Following on from this, here's more on how the Syrian Kurds are seizing the opportunity presented by the current troubles to re-establish their identity:
“I want to learn how to read and write in my own language,” says Manal, a young Kurd from Syria. Neither she nor any of Manal’s 30 classmates have ever been so close to achieving their goal.
And it’s not that Manal doesn’t have an education: the 21-year-old explains in almost perfect English that she hopes to get her degree in economics next year at the university of Hasake, 600 kilometres northeast of Damascus. But until two months ago, she had never had a chance to write in her native Kurdish, banned for the nearly 50 years the Baath party has remained in power in Syria.
The rest is here.
Though, as commenter Mehmet so sagely observes, there's really no such thing as Kurdish identity: it's "only a new Israeli project".
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