the show notes for this episode to the live broadcast throughout the weekend by Radio RIA and some video of presentations and audios of presentations in German, Spanish, French, Italian and English. Maybe even one or two in Esperanto for you spicey types.

. ... . ..

Featured Tracks:

• Serêkaniyê û Avaşîn by Mehmûd Berazî
• Cerr performed by Mehmûd Berazî