By: Dr. Adnan Bozan

Introduction:
Kurdish journalism was not born out of a vacuum; it emerged as a cry against marginalization and as a weapon in an unequal struggle for recognition and existence. Ever since Miqdad Madhat Badrkhan published the first issue of the Kurdistan newspaper in Cairo in 1898, the Kurdish word has transformed from a tool of expression into a means of resistance—from a cultural activity into an existential political act. Kurdish journalism was never a bourgeois luxury, but rather an existential necessity for a nation without a state, living in a fragmented geography and a history conspiring against its language and memory.

In the beginning, there was the word. But the word was not merely a sound or script; it was an ontological act—a stance toward existence, a scream against oblivion. While all peoples have expressed themselves through the word—in poetry, declarations, and journalism—the Kurdish word was born in the exile of history. It did not blossom on a table of freedom, but on the dining tables of censorship and oppression. From its inception in the late 19th century, Kurdish journalism was never simply a media practice aimed at reporting news or analyzing reality—it was a symbolic project of reshaping a self threatened with erasure.

The history of Kurdish journalism is the history of a struggle for existence—a history of words written from exile, striving to write the homeland itself. The first Kurdish newspaper, Kurdistan, published by Miqdad Madhat Badrkhan in Cairo in 1898, was not printed on Kurdish soil, but was written about Kurdistan, from outside it, and for its sake. From the very beginning, we find ourselves before a paradox: the word that does not emerge from the land, but attempts to reclaim it symbolically. The word as exile, but also as symbolic return. The word as political opposition, but also as existential being.

From this perspective, Kurdish journalism cannot be reduced to its historical or media dimensions alone. It must be understood as a resistant cultural structure—as a manifestation of the long struggle between power and voice, between the state that seeks to produce silence and a people striving to produce itself through discourse. Kurdish journalism does not belong to the conventional history of the press, but to the history of cultural resistance. In this sense, it is not merely writing about events—it is writing against events: against the erasure of identity, the negation of existence, and the fragmentation of consciousness.

Power, in all its forms, has always feared the word—not when it is neutral, but when it is biased toward truth. That is why censorship of Kurdish journalism has not been merely political, but linguistic—targeting letters, dialects, and meanings. The Kurdish word has not been fought because it speaks of politics, but because it speaks life in a language threatened with extinction. Thus, Kurdish journalism takes on its unique character: it is not only a cultural act, but an act of resistance—against alienation, oblivion, erasure, exile, and estrangement.

Following the footsteps of Antonio Gramsci, who spoke of the "organic intellectual," we can view the Kurdish journalist as a combatant intellectual—not working on the margins of society, but in the heart of its battles: writing under threat, printing in darkness, and distributing in the mountains. The most dangerous part of this equation is that the word itself was not only censored but targeted for elimination—just as the bodies that wrote it were targeted. Every Kurdish newspaper is thus a symbolic tombstone; every editorial is a tree watered with blood; every headline is a cry against state historians who tried to erase the story.

This study does not aim solely to document the history of Kurdish journalism from a historical perspective; rather, it seeks to analyze its philosophical structure—as a discourse of being, a tool of symbolic resistance, and a space for collective self-construction. Through the chapters of this work, we will attempt to reread Kurdish journalism as part of a larger liberation project, shedding light on the evolution of its discourse—from reporting to resistance, from neutrality to belonging, from paper to revolution.

Kurdish journalism is not merely a collection of published pages; it is the archive of Kurdish consciousness in its most fragile yet powerful moments. It is not simply a record of what has happened, but an act to change what must happen. In writing about Kurdish journalism, we are writing about the word that refused silence—the word that was written despite everything being against it: language, geography, history, the state, and even logic.

For all these reasons, the study of Kurdish journalism is a study in the meaning of writing under the rule of silence; of publishing a newspaper in exile; of printing the voice of a people on paper no one acknowledges; of transforming the word into resistance—not merely into news.

This research attempts to trace the journey of Kurdish journalism from a philosophical and cultural perspective, seeing it as more than a media tool—as a form of national consciousness, a manifestation of the Kurdish self striving to write itself in a world that refuses to recognize it.

First: The Historical Context of the Birth of Kurdish Journalism

1. Kurdistan Newspaper: Birth in Exile
   When we look back at history to search for the moment when the first printed Kurdish word was spoken, we do not find it in Diyarbakir, Sulaymaniyah, or Mahabad, but in Cairo. This paradox alone says a lot: the Kurdish word was born in exile, in foreign lands, in a geographical periphery, yet in truth, it was a birth in the heart of identity, at the core of the need for expression. Kurdistan newspaper, which was issued on April 22, 1898, is the first printed Kurdish voice and the first attempt to establish a collective discourse that transcended tribal fragmentation and local isolation toward building a comprehensive Kurdish national consciousness.

This newspaper was not an "ordinary" one in the functional sense, but rather a symbolic foundation for the presence of the Kurdish nation in the modern space of the Ottoman Empire, which was increasingly closing itself off with its Turkic and authoritarian tendencies. Kurdistan represented a moment of cognitive and political rupture: a rupture with silence, with isolation, and with the submission of the Kurdish people to the discourses of others. It was a moment of transformation where the Kurds shifted from being subjects in the texts of others to a self that writes and speaks for itself.

However, the greatest paradox, which governs the entire trajectory of subsequent Kurdish journalism, is that this birth did not take place within the homeland, but outside of it. Exile, then, is not only a geographical space, but the structural condition of the Kurdish word: it writes itself from the outside, against the inside. Miqdad Medhat Bedirkhan wrote his newspaper from exile, addressing a homeland that official history did not recognize, but which was alive in the hearts of its people. Kurdistan newspaper is an act of resistance from exile against an usurped homeland. 2. Miqdad Medhat Bedirkhan: From the Ottoman Elite to the Conscience of the Nation
Miqdad Medhat Bedirkhan's character embodies the profound transformation experienced by the Kurdish elite at the end of the 19th century. Bedirkhan belonged to an aristocratic family that represented one of the last relatively independent Kurdish political structures before the complete collapse under Ottoman domination—the Bedirkhan Pasha family, rulers of the Botan Emirate. Miqdad was educated in Istanbul and was influenced by the reformist and revolutionary atmosphere that was active among the young Ottoman intellectuals at the time, particularly among those who were engaged in an internal struggle between loyalty to the empire and the desire to save their ethnicities from marginalization.

Miqdad was one of the first to move beyond the tribal or clan-based Kurdish discourse toward a more inclusive national consciousness. He did not see the Kurds merely as one component of the empire, but as a people with their own language, history, and culture. As a result, his newspaper became a platform to revive this forgotten history, to critique the Turkification policies, and to call for an independent Kurdish consciousness. Emerging from the Ottoman elite that sought to reform the empire, Miqdad Medhat Bedirkhan became a Kurdish intellectual searching for the independence of the self, not just a reform of an empire that dissolves identity.

In today's terms, we could consider him a "transitional intellectual," who not only sought reform from within the state but chose to create his symbolic space outside of it. He moved from the position of "Ottoman employee" to that of "national conscience," planting the first seed of modern Kurdish discourse, not only in his language but in his universal vision: he did not write for the Kurds alone, but for the world about the Kurds, thus opening up a horizon for identity beyond the narrow geography in which he was born.

3. Cairo as a Center for the Emergence of Kurdish National Consciousness
   The choice of Cairo as the location for issuing the first Kurdish newspaper was not a mere geographical coincidence, but rather a profound political and cultural indication. At the end of the 19th century, Cairo was a vibrant center of thought, relative freedoms, cultural exchange, and a cradle for the free press established by intellectuals from various backgrounds escaping Ottoman repression. It was a meeting point for political exiles and an early laboratory for Arab, Turkish, and Armenian nationalist discourse, and within this pluralistic modern space, the Kurdish discourse also emerged.

It can be said that Cairo was not just the place where the newspaper was published, but it was a historical womb for the birth of modern Kurdish identity. In Cairo, the Kurdish word began to dismantle the state’s discourse and build a new discourse of the nation. Perhaps this paradox—that Kurdish nationalist discourse was born in an Arab city, outside the empire, from a Kurdish intellectual who had studied in Istanbul—tells us that identity is not only born from the land, but from the feeling of absence from it, from longing, from exile, from the need to say "we" in the face of a discourse that says "you are part of others."

Therefore, Kurdish journalism did not begin as a "media tool," but as a cry for identity, and a process of rebuilding the self. The publication of Kurdistan in Cairo was an early declaration that the homeland is not only the land we live on, but the language we write with, the consciousness with which we shape our narrative, and the courage to claim our voice in the face of the imposed silence.

Second: The Development of Kurdish Journalism Between Repression and Cultural Construction

The trajectory of Kurdish journalism was not a simple upward line but rather resembled intermittent pulses of resistance, rising during moments of enlightenment and being suppressed during moments of oppression. Yet, it never died. Kurdish journalism accompanied the history of the Kurdish nation through all its tragedies and revolutions, reflecting the development of self-awareness in the face of three major challenges: censorship, exile, and the fragmentation of geography.

1. Facing Censorship: The Forbidden Word and Constant Persecution
   Since its birth, Kurdish journalism has engaged in a nearly impossible act: to say what cannot be said, in a language that is not recognized, about a people that is not recognized, within states that do not even acknowledge the existence of a "cause." Censorship was the first to confront the Kurdish word, not the readers. In Turkey, after the establishment of the republic, all Kurdish newspapers and publications were banned, and writing in Kurdish was criminalized under the pretexts of "national unity," "threat to security," and "foreign conspiracy." In Iraq, Kurdish journalism was subjected to state surveillance, with dozens of newspapers being shut down during periods of national tension. In Syria, until the mid-20th century, not a single Kurdish newspaper was allowed. In Iran, the allowed space fluctuated between absolute prohibition and conditional recognition, depending on the political regime.

The Kurdish journalist always lived in a zone of uncertainty: their writing was monitored, they were easily arrested, and their press was confiscated. Therefore, writing was not merely a profession; it was an existential risk. To write in Kurdish meant to challenge the policy of assimilation, to expose the falsehood of the official discourse, and to restore honor to a culture meant to disappear. Political censorship clashed with the language itself, prohibiting the letter, the text, and even the story.

1. Exile as a Free and Tragic Space
   Just as Kurdish journalism was born in exile, it continued to breathe outside the homeland for a long time. Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, Yerevan, Baghdad, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Beirut were Kurdish hubs for journalism, pulsating with words and witnessing the transformation of exile into a cultural and political space alternative to the homeland. Kurdish journalism in exile had more freedom of expression, but conversely, it suffered from a disconnection from the true audience—i.e., the Kurdish reader living in the mountains and oppressed cities.

In exile as well, intellectual and cultural magazines emerged with important enlightenment projects, such as Hawar magazine in Damascus, founded by Prince Celadet Bedirkhan, which contributed to the establishment of the Latin Kurdish alphabet, and Ruwandaki magazine in Baghdad, which served as a platform for literature and language. In Europe, dozens of journals addressed the Kurdish issue from a human rights and cultural perspective, linking the Kurdish struggle to global narratives of liberation and justice.

Yet, despite its freedom, exile remained burdened with a sense of loss: the loss of land, the audience, and direct influence. The press was written from the outside, smuggled into the homeland, or printed for the diaspora, but it remained, at its core, a form of resistance journalism because it never lost its connection to the central cause.

1. Geographical Fragmentation and the Diversity of Dialects and Spaces
   The division of Kurdistan into four countries (Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria) created a unique challenge for Kurdish journalism: how to build a common discourse amid differing policies, dialects, and alphabets? The Kurds used three different alphabets (Arabic, Latin, and Persian), and dialects varied (Kurmanji, Sorani, Zaza, Horalami), making it difficult to unify the journalistic and cultural discourse.

Nevertheless, Kurdish journalism gradually overcame these challenges, and serious attempts were made to build a modern Kurdish journalistic language that reconciled the dialects. Kurdish journalism also played a pivotal role in preserving the language itself from extinction, transferring it from the oral tradition to the written word and from folk literature to political analysis.

Geographical fragmentation was not just an obstacle but a driving force for creating a discourse that transcended borders. Every Kurdish newspaper wrote about all of Kurdistan, not just a "part" of it. Thus, journalism became a tool to connect the scattered parts and to form a shared Kurdish memory, despite the artificial barriers.

1. From Media to Enlightenment: The Word as a Cultural Constructive Act
   Kurdish journalism did not simply report the news but became a major cultural lever. It introduced the Kurdish reader to literature, history, thought, and philosophy, creating a kind of "silent Kurdish renaissance." It played the role of alternative universities, especially in areas deprived of education in the Kurdish language. Through it, oral heritage was immortalized, songs were documented, myths were preserved, and forgotten history was recorded.

Kurdish journalism also became a platform for literary experimentation, with writers and poets who changed the cultural landscape, such as Abdullah Kurdi, Sherko Bekas, and others. The journalistic word embraced the poetic word, building a new spirit for a people searching for itself in the mirror of words.

Third: The Exiled Geography of Kurdish Journalism

? From Exile to the Mountains: Journalism in a Decentralized Space
Kurdish journalism, spanning over a century, was not born in a geographical center where it held power or sovereignty. Instead, it emerged in regions outside the scope of Kurdish political decision-making and developed in marginalized spaces, or rather, in spaces suppressed and opposed to the official center of the state. Cairo, London, Paris, Yerevan, Baghdad, Beirut, the Qandil Mountains, and even caves and tunnels became cosmic observatories from which the Kurdish word gazed upon the world, declaring the existence of a nation exiled from official history, yet present in the geography of the word.

This journalism was decentralized both politically and geographically, yet it remained centered around the Kurdish self as an anguished and resistant being. Exile was not just a temporary location; it became a permanent stage for the production of Kurdish discourse. With every wave of political repression, the press moved from place to place, breaking through the walls of censorship and reshaping itself anew.

In this sense, we can speak of "multiple maps of Kurdish journalism" that do not recognize national borders, but rather draw boundaries for memory, struggle, and experience. In this context, mountains become media platforms, and trenches transform into secret printing presses.

Kurdish journalism has always been a voice in the darkness, searching for light—not in capitals, but in the gaps, in places excluded from the central authority, and where the free word is marginalized.

? Exile as a Discursive Platform
In the context of colonialism, exile is used as an exclusionary tool. However, for the Kurds, it transformed into a tool of production. Instead of being a banishment from geography, it became an empowerment of discourse.

The Kurdish exile lived by journalists, writers, and politicians was not just a geographical estrangement; it was an existential explosion of the self. It forced them to redefine their identities, their language, and their vision of the world. Thus, journalism in exile became not just a news transmitter, but a symbolic construction of identity. It was the language through which the Kurdish self was written from outside the homeland, becoming more attached to the homeland than the homeland itself.

Exile also helped open the horizon of Kurdish journalism to the world. While the word was besieged in Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Ankara, it was printed and published in London, Berlin, and Stockholm. Thus, Kurdish journalism was born as a hybrid: speaking the language of identity, printed with modern tools, addressing Kurdistan from across the seas, and reshaping the consciousness of the homeland.

Kurdish journalism in exile became akin to a "digital field before the digital age"—a free space that creates an alternative language, transcends censorship, and expresses the marginalized.

? The Relationship Between Kurdish Journalism and Colonial Space and Censorship
Since its inception, Kurdish journalism has been in direct confrontation with colonial regimes or the nation-states that inherited colonial discourse. This journalism was an act of resistance against censorship, and its very existence was an act of rebellion.

Kurdish journalism was not granted the right to publish; instead, it was forcibly seized or written in secrecy. The Kurdish journalist had to choose: exile or prison, ink or blood. Thus, printing presses were raided, newspapers confiscated, writers assassinated or exiled, but the word did not stop; it turned into a "fleeing discourse" from the authority—mobile, evasive, and full of life.

In this context, we can say that Kurdish journalism underwent what Foucault called "censorship of discourse," where it was not only prevented from expression, but the very conditions for the possibility of speech were reshaped. The Kurdish language itself was banned, national terms were considered crimes, and using the name "Kurdistan" was treated as a hostile act.

Nevertheless, Kurdish journalism formed a type of writing against the authority—i.e., a structural resistance to forms of symbolic domination, by seizing the right to name the self, narrate history, and produce alternative self-knowledge. At the heart of all this, Kurdish journalism became the guardian of the memory of a nation meant to be forgotten, and a catalyst for collective consciousness that challenged colonialism, not only with arms but with the word.

Fourth: Kurdish Journalism and Identity: Shaping the Self in the Mirror of Words

In this chapter, we will examine the relationship between Kurdish journalism and the production of identity, not as a fixed concept, but as a symbolic and historical construction shaped through discourse, language, memory, and struggle. We will delve into the role journalism has played in the formation of the Kurdish self, within the contexts of exile, repression, and revival, and focus on the Kurdish word as a "mirror" reflecting the image of the nation: wounded, fragmented, yet reconstituting itself through words.

1. Language and Identity – From the Forbidden Tongue to Living Consciousness: "Identity is not what we are, but what we say about ourselves." In the Kurdish context, journalism was the primary space where Kurds spoke for themselves in their language, in the face of a state that wanted them to remain silent or speak the language of the other.

Modern Kurdish identity—both national and cultural—was born in an opposing linguistic context. Kurdish language, in most countries of the region, was prohibited from official circulation, denied education, and treated as a "vulgar dialect" unworthy of documentation. Here, journalism emerged as the space where the language regained its existential legitimacy.

Kurdish newspapers, despite their technical primitiveness at times, became "a linguistic laboratory for identity." Through them, the alphabet was standardized, terms were developed, and political and intellectual discourse in Kurdish was formulated, not translated from a foreign language, but stemming from the internal experience of the people.

In this context, Kurdish journalism becomes a linguistic act of resistance, confronting the symbolic eradication practiced by the state through the obliteration of the language. In this sense, the Kurdish word in journalism is not just a tool for expression, but an existential entity of the self.

1. Journalism as Counter-Memory – From Official Forgetting to the Archive of the Self: In the centralist states that governed Kurdistan, history was written from above, in the language of authority, and with the memory of the victor. Kurdish journalism, however, was "the memory from below" – the memory of the marginalized, the exiled, and the oppressed, which did not recognize official narratives but wrote its own.

Kurdish newspapers formed a type of self-archiving for the Kurdish tragedy. From reports of massacres to articles about displacement and Arabization campaigns, from testimonies of detainees to descriptions of life in the mountains and exile—these texts were not mere news, but existential documents that preserved what the authority sought to erase.

In this regard, Kurdish journalism can only be understood as a collective political and cultural memory. A memory that resists forgetting, retrieves the victims, and builds from the rubble a new narrative of an identity still in the process of being formed.

1. Between the Interior and Exile – Division of Identity or its Plurality? One of the complex philosophical aspects of Kurdish journalism is the question of "place": Where is identity produced? In the oppressed interior? Or in the free exile?

Kurdish newspapers published in Europe, America, and the Soviet exile presented a global, modern, critical Kurdish image, while newspapers within the homeland were often more realistic, field-based, and grounded, yet also more subject to censorship.

This geographic division produced a plurality of identity forms. But instead of this division being a weakness, it gave Kurdish journalism a rare duality: the language of the interior, expressing the living experience, and the language of the exterior, theorizing, thinking, and analyzing.

Here, we can say that Kurdish journalism did not produce a single identity, but multiple and sometimes conflicting Kurdish identities, all sharing in the rejection of colonialism and the pursuit of a possible Kurdistan.

1. The Word as a Mirror of the Wounded Self: Finally, we must return to the existential dimension: Kurdish journalism, at its core, is not just a journalistic practice, but a philosophical confrontation with nothingness.

Every time a Kurdish journalist writes an article about repression, recounts the tragedy of their people, or publishes an image from the mountains, they are saying: "I am here. We are here." This writing is an act of affirming the self in the face of erasure.

And here, the word transforms into a wounded mirror reflecting a bleeding self, yet still able to see itself and re-shape its image through language. In this sense, Kurdish journalism does not merely document reality, but re-creates it anew.

Fifth: The Transformation from News Journalism to Struggle Journalism

Kurdish journalism has never been just a neutral transmission of news. It has always been an open field for resistance, a platform for voicing the unsaid, and a frontline trench in the battle for national and cultural existence. With the intensification of political repression, the closure of democratic horizons, and the deprivation of the Kurdish people of their most basic rights to expression and language, journalism transformed from a media tool into a weapon of struggle, from merely conveying information to shaping awareness, and from reporting news to instigating revolution.

1. From News to Political Statement: In the Kurdish context, where a single word could lead to imprisonment or execution, it was impossible for journalism to maintain the "cold objectivity" or "dead neutrality" seen in stable nations. Kurdish news was not just ordinary news; it was a political cry, a linguistic bomb, and an exposure of what the regimes sought to conceal.

The journalistic text became an explicit or implicit political statement that did not just describe reality but sought to change it. An article about massacres became an indictment, a report about burned villages became a call to action, and an interview with a fighter in the mountains became a declaration of belonging. Every word placed the writer at risk of arrest, exile, or death, making the act of writing itself a form of civil disobedience.
Kurdish journalism blended with revolutionary statements, whether in style, content, or even its provocative poetic rhetoric. Thus, the boundaries between an article and a political declaration, between news and stance, and between journalism and revolutionary action began to dissolve.

1. Kurdish Journalism as a Platform for National Mobilization: When the Kurdish peoples were deprived of official mobilization tools—schools, universities, public media, and cultural institutions—journalism became the only means of national education.
   Kurdish newspapers and magazines formed an alternative public space where people could define themselves, learn their banned history, and rewrite their cultural and political maps. Articles were not written for journalistic experience as much as they were written to "create the new Kurdish citizen," one who knows their history, believes in their cause, and is ready to sacrifice for it.
   Between the lines, new national ethics were formed: loyalty, sacrifice, dignity, determination, dreams, and other values that wove the fabric of modern national consciousness. The Kurdish reader did not merely consume journalism; they engaged with it, orally reproducing it in village gatherings, on battlefronts, or inside prison cells.
2. The Underground Newsletter: From Paper to Walls to the Mouth: One of the most significant transformations reflecting the nature of Kurdish resistance journalism was the emergence of what can be called "secret journalism" or "resistance newsletters," which did not pass through traditional media channels but were produced and distributed in the shadows, living in secrecy, whispered in corners.
   These newsletters were sometimes handwritten or secretly printed in hidden presses within the mountains or cities and smuggled across borders or villages. With the lack of security, Kurdish journalism took to the streets in a literal way: through wall slogans, nightly leaflets, or even oral poetry passed from tongue to tongue and sung at both weddings and funerals.
   This "oral journalism" was more effective than any technological medium because it bypassed censorship barriers, reached hearts directly, and wrote history from mouth to ear, from memory to memory.

The Kurdish underground newsletter was a symbolic act of existence. It did not merely convey the event; it shaped the event itself as a struggle. It was the mobile rebellion, the voice that could not be arrested because once the word is spoken from the mouth, it cannot be confiscated from paper.

In conclusion, the transformation of Kurdish journalism from a media intermediary to a tool of struggle reflects the specificity of the Kurdish context, where words cannot be innocent. Every news piece is a stance, every article is a front, and every newsletter is a weapon. Kurdish journalism taught Kurds how to say "no" when silence was the official policy, and how to rewrite themselves—not merely as victims, but as active agents in the narrative of the world.

Sixth: The Kurdish Intellectual Between Neutrality and Resistance

In the midst of the existential struggle endured by the Kurdish people, the Kurdish intellectual could not afford the luxury of isolation, nor the possibility of positioning themselves in a place of "objective neutrality" as celebrated by some Western journalistic schools. By virtue of reality, history, and language, they found themselves at the heart of the tragedy, walking on the edge of a blade. Thus, the Kurdish journalist became, by all means, an organic intellectual, as described by Antonio Gramsci: an intellectual deeply involved in the struggle for the liberation of their people, not merely a transmitter of events or an analyst of reality.

1. The Journalist as an Organic Intellectual (In Gramsci’s Terms): Gramsci argues that an "organic intellectual" is one who does not merely hold a position within the cultural structure of society but actively participates in shaping the collective consciousness and becomes part of the class and political struggle. In the Kurdish context, it can be said that the press was the primary platform that produced this type of intellectual, one who immersed themselves in the people's issues, expressed their pains and hopes, and became the voice of the marginalized community.

The articles written by Kurdish journalists overflowed with the pain of the mountains, the longing for burnt villages, the sorrow of exile, and the oppression of the forbidden language. These were not just news reports but emotional statements of committed intellectuals fighting for liberation, sometimes paying for their words with their freedom and lives.

The Kurdish journalist was not a neutral observer but a witness and an accused simultaneously. They were not intermediaries between the event and the public, but active participants in the event itself. Thus, the Kurdish intellectual became a child of journalism, and the journalist-intellectual became the hero of contemporary Kurdish culture.

1. Limits of Freedom Under Totalitarian Regimes: For many decades, Kurdish journalists worked under totalitarian regimes that banned the language, criminalized identity, monitored words, and imprisoned pens. In these regimes, journalism was nearly impossible, and freedom of expression was as rare as rain in the summer mountains.

Thus, the Kurdish intellectual had to maneuver, to write in symbols, to use poetry, to transform reality into myth in order to bypass censorship. They had to choose between internal exile or external exile, between humiliating silence or honorable imprisonment.

Press freedom transformed from a legal right into an existential dream, from a space for debate into a field of risk. Kurdish journalism never operated in a democratic space but always in a time of constant emergency, where the boundaries between the intellectual and the prisoner, the article and the judicial sentence, were erased.
These restrictions did not weaken journalism but refined it. From the harshness of the circumstances, the rhetoric of resistance was born, from the repression of freedom emerged a culture of defiance, and from the suffocation of ink exploded poetry, prose, and screams.

1. The "Authority and Opposition" Binary in Kurdish Journalistic Discourse: One of the striking features of the development of Kurdish journalism is its historical positioning in opposition. There was no "Kurdish authority" to criticize or defend for most of modern history; instead, external powers dominated decision-making and destiny, preventing the existence of a free press.
   However, with the development of the Kurdish political movement, especially in semi-independent entities or areas of self-administration, the emergence of power-based journalism appeared, countering the continued existence of opposition journalism. Here, the Kurdish intellectual faced a new challenge: How can one support the cause of their people without becoming a mouthpiece for the emerging power?

An internal binary began to form in Kurdish journalistic discourse: between an official discourse that justifies, and a critical discourse that exposes. Between a "submissive" intellectual justifying the decisions of the status quo, and an "organic" intellectual insisting that freedom is indivisible, and that self-criticism is also part of resistance.
Thus, the battle of Kurdish journalism shifted from confronting external censorship to a struggle within the Kurdish body itself: Can nationalist journalism remain free? And can the activist intellectual hold their comrades in power accountable?

These questions remain open and form one of the most significant challenges for the next phase of Kurdish journalism’s development.

In conclusion, Kurdish journalism, through its intellectuals, did not merely report events or comment on them, but contributed to the making of modern Kurdish history. The Kurdish intellectual was not a gatekeeper for power, but a revealer of its falsehood. They were not neutral; they sided with the oppressed. They were not a tool in the hands of the state, but the voice of the voiceless.

Kurdish journalism embodied one of the most beautiful expressions of the "organic intellectual," who does not live in an ivory tower, but resides in the mountains, is printed in secrecy, imprisoned in public, and writes with their blood when necessary.

Seventh: The Word as an Act of Resistance

"Language is the house of being," as Heidegger says. When a person is uprooted from their language, they are stripped of their existence. We cannot understand Kurdish journalism merely as a professional or media activity; rather, it is, above all, an existential act in the face of exile, a cry against nothingness, and a symbolic practice of resisting cultural genocide. It is not only a means of conveying news, but a means of affirming existence itself. In this chapter, we read Kurdish journalism from a critical philosophical perspective, from Heidegger to Foucault, through all the battles of language against exclusion and marginalization.

1. From Heidegger to Foucault: Language, Power, and Being

Heidegger treats language as the place where being resides. We do not first live in the world and then use language, but we exist through language. When a Kurd speaks their language, they are not just expressing themselves; they are creating their existence in the world. Therefore, the suppression of the Kurdish language in modern history was not just an educational policy or administrative measure, but an assault on collective being.

Michel Foucault, on the other hand, linked language to power and knowledge. Language is not an innocent tool but produces systems of domination, knowledge, and control. Discourse, as Foucault sees it, does not merely describe reality; it creates it. In this context, Kurdish journalism can be viewed as a discursive practice standing against the "official truth" imposed by central authorities on history, geography, and identity.

Thus, Kurdish journalism is not merely about reclaiming language, but about deconstructing the authoritarian discourse and constructing an alternative one. It is a confrontation between power that excludes and a voice that refuses to be silenced. Between a state that creates "one narrative" and a voice that seeks to restore humanity and being.

1. Kurdish Journalism as an Existential Act Against Nothingness

In a reality where villages are burned, geography is erased from maps, and the Kurdish name is forbidden on birth certificates, journalism becomes more than just a profession: it becomes an existential resistance.

To publish a Kurdish newspaper in exile, distribute a clandestine leaflet in the alleyways, or write an article about your people's tragedy... all of this is not an intellectual luxury, but a battle with nothingness. A battle against the attempt to turn Kurds into a "people without history, without language, without memory."

The Kurdish journalist does not write to persuade, but to say, "I exist." The word here is not ink, but a manifestation of the self against nothingness. Every article, every editorial, every poem published is like a gravestone above the rubble of symbolic genocide.

Even the silence imposed by the authorities was sometimes met with a single word written on the walls: "ئه‌مه‌ هه‌ن" ("We are here"). The word was not a linguistic ornament, but an existential cry, like a stone thrown at nothingness.

1. Resisting Symbolic Genocide Through Discourse

One of the greatest challenges faced by the Kurds was not only physical genocide but symbolic genocide: the erasure of memory, the distortion of language, the confiscation of narrative. Here, Kurdish journalism played a pivotal role in resisting this type of annihilation.

Kurdish journalism rewrote the Kurdish self, recovered faces that history tried to erase, and reclaimed stories that regimes turned into voids. The journalistic article became an anti-archive, an alternative notebook for the events of a people forgotten by official books.

Even when resources were scarce, Kurdish journalistic discourse continued to resist with ink, paper, and voice, raising a symbolic wall against nothingness.

Thus, the word transformed into a defensive trench, a daily practice of resistance. Resistance was not only through arms but through language, a symbolic weapon that terrified tyrants and nourished the collective memory.

In a world where names are suppressed, and letters criminalized, "discourse" becomes a battleground, and the word is the last fortress of existence.

In conclusion, reading Kurdish journalism from this perspective reveals its philosophical depth and its symbolic existentialism. The word was not merely a means of communication, but a place of resistance, a shelter for being, and a platform for defiance.

The Kurds faced an assault on their language, a falsification of their history, and a denial of their existence. Their greatest response was: to write. To write, despite the ban. To publish, despite the censorship. To scream, despite the darkness. To say — in deep simplicity: "We are here... and we write."

Eighth: The Kurdish Language and Journalism – The Structural Parallels

Since its inception, Kurdish journalism has not merely served as a carrier of content, but it has itself shaped a structure of resistance parallel to the structure of the Kurdish language. The relationship between journalism and language was not one of a medium to a message, but a reciprocal, formative relationship: just as journalism served as a means of expression in the Kurdish language, the language itself was shaped and crystallized within the body of journalism. In this structural parallelism, we see how language transforms from a tool into an entity, from a medium into an identity, and from a carrier of meaning into a carrier of memory.

1. Language as Identity: From Tongue to Being

The Kurdish language, as many philosophers and linguists have pointed out, is not merely a system of sounds and vocabulary, but an embodied identity. Belonging to a people dispossessed of their land, deprived of a state, gives the language an additional function: to be the symbolic state of the Kurds.

In Kurdish journalism, language has always been a mirror of the collective self, reshaping consciousness, codifying belonging, and renewing history. Language was not just a means of informing, but a space for redefining "who we are," "what we want," and "what we dream."

For this reason, the suppression of the Kurdish language was tantamount to erasing identity, and writing in it meant resisting assimilation and obliteration.

1. Challenges of Writing in Kurdish: Alphabet, Dialects, and Suppression

• The Alphabet: Three Languages in One Tongue Due to the fragmented political and geographical reality, Kurdish language exists in three alphabets:
• Arabic (in Syria and Iraq)
• Latin (in Turkey and among most of the diaspora)
• Cyrillic (in the former Soviet republics)

This alphabetic diversity complicated the path toward linguistic unity, making each region write and read in its own script and alphabet. Here, journalism tried to play a complementary role, as some magazines and newspapers published multiple versions or used hybrid symbols to bridge the gaps between alphabets.

• Dialects: Sorani, Kurmanji, Zaza, Lori… The dialectical diversity led to communication challenges. However, journalism, in turn, became a linguistic laboratory, experimenting with dialects, eventually crafting a hybrid standardized language that sought to balance fluency and commonality.
• Suppression: The Forbidden Word The challenge was not only linguistic but also political and security-related. At many times, using the Kurdish language was prohibited even in private conversations, let alone in newspapers. Kurdish journalism often operated under censorship, in exile, or in secrecy. Despite this, it continued, and was able to create a rich journalistic legacy despite the prohibition.

1. The Role of Journalism in Unifying and Stabilizing the Language

One of the most important roles of Kurdish journalism was not only political or media-related, but also linguistic and cognitive. Journalism played a pivotal role in:

• Stabilizing Terminology and Unifying Usage
• Expanding the Written Language
• Transforming the Language from Popular Oral Use to Official Cultural Use

Newspapers helped refine a modern Kurdish lexicon: political, intellectual, and technical. Through daily dialogue, articles, and investigations, they contributed to the creation of a collective linguistic consciousness, driving the focus toward a shared language that transcended geography and dialects.

Journalism was also a platform for linguistic intellectuals who discussed issues of grammar, translation, terminology, and published their views on a unified language. There was an increasing awareness that linguistic unity was a prerequisite for national unity, and that journalism was the most important incubator for this project.

In conclusion, in Kurdish history, journalism was not just a transmitter of events, but the tongue that carved the language out of siege, making it livable, communicable, and writable. In a country where letters are prohibited and words criminalized, every sentence printed in Kurdish became a heroic act, every newspaper a tool for unifying the language, carrying consciousness, and solidifying existence.

The relationship between Kurdish journalism and the language was not one of subordination, but one of equality and solidarity. Both waged war against oblivion, and together they were the lungs of Kurdish existence in a world that sought to strangle it.

Ninth: Kurdish Women and Journalism – The Voice of the Margins at the Heart of the Word

If Kurdish journalism, since its inception, has represented an act of resistance against power and oppression, then the participation of Kurdish women in this field represents a double resistance: resistance against political oppression and national censorship, and resistance against patriarchal power structures that have often sought to marginalize their voices. Kurdish women transformed from subjects written about in newspapers to writers, editors, and active linguistic and political agents who break taboos and say "I" in their own language, on behalf of their community.

1. From Representation to Agency: Transformations in the Image of Women in Kurdish Journalism

In the early days of Kurdish journalism, women often appeared in romantic or nationalistic discourses, either as symbols of the land, as militant mothers, or as national lovers. They were invoked in texts but rarely wrote them. However, with the passage of time, especially in exile and areas that witnessed social revolutions, we began to see real female names emerging in Kurdish journalism, not as symbols but as voices. Among them were those who fought dual battles: national liberation and gender liberation, and they wrote about women not only as victims of power but as a fighting force, resisting with text, words, and stance.

1. Kurdish Feminist Journalism: Born from the Struggle

Kurdish feminist journalism emerged from the reality of suffering, not from imported theory. Kurdish women fought in the mountains, wrote in caves, distributed leaflets in secrecy, and engaged in gender dialogues on the pages of opposition and exile newspapers.

Kurdish women’s magazines were not just spaces to discuss gender; they addressed nationalism, language, justice, love, and diaspora. Among its symbols were women who defied everything: imposed veils, forced marriages, prohibited language, and even death.

Kurdish feminist journalism represented a transformation in the structure of discourse:

• From talking about women to talking from women.
• From symbolic representation to linguistic agency.
• From the margins to the heart.

1. Double Challenges: Between Patriarchal Authority and the Oppressive Nationalist System

The Kurdish female journalist was always under fire from two fronts:

• On one hand, political oppression, which showed no mercy to any free Kurdish voice, especially if it was a woman's.
• On the other hand, the patriarchal society that silenced her voice and granted men the right to monopolize the narrative in the name of "the cause."

This situation produced a resistant feminist discourse, more aware of intersecting identities, and more daring in naming the real enemies: "The oppressor is not only the state but everyone who denies us the right to speak – including those who claim to defend our cause!"

1. From the Body to the Text: Kurdish Women Writing Themselves

In traditional Kurdish culture, women were confined to the body: as a wife, as a mother, as shame to be covered, or as beauty to be married. But in journalism, women began to write about their bodies as a political space, their lives as stories of resistance, love from their perspective, and motherhood as an act of struggle.

Thus, the word transformed into an alternative body, and the text became a new realm of freedom. Writing was no longer just "about life," but became the alternative life in which women shaped their newfound freedom.

In conclusion, talking about Kurdish journalism without talking about women is to reproduce the very exclusion that Kurdish journalism has resisted since its inception. Kurdish women were not only victims of denial policies, but they were at the forefront of those who said "no," at the forefront of those who wrote, liberated, and launched words in the face of silence.

Kurdish feminist journalism is not merely a chapter in the struggle, but a third language, built on the ruins of silence, and it constructs a more inclusive, just, and diverse Kurdish identity.

Tenth: The Ethics of Kurdish Journalism – Commitment, Not Neutrality

■ Who Writes for Whom? The Question of Conscience

In the world of journalism, a journalist is supposed to be a witness, not an actor; an observer, not an instigator; a transmitter, not an interpreter. However, when a nation is threatened, language is repressed, and history is distorted, the question shifts from "What happened?" to "Who writes for whom? And why?" Here, neutrality is no longer a supreme value but becomes a suspicious ethical stance because what appears to be "neutrality" under oppression is, in essence, a form of complicity.

In the Kurdish context, where identity itself is a subject of dispute, the word becomes not only a tool for expression but also a tool for struggle or betrayal. The Kurdish journalist does not write from an ivory tower but from a cultural trench. For this reason, conscience has always been the dividing line between writing as responsibility and writing as a job.

"Who writes for whom?" is not a rhetorical question but the key to the ethics of Kurdish journalism because the journalist does not write for a neutral audience, but for a people who are bleeding, for a society reinventing itself, and for a resistance born from the word just as much as it is born from weapons.

■ The Kurdish Journalist Between Truth and Party Interests

One of the most significant challenges faced by Kurdish journalism is the complex relationship between the journalist and Kurdish political parties. Many Kurdish newspapers were founded within the womb of political organizations, which made the editorial line conditional on prior loyalty. Thus, the Kurdish journalist found themselves torn between loyalty to the truth and loyalty to the party.

In environments where independent media institutions are scarce, the journalist becomes a hostage to party funding and ideological direction, turning news into a statement, investigative journalism into propaganda, and an article into a tool for political cleansing.

However, this reality does not absolve the journalist from ethical responsibility. Amid this division, independent and courageous journalistic experiences emerged, attempting to restore professional standards. But they collided with a reality where the journalist merges with the fighter, the editor with the spokesperson of the faction, and the critic with the enemy.

The ethical question here is not only: "Do you tell the truth?" but also: "Do you tell the truth that does not please your funder?" And this, in the Kurdish context, is a major dilemma in journalism ethics.

■ The Ethics of "Belonging" in Kurdish Journalistic Discourse

Unlike the Western liberal model that praises "objective neutrality," the Kurdish journalist operates in a space where affiliations are still part of existence, not just identity. In this context, belonging – when it does not corrupt professionalism – becomes a form of moral honor.

A Kurdish journalist who writes in Kurdish, about Kurds, for a Kurdish future, is not considered "unprofessional," but may be more honest than those who claim objectivity while relaying the narrative of the occupier. Belonging here is not bias but recognition of reality and standing on the side of the victim.

However, this belonging does not absolve the journalist from adhering to standards of truth, nor does it grant them the right to deceive in the name of the cause. It must be a critical belonging, one that sees the flaws within the Kurdish self and exposes them, not out of a desire to self-flagellate, but in order to preserve the very values of the struggle.

The ethics of Kurdish journalism are not built on "cold neutrality" but on a passionate commitment to truth, to dreams, and to society. It is a bias not towards power but towards the weak; not towards official history but towards the stolen memory; not towards partisan statements but towards the unheard voice.

Conclusion: Towards a Free and Liberated Kurdish Journalism

■ The Word as a Liberation Project, Not Just a Function
In the Kurdish context, journalism is not just a profession or a means of communication; it is a complete liberation project. It is an extension of identity, resistance, memory, and dreams. Every word written in Kurdish, or for the Kurds, in an environment of colonialism, censorship, and fragmentation, is not merely a "text," but a political act, and a testimony of existence.

Thus, the Kurdish journalist cannot be reduced to just a news writer or a carrier of information; they are a cultural and national actor in a complex battle— a battle against marginalization, symbolic extermination, and techniques of erasing the self from text, time, and space.

Kurdish journalism is the civil expression of the fighter, the intellectual, the refugee, the deprived, and the exiled... And when it remains faithful to its essence, it becomes a bridge between the stolen past and the possible future.

■ Restoring Meaning in an Era of Deception
In the age of post-truth, where reality mixes with illusion, and meaning dissolves in a sea of misleading news, the mission of Kurdish journalism becomes more than just reporting facts; it is a philosophical and cultural mission to restore meaning.

The meaning that was stolen when Kurdistan was reduced to a "problem," imprisoned when resistance was portrayed as terrorism, and buried when the language was banned from schools and poetry from publication.
In this context, journalism does not just undermine the official narrative, but works on building an alternative narrative capable of resisting dismantling, able to address the other without merging with them, and to question the self without self-flagellation.

It is resistance to emptiness, superficiality, and the media passivity that has made truth something that can be bought and sold. Therefore, the Kurdish journalist, if they remain true to the message of their words, becomes a priest of meaning in a temple threatened with destruction.

■ Kurdish Journalism as Part of the Modern Kurdistan Project
Journalism is not a sector isolated from the project of the state or the nation; it is the mirror of this project and its symbolic foundation. Thus, it is impossible to imagine a modern, multi-faceted, democratic, and vibrant Kurdistan without a free, critical press that is liberated from narrow allegiances.

Modern Kurdistan needs not only fighters but also journalists who fight with the pen—who do not strip the truth of its critical weaponry, nor turn journalism into a mere conduit for propaganda.

The modern Kurdish project needs journalism that:

• Writes in Kurdish, not as a linguistic duty, but as a celebration of existence.
• Writes from within, but with a critical eye capable of questioning the self, the party, and society.
• Writes for the future, but with a vigilant memory that rejects forgetting and domestication.

Journalism that reshapes society anew, not as a passive audience but as an active, responsible, and critical civil actor.

In conclusion, if power writes history, the oppressed write the press.
If totalitarian regimes plant silence, the Kurdish word restores the voice to the invisible, and identity to the dispossessed.
Thus, Kurdish journalism, as we have envisioned it in this research, is not just a narrative of the past, but a roadmap for tomorrow.

Let the word be the beginning of liberation, not its end.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

• Badrkhan, Miqdad Madhat. Kurdistan: The First Kurdish Newspaper in Exile, Archival Edition, Istanbul, 1898.
• The Kurdish Press: Its Origins and Development. Baghdad: Dar Al-Hurriya for Printing, 1978.
• The History of Kurdish Journalism in the Twentieth Century. Erbil: Ministry of Culture, Kurdistan Regional Government, 2004
• Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2001.
• Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual. Vintage Books, 1996.

Add comment