When a wave of Kurdish refugees came to Nashville, they quickly got to work.
The Country In Our Hearts, Ep. 2: The Ones Who Face Death
WPLN reporter Rose Gilbert takes a journey through the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan and into generations of one Kurdish family.
Introducing ‘The Country In Our Hearts’ podcast series
In 1988, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled northern Iraq as Saddam Hussein’s armies hunted them down. Many ended up in Nashville, making this southern city home to the largest Kurdish community in America.
This Nashville asylum seeker faced prison for a tweet. Trump’s executive order jeopardizes his future.
The family came to Nashville as asylum seekers about two years ago. Now, they are among thousands facing an uncertain future.
‘USA, defend your Kurdish allies!’ Nashville’s Kurdish community outraged following Turkish attacks on Syrian Kurds
The Kurdish forces in Syria have been the United States’ main partner in the fight against ISIS. However, the United States and Turkey are also allies, which makes things complicated.
This Kurdish Nashvillian supports Trump. The reason is rooted in history.
During his first term in office, Donald Trump had a complicated track record when it came to Kurdistan. Following his reelection, a politically engaged member of Nashville’s Kurdish community weighs in.
Connecting Nashville to its sister city, Erbil
Have you met Nashville’s sisters? Sister cities, that is. If you didn’t know, the long-running Sister Cities Nashville program has formal partnerships with 10 international cities.
For Nashville’s Kurdish community, clothing and culture are interwoven
For Nashville’s Kurdish community — a people whose culture has historically come under fire — clothing is a tangible way of preserving their traditions.
A new wave of Kurds fleeing Turkey bring their own sound to Music City
Nashville has the largest Kurdish population of any city in the U.S., and most are from the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, also known as Bashur. They arrived in waves starting in the 1970s, with the largest influx prompted by Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaigns in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
What is a ‘sister city’? Nashville prepares for cultural exchanges with Erbil, the capitol of the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
A partnership roughly a decade in the making is about to become official: Nashville and Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, are in the homestretch of formalizing a relationship as “sister cities.” Erbil would become Nashville’s tenth sister — a designation that involves travel, cultural and professional exchanges.
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