QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Neworz is celebrated by tens of millions throughout the Middle East, the Caucasus, Iran, the Balkans, and Central Asia. Yet nowhere does the millennia-old holiday bear such urgency as it does in Kurdish regions. Newroz’s themes of renewal, liberation, and the victory of justice over injustice are ever-present in the context of the Kurds’ ongoing struggle for survival, recognition, and peace.
As old as time
The precise history and meaning of the holiday are as diverse as the peoples who celebrate it. Newroz (also spelled Nevruz or Nowruz) is as much a holiday for Albanian Bektashis as for the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and China. It is sometimes connected to religious celebrations for Muslim Sufis, Alawites, and Iran’s Baha’i, among others. Yet its roots are usually attributed to the Indo-Iranian cultural tradition, particularly to the ancient religions of Zoroastrianism and Mithraism.
The spring equinox, generally falling on March 21, has been celebrated in the region constituting today’s Iran since the Neolithic; the name itself is derived from the words for ‘new’ and ‘day’ in Persian. Newroz has been celebrated in some form for the past 3,000 years. It is among the oldest observed holidays in the world. March 21 is also the first day of the Iranian solar calendar.
Newroz has been the main holiday of several Iranian royal houses going back millennia. It survived the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century and was observed during the Abbasid caliphate even as other Zoroastrian rites were outlawed. During the Middle Ages, Newroz continued to be celebrated throughout the periods of Turkic and Mongol conquest. In 2010, it was officially recognized by the United Nations.
The meaning of Newroz varies between cultures, but generally celebrated by lighting bonfires. In Zoroastrianism, the fires serve to scare away Angra Mainyu, the antithesis to the creator deity Ahura Mazda.
Kurdish Newroz
Despite its ancient heritage, Newroz as it is celebrated by Kurds today is a blend of old and new. In the 1920s, Turkey undertook a systematic erasure of Kurdish culture, ‘Turkifying’ Kurdish towns’ names and outlawing the Kurdish language. Kurdish national consciousness spread as a result.
In the 1930s, Kurdish poet Taufik Abdullah linked the Newroz holiday to the legend of the blacksmith Kawa. According to the Shahnameh, an Iranian mythological epic first written down around the year 1000, Kawa defeated an oppressive tyrant, Zahak, leading the people of the kingdom to freedom. Ever since, Kawa and the people who freed themselves and defeated Zahak have been seen as the mythological progenitors of modern Kurds. The holiday became inexorably linked with themes of liberation and the victory over unjust oppressors.
Only a few years after being imbued with this new meaning, reality was to mirror mythology. On March 20 of 1937, the Turkish government launched a genocidal campaign against Kurds in the Dersim region, in central Turkey. Around 30,000 people were killed. The new meaning of Newroz also became widespread among the Kurdish communities of Iran, Iraq, and Syria in the 1950s, as these states cracked down on its Kurdish populations, too.
Kurds generally celebrate the holiday by lighting bonfires on the eve of March 21. The day of Newroz itself is usually spent in large congregations outside, dancing, and dressed in traditional Kurdish clothes, or visiting family members and the graves of relatives. In the spirit of renewal, people are encouraged to resolve past conflicts. Beyond these communalities, Newroz has been shaped by the peculiar political context in each country.
Despite the anti-Kurdish oppression inherent in modern Iranian governments, Kurds in Iran face few hurdles in celebrating Newroz, as it is a country-wide holiday. A notable distinction to Newroz (or Nowruz) traditions in the rest of Iran is that Kurdish men and women mingle freely and dance together holding hands, which Iran’s Islamist government disapproves of.
In recent years, however, Iranian authorities have also begun to crack down on overtly Kurdish symbols. Newroz celebrations last year were forced to obtain government approval, display the Iranian flag, and omit Kurdish national imagery, such as red roses and white scarfs. Some celebrations were dispersed by security forces with gas and rubber bullets. Several dozen Kurds were arrested across Iranian Kurdistan.
Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan mark Newroz with widespread celebrations. The largest is held in the ancient town of Akre, near Dohuk, where thousands of torch-bearing men and women climb up the slopes of the surrounding mountains. This was not always the case. Under Saddam Hussein, large gatherings for Newroz were forbidden. In Akre, Hussein built a security fort as an administrative center from which to launch the genocidal Anfal campaign against the country’s Kurds in 1988. The infamous poison gas attack on Halabja was carried out a week before Newroz, on March 16, 1988.
Iraq‘s Kurds spent Neworz in fear for the last time 20 years ago. On March 20, 2003, the US was set to begin its invasion of the country. The Kurds worried that Hussein would open a front in the north; makeshift gas masks were being sold across the region. That attack never materialized. The US invasion – while disastrous for the rest of the country – gave Iraq’s Kurds self-rule, and, with that, the freedom to celebrate the Newroz holiday. To this day, Kurds in Iraq equate Hussein with the Zahak of old.
More than in other countries, Kurds in Turkey have imbued their celebrations with immediate political demands. The first large Newroz festivities were held in the province of Diyarbakir in 1970, organised by Kurdish political parties. Nine years later, Istanbul saw its first Newroz bonfires. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has also often used March 21 as a symbolic date to launch attacks against the Turkish state.
Despite the fact that the Kurds make up a sizeable minority in Turkey and that Newroz is celebrated in other Turkic-majority countries, such as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the holiday was outlawed until 1992. Since then, the Turkish government has imposed a Turkified spelling of the holiday – ‘Nevruz’ – and claimed that its origins are to be found in Central Asia. It reportedly prosecuted several newspapers for using the unsanctioned spelling.
Turkish police continue to regularly meet Newroz celebrations with violence. During the first legal festivities in 1992, around 90 Kurds were killed by the government forces. As late as 2008, two participants were killed. In 2022, 83 people were reportedly beaten and arrested by the police in Istanbul after an organized Newroz event.
Newroz in Rojava
Syria‘s Kurds saw similar restrictions under Baathist rule. Under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s rule (2000-present), restrictions were slowly lifted. In 2004, the government allowed celebrations for the first time under the condition that they not become political demonstrations. In 2008, three Kurds were shot dead by security forces during Newroz festivities. In 2010, three more were killed and 50 injured.
As the entire country rose in revolt in 2011, the al-Assad government attempted to buy off the Kurds with a package of civil rights, including citizenship for hundreds of thousands, the release of political prisoners, as well as the first sanctioned Newroz celebrations, which were to be held in Damascus.
Yet these concessions were mostly for show. A resident of Afrin described the imposition of ‘voluntary workdays’ on March 21 for Kurds in government institutions and schools, under threat of political prosecution. Only as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) gained control of Syria’s northeast were Kurds allowed to freely celebrate the holiday. The eve of March 21, 2015, provided an additional impetus for celebration, as it marked the final liberation of the Kobani canton from the Islamic State (ISIS). In Syria, too, ‘Zahak’ had been defeated.
Newroz celebrations in Rojava today are marked by loud music and the asphyxiating fumes of burning diesel fuel and rubber tires across all Kurdish cities, towns and villages in the evening of March 20, and colourful open-air festivals on the 21st. The holiday is also seen as an occasion to put aside political differences. The tri-color flag with the 21-ray crested sun, a Kurdish national symbol seldom used by the AANES for its political connotations, is flown proudly. Men and women wear traditional Kurdish clothes, otherwise a rare sight in Rojava, in what has become a celebration of ‘Kurdishness’, and the Kurds’ endurance against the Syrian state.
Spirit of Newroz
Yet Newroz again became a point of contention of the invasion and occupation of the Kurdish region of Afrin by Turkish forces in 2018. The city of Afrin itself, northwest Syria, fell mere days before Newroz. Turkish proxy Arab Islamist forces marked the occasion by shooting at and then demolishing a prominent statue of Kawa, the blacksmith, in the city.
The Turkish-backed administration imposed an outright ban in 2019. Kurds who had remained in Afrin defiantly lit fires inside their houses; many were arrested for it. The ban was only lifted in 2021, when, after international condemnation of the occupation, the Turkish government attempted a charm offensive. Yet the festivities that year had to occur under strict Turkish supervision. It was hardly the anti-authoritarian holiday Kurds had grown accustomed to. As if to make that point, Turkish-backed factions tore down the Newroz Roundabout in Afrin city in November of 2021.