Nytimes.com | By PATRICK KINGSLEY

ISTANBUL — A village leader shoves four voting slips into a ballot box. An unknown arm marks three slips with a “yes” vote. An unknown hand adds five more. An election official validates a pile of voting slips — hours after they were meant to be validated.

Publisher Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

The views, opinions, conclusions and other information expressed in this document are not given nor necessarily endorsed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) unless the OSCE is explicitly defined as the Author of this document.

Rudaw.net

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Holding referendum on independence is “not risk-free” and will test the water regarding reactions from other countries before the Kurdish leadership decides on declaring an independent Kurdistan, a senior Kurdish politician and former Iraqi Foreign Minister told Rudaw Sunday night, as he revealed that the issue has been discussed with all permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Nytimes.com | The Opinion Pages | By By ANTONY J. BLINKENJAN

Washingtonpost.com | Twitter: @LallyWeymouth

Massoud Barzani talks with the Post about beating the Islamic State and forging a separate path for his people.

Nytimes.com | By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT

Nytimes.com | By ROD NORDLANDDEC. 24, 2016

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — It was the end of the day in an underground tavern with no name. Beneath a domed Ottoman ceiling, with the lights down low and the music muted, patrons could just hear a distant rumbling through the basalt block walls, five centuries old.

Euronews.com

ISIL survivors-turned-activists Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar will receive the 2016 Sakharov Prize in a ceremony in a ceremony in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

Nytimes.com | By ROD NORDLANDDEC

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — When Kurdish officials here in Diyarbakir, the biggest Kurdish city in the world, say they’ve been “unavoidably detained,” it is not just an excuse for lateness.

Nytimes.com | By Peter W. GALBRAITHDEC - TOWNSHEND, Vt. — The civil war in Syria is over. Now it is time to stop the fighting.

Aided by Russia, Iran, Shiite militias and Hezbollah, the government of President Bashar al-Assad is on the verge of taking Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city. Supported by its powerful allies, the Syrian Army will then move to eliminate the remaining pockets of resistance, notably around the northern city of Idlib. While Iran has been Mr. Assad’s most important military ally, the Syrian regime would still want to have Russian airpower to finish its reconquest of the country’s populous west.