The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will host an academic conference from April 29 through to May 1, 2017 in Doha, Qatar. The conference, which focuses on the complex relationship between the Arab and Kurdish peoples of the Middle East, builds on an existing tradition of exploring some of the region’s most pressing questions through an academic prism.

Specialists on both Arab and Kurdish affaird will examine the relationships between Arabs and their neighbors in the region, and, in turn, how these influence (and are influenced by) relations with major players in the international arena. Participants will join the broadest academic discussion of its kind, hosting a variety of topics that extend across a number of specialist fields. Uniquely, this conference will study the concept of “The Other” as seen from within the confines of the modern Arab nation-state. These issues will be understood in the context of current political turmoil in the Arab Mashreq.

The Arab and Kurdish peoples were previously united in an intricate historical, geographical and cultural sphere for more than 1,000 years. Only after the fall of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War were the two groups cleaved into separate national groups which demanded ever-greater national self-determination. Today, the Kurdish issue is the most pressing ethnic struggle faced by the Modern Arab state, specifically in Iraq and Syria.  Today, with Iraqi federalism in tatters, and given the chaos throughout, the conflicts between Arabs and Kurds has reached a tipping point. The ACRPS conference will seek to explore the past, present and future of Arab-Kurdish relations and how they will affect the fate of the modern nation-state in the Fertile Crescent.

To read the English version of the Conference Background Paper, please click here.

Sessions over the first two days (Saturday and Sunday) will be held at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. The third and final day of sessions (Monday, 1 May) will be held at the Doha Ritz-Carlton Hotel.  All of the panel discussions, which will be conducted in Arabic, are open to the public. No simultaneous translation is available during this conference.

To attend: please RSVP to events@dohainstitute.org

Or by telephone: 4035 4111