ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - After a year of intense work, the Kurdistan Center for Arts and Culture (KCAC) to preserve and promote Kurdistan Region’s heritage, culture, and art was inaugurated in Erbil on Monday.
The KCAC archive offers a comprehensive digital collection of books, manuscripts, photographs, periodicals, and historical documents from diverse collections throughout Kurdistan.
The center uses state-of-the-art technologies with its archive system, providing "an indispensable research tool for scholars and enthusiasts of Kurdish history, literature, and culture."
"This is a center that we want to become a platform to introduce the art and culture of Kurdistan to the outside world," Mohammed Fatih, head of the KCAC said. "This is our first project which is a very advanced digital archive in which I could say it is the most advanced digital archive in Kurdistan. It has been strengthened with AI."
Rudaw Media Network has contributed to enriching the center by adding all of its publications to its digital archive database.
Thank you, Rudaw pic.twitter.com/8Taks1fOYi
— Kurdistan Center for Arts and Culture (@KCAC_Kurdistan) May 25, 2024
The center's digital archive is available in Kurdish, English, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian languages.
Well-known Turkish scholar and sociologist Ismail Besikci, who also spent 17 years in prison for writing about the decades-long suffering of Kurds in Turkey described the KCAC center as an important platform.
"Four of my 15 books have been digitized. They say another two of them are also ready. All the 15 books will be digitized. I think this center works well," Besikci said.
Until now, 1,111 books, manuscripts, photographs, periodicals, and historical documents have been digitized.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani participated in the inauguration of the centre.
“All events like this are an opportunity to not forget that life does not only encompass politics; art and culture are important, beautiful, and meaningful aspects of life. It is especially important for the people of Kurdistan to preserve their culture, art, language, literature, heritage, and history, which form the ethnic and national identity,” he said in a speech.
He thanked KCAC staff for their efforts to preserve the documents.
"Kurds and the people of Kurdistan have a very rich and varied history and culture," President Barzani stressed, adding that despite all sufferings and catastrophes they experienced through history, the people of Kurdistan managed to preserve their language, culture and heritage due to their passion.
