A Newsroom in Exile Imagines a Free Kurdish Press

The Amargi, a digital outlet based in Germany, takes the lead on Kurdish news.

Kurdish media has a storied history of coverage from exile. Kurdistan—the first Kurdish newspaper, published by the son of an ousted emir—debuted in Cairo in 1898. A century later, the rise of the internet, mass displacement of Kurds, and pressure from states governing Kurdish-majority regions fueled the growth of Kurdish news outlets across Europe. But unlike much of the Kurdish press, both in the diaspora and in the Middle East—which is often aligned with political parties that oppose the governments of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—a new outlet, The Amargi, aims to fulfill a long-standing mission of covering Kurdish affairs without state or party interference. Started in Germany in September by a Kurdish journalist named Kamal Chomani and several colleagues, The Amargi emerged from a repressive Kurdish media environment to establish an independent, grassroots-funded, nonprofit digital newsroom. It takes its name from the Sumerian word for “freedom.”