News makes life comprehensible. Without it we would not be able to make sense of all the developments taking place in our daily lives here on earth.


To this day, several regions across the globe have yet to establish their own news agencies and therefore may not have access to accurate news about their own areas, let alone be able to provide such news to others. The region of Kurdistan is no exception, yet AK News is now filling that gap.


AK News is a politically independent news agency serving the Iraqi Kurdistan region. It was founded in October 2008 by Aras Press with the extensive cooperation of an experienced network of journalists along with professionals from the Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (WDR), and Dortmund University of Technology. It publishes its stories in Kurdish (Kirmanji Saru and Kirmanji Khwaru), Arabic, Turkish, Persian, English, and German.


Background


While a large number of Kurdish people across the globe are eager to hear local news from their homeland, they are still for the most part unaware of the social, political, and economic events shaping the lives of their people due to the absence of a free and independent Kurdish news agency. It has often been the case that those responsible for denying the national and democratic rights of Kurdish people were also responsible for providing their news to the world at large. As a result, much of Kurdistan’s social, political, cultural, and economic news has reached the rest of the world somewhat distorted.


Many stories were never told from the Kurdish perspective and have therefore essentially remained unreported, such as:

 
 
  • the mass killings of Kurdish children, women, and men led by Saddam Hussein’s Regime in 1988 totalling some 205,000 fatalities, with 200,000 killed in the notorious Anfal campaign, and another 5,000 killed in the chemical attack on Halabja City alone
  • the democratic process that began in 1992, including its progress and challenges
  • the internal changes that followed the toppling down of Saddam’s regime in Iraq, and the rapid developments that took place as a result in the Kurdistan Region
  • economic growth and social change in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region
  • Kurdistan’s international relations
  • issues facing Kirkuk and other conflict-laden areas
  • the situation at the Turkish border and issues with the PKK
  • the free media guaranteed by Iraq’s new constitution

Democracy needs media


The past decade has seen a large number of media channels being established in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, all of which have required both national and foreign news sources. These media channels can now count on AK News to deliver accurate and objective news about Kurdistan. With the cooperation of DPA, AK News offers news about Kurdistan, Iraq, and the rest of the world to a global clientele consisting mostly of:

 
 
  • local and international government officials and related groups
  • local and international media agencies and groups
  • civil society institutions

AK News is committed to honesty, accuracy, and independence, and can be depended on to uphold these values in its approach to delivering the news. AKnews has no political or religious affiliations of any kind, and its sole purpose is to channel an objective representation of Kurdistan’s state of affairs, giving the people of Kurdistan an opportunity to tell their story and the rest of the world a chance to better understand Kurdistan.