“The festival this year comes with the fall of Assad’s regime, and we wanted to focus on this as it marks a new era in Syria and Rojava [northeast Syria],” festival director Maxim Issa told Rudaw’s Diaspora program that aired on Friday.
Over the festival weekend, Kurdish and German youth will engage in discussions, showcase their work, introduce their businesses, prepare traditional Kurdish cuisine, and perform traditional folk dances.
Kurds from the diaspora and other ethnicities, including Arabs and Assyrians, are attending the festival this year, according to Issa.
Gunay Darici, managing director of the education non-profit Yekmal Association, said events like this festival give Kurds a platform to express themselves without the restrictions that they would face in their home countries.
“In the diaspora, we can practice cultural and political work more effectively,” she said, noting that in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish areas, “there is no freedom for associations.”
The festival, titled “Turning Point in Syria - A New Future for the Kurds,” will run through Monday.
Germany is home to a large Kurdish diaspora community of at least 1.3 million, according to official government figures, making it the largest Kurdish community in Europe.
