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Kedis­tan is a web­magazine with an orig­i­nal and lib­er­tar­i­an atti­tude, treat­ing of Mid­dle East­ern news in gen­er­al, of Turkey more specif­i­cal­ly, of cats, of sub-Mediter­ranean cul­ture. And, every time, of equal parts of human­i­ty, women and men both.

kedistan -ecranKedis­tan, is also a tee­ny-tiny plat­form that aims for open­ness and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ness and that relies on a small team : which means that the mag­a­zine belongs to no one. Or rather, it belongs to all those who keep it alive: its edi­to­ri­al­ists, its trans­la­tors, its cor­re­spon­dents, its pho­tog­ra­phers, its tech­ni­cians, some­times the same func­tions belong­ing to the same per­son, and some­times it relies on the wider net­work. With­out for­get­ting, of course, the most impor­tant ones with­out whom Kedis­tan would have no rea­son to exist : you, its readers…

We have an “inner con­vic­tion”: that of a close rela­tion­ship between this part of the world and the rest, a rela­tion­ship built over cen­turies of his­to­ry and still an active hub for a num­ber of rea­sons. We could spend all of our time talk­ing about those rea­sons, attempt­ing to throw light on them, to uncov­er them, poles apart from con­ven­tion­al “Euro­cen­trism”, or of the wooly the­o­ries con­cern­ing “vast plots of world domination”.

If you vis­it Kedis­tan, it is because you come look­ing for infor­ma­tion on Turkey and the Mid­dle East, oth­er than that served up on main­stream medias, with­out giv­ing in to cul­tur­al short­cuts or mud­dle­head­ed notions. Here you will find nei­ther the stereo­typed jar­gon of par­ties or groups that exist for that pur­pose, nor a cliquish men­tal­i­ty, be it of a lib­er­tar­i­an slant.

And of course, if you come back, it is because you defend lib­er­ty, the utopia of a bet­ter world… and because you love cats.

Wel­come then to Kedis­tan, the mag­a­zine that still believes anoth­er world is both pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary, and that fight­ing for it isn’t a waste of time; it is existence.

On Octo­ber 1st 2021, Kedis­tan will cel­e­brate sev­en years of exis­tence and feels more moti­vat­ed than ever.

If you wish to sup­port us, there’s an ongo­ing fund dri­ve. Even one euro is use­ful, lit­tle streams make for big rivers.

Les chats de gout­tières(the all­ey­cats)
To meet the team, click HERE
moustache-chat-kedistan

Why « Kedistan » by the way ?

The “stan” suf­fix sim­ply means “gar­den”, in the sense of “coun­try” or “land”. Thus, Turk­menistan is the land of the Turk­mens ; Kaza­khstan, that of the Kazakhs…The kedi, rep­re­sent an entire species. That of the “Kedi”, the cat.

But why “Kedis­tan” specif­i­cal­ly con­cern­ing the Mid­dle East ?
Well, you have all seen pho­tos of the cats of Istan­bul or Ankara. If noth­ing else, those cats liv­ing in free­dom would jus­ti­fy the name. But let’s go back a bit further…

More than 10 000 years ago, migra­tions brought humans to pop­u­late an area one arche­ol­o­gist called lat­er the Fer­tile Cres­cent. This des­ig­nates a region of some 400 000 to 500 000 km². Present­ly, it stretch­es across some dozen or so States : Lebanon, Cyprus, Koweit, Israel, Pales­tine along with parts of Jor­dan, Syr­ia, Irak, Iran, Egypt and, of course, the south­east­ern part of Turkey (Ana­to­lia). It is no acci­dent if humankind chose to set­tle in the “Fer­tile Cres­cent” since the region offered a favor­able cli­mate and was vast­ly irri­gat­ed at the time by 5 great rivers : the Jor­dan, the Orontes, the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Nile.

To sum­ma­rize, seden­ta­riza­tion trans­formed the nomadic hunter into a cat­tle breed­er and farmer. This region was the birth­place of a flour­ish­ing agri­cul­ture, as hap­pened in oth­er lands of migra­tion lat­er. The build­ing up of cities devel­oped agri­cul­tur­al needs greater than those for nomadic pop­u­la­tions. In fact, traces of this human col­o­niza­tion are being erased in Irak part­ly by beard­ed and very self-inter­est­ed barbarians.

This “agri­cul­ture” already devel­oped the notion of “yields” and “stocks” since the need to feed the cities made it nec­es­sary to pro­tect the crops from rodents. Unless it was the cat him­self who dis­cov­ered the rodents hard at work. This is prob­a­bly how the cat became domes­ti­cat­ed, with­out los­ing his free spir­it. And if skele­tons of our com­pan­ions were dis­cov­ered in tombs all the way to Crete, it is because humans bound their fate to the ani­mal, or vice-versa.

In short, we only speak about the coun­try of the cats, KEDISTAN.

And the cap­i­tal Ⓐ in all that ? It “both­ers” a lot of “seri­ous ones”, you will find an expla­na­tion for it HERE.

 


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