About Us
The New York Kurdish Cultural Center was founded in 2017 to showcase and promote Kurdish culture, as it has developed from ancient times to the present.
Kurds are the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of their own. Their native region in the Middle East lies along the Zagros and Taurus Mountains, covering parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria. Some 40 million Kurds in these countries today, and even more in the diaspora.
Over the millennia, Kurds developed sophisticated music, visual art, poetry, literature, folkloric dance, and theater; culinary and textile arts; and cinema. Yet the Middle Eastern countries were they live mostly repress their cultural expression. In Turkey and Iran, Kurds who speak their mother tongue, wear traditional clothing, and practice longstanding traditions are routinely subjected to persecution, violence, and imprisonment.
We believe that a people’s freedom to affirm and express ethnic identity is an essential human right. No one should be punished, let alone tortured, for singing a song in their mother tongue. For that reason, preserving and advancing Kurdish culture is not only a matter of self-expression but a crucial part of the Kurdish freedom struggle.
By creating events, screenings, and exhibitions in the New York area, we aim to strengthen our diaspora community and provide a space for Kurdish Americans from diverse communities of origin to reclaim, celebrate, and advance their shared cultural traditions, to find common ground and build friendships.
At the same time, we build bridges to non-Kurds by introducing them to the richness and breadth of Kurdish culture. In this way we hope to raise general awareness about the Kurdish people and their issues.
And by contributing to the melting pot of diverse cultures, we seek to advance multiethnic democracy and an equitable society.
Our Board
Xeyal Qertel is a New York-based educator and human rights activist with a special interest in women’s rights.
She is originally from the Dersim region of North Kurdistan, Bakur. She attended Istanbul University, then migrated to the United States and settled in New York. In 2010, Xeyal earned her M.A. in political science at Brooklyn College.
She is the founder and president of the New York Kurdish Cultural Center, director of the annual New York Kurdish Film Festival, and representative of the Rojava Film Commune to the United States.
Janet Biehl has copyedited manuscripts for New York book publishers for several decades. She is the author of Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin (2016). She has translated several books about Kurdish issues from German to English, including Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan (2014), Revolution in Rojava by Knapp et al. (2017), and Sakine Cansız’s memoir SARA, 2 vols. (2018, 2019). She wrote and illustrated the graphic memoir Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS (2022). She participated in the collaborative translation (Turkish to English) of Gültan Kisanak’s The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics (2022). She is currently manages the NYKCC’s website.
Myles B. Caggins III is a retired U.S. Army colonel who served three year-long combat tours in Iraq. As spokesperson for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria, he led a multinational communication team representing 78 nations. He served as the U.S. Army’s visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a life member. He is a senior nonresident fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, where he provides expertise on public information warfare, Iraq, Syria, U.S.-Kurdish relations, ISIS, and military culture. He has lectured, paneled, and keynoted at numerous institutions. With 26 years of national security leadership and communication experience, he currently heads Word Warriors LLC, which provides specialized language and translation services, executive communication coaching and advice, and business consulting in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. With his extensive international media experience and relationships with journalists—particularly on Arabic and Kurdish language networks—he is a cross-cultural communication leader.
Rêz Gardî is an international human rights lawyer, advocate, and trailblazer in the global refugee leadership movement.
Born stateless as a Kurdish refugee, Rez has dedicated her career to advocating for marginalized communities and addressing systemic inequalities through a combination of legal expertise and grassroots advocacy. Her work bridges the gap between law, policy, and lived experience, driving systemic change and justice for those most affected by displacement and persecution.
Rêz is a Harvard-educated lawyer admitted to the bar in New York and New Zealand and also has degrees in international relations and politics. She leverages her unique perspectives to champion human rights and to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities on a global scale.
Yek Kareric is an academic librarian. He is originally from Çolig (North Kurdistan) and has been living in the United States since 1989.
He received his B.A. from Philipps-Universität Marburg and master’s in library science from Queens College, City University of New York.
Yek knows Kurdish (Kurmanci and Zazaki), Turkish, German, and English and is an advocate of the Kurdish issue.
Our Supporters
For major finanical support, we are grateful to:
For further extremely helpful ongoing support, we deeply thank:
We are grateful to our many other wonderful community partners:
