Now for the fourth time, Embrace Relief is organizing another campaign to assist Syrian refugees abroad, this time to Syrians in refugee camps in Iraq. We are asking our volunteers to bring new or gently used blankets and winter coats to one of the drop-off locations.
As U.S., Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish forces close in on Mosul, there is hope that the military campaign can force ISIS out of Iraqi territory. Of course, there are many questions still unresolved, for example, about how to pick up the pieces in Mosul.
Erdogan, by contrast, has given voice to an alternative narrative in which Ataturk’s willingness in the Treaty of Lausanne to abandon territories such as Mosul and the now-Greek islands in the Aegean was not an act of eminent pragmatism but rather a betrayal. The suggestion, against all evidence, is that better statesmen, or perhaps a more patriotic one, could have gotten more.
Schools and educational centres in the Kurdistan Region associated with the Gulen movement have insisted they are a private company operating under the Kurdish Ministry of Education and have no ties to Turkey. “In short, we are a Kurdistan company,” an official at the schools told Rudaw, speaking anonymously. “Our institutions operate under the directives and regulations of the Kurdistan Ministry of Education.”
There are 20 schools serving to 12,719 students in Northern Iraq Kurdish Region. Kurdistan Regional Government announced that the 20 schools affiliated with the Gulen movement will not be shut down. There were rumors in the media, in the aftermath of the coup attempt on July 15, about the closure of the Gulen inspired schools.
Sherko Hama Amin, a member of the Kurdistan Parliament’s Education Committee, told NRT that schools should not be shut down over political reasons, especially a political issue outside the region. The Turkish government has previously, even before the July 15 military coup attempt, called on the KRG to close schools connected to the Gulen movement in the region.
The KRG Ministry of Education said it would abide by any decision made by the KRG Council of Ministers concerning the closure of the organization’s schools in the Kurdistan Region. Sherko Hama Amin, a member of the Kurdistan Parliament’s Education Committee, told NRT that schools should not be shut down over political reasons, especially a political issue outside the region.
Jafar Gwani, an Islamic theologian based in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, has said the ideas of Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic preacher who lives in self-imposed exile in the US, are the best antidote in the fight against the ideology of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The President of Ishik University Prof. Ahmet Oztas mentioned that the staff and instructors of the university are strongly against the message of IS. They echo the official line of Gulen, that believes that Islamic State must be fought. He emphasized that IS militants are the enemy of all humanity, Turkey, Kurdistan, US and democracy, and it is the duty of all people to fight against them to the best of their ability.
Kimse Yok Mu, one of the largest charity organizations in Turkey, has sent humanitarian assistance worth nearly TL 2 million collected by volunteers to help Turkmens and Yazidis escaping Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) forces in Iraq.