Nashville Preps for Sister City Partnership With Erbil, Capital Of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region
Image Credit: Adam Norwood / CC & Esmihel Muhammad / Pexels
The Tennessee Conservative [By Adelia Kirchner] –
The city of Nashville is getting ready to officiate a sister city partnership involving travel, cultural and professional exchanges, with Erbil the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Sister city relationships were popularized in the wake of the Cold War by President Eisenhower who wanted to encourage “citizen diplomacy” and U.S. cities have continued to acquire these relationships ever since.
Nashville is no exception to this and last month a delegation from Sister Cities of Nashville traveled to Erbil to visit local schools and cultural sites, attend a tea ceremony, and have meals and meetings with Erbil residents and top officials.
The non-profit organization’s board has since voted to approve the official sister city relationship.
This would make Ebril Nashville’s tenth sister city, joining the ranks of Belfast (Northern Ireland), Caen (France), Chengdu (China), Edmonton (Canada), Kamakura (Japan), Magdeburg (Germany), Mendoza (Argentina), Taiyuan (China), and Tamsworth (Australia).
Maintaining ten of these partnerships may sound like a lot, but it’s not unusual for tourist cities to have many sister cities. For example, New Orleans has fourteen and Houston has nineteen.
All of this comes about a year after an Erbil contingent visited Nashville to get a feel for their potential sister city by attending meetings with the mayor and other city officials, going on a tour of the Convention Center, and participating in several other activities.
But why Nashville of all places?
Well, Tennessee’s beloved capital city happens to be home to an estimated 25,000 Kurds ever since they first started immigrating to Tennessee from the Middle East in the 1970’s.
In acknowledgement of this, Erbil’s Governor Omed Khoshnaw, made a statement to the Nashville Metro Council.
“The biggest diaspora (of Kurds) is located in the city of Nashville,” he said via an interpreter. “These people here, they do not feel like they are strangers. They have been welcomed by you. They have been welcomed by your big hearts.”
The idea for Nashville and Erbil to become sister cities in the first place was actually suggested back in 2013 by Azad Sameen, Founder of the Kurdish-American Cultural Institute which seeks to help Kurdish immigrants adjust to life in Tennessee’s “big city.”
“We proposed the idea to Nashville Sister Cities,” he said. “They welcomed the idea. They loved it. So ever since, we have been working on this project.”
Just a few years ago, Sameen moved back to Erbil to continue the project from there and looks forward to the possible benefits of the city partnership.
“There will be a lot of cultural exchange – especially when it comes to medical, when it comes to health care, when it comes to agriculture. As you know, America is very advanced, and Nashville is very well known for that,” said Sameen.
The Nashville Metro Council is expected to officially approve the sister city relationship with Erbil as soon as July 2023.
About the Author: Adelia Kirchner is a Tennessee resident and reporter for the Tennessee Conservative. Currently the host of Subtle Rampage Podcast, she has also worked for the South Dakota State Legislature and interned for Senator Bill Hagerty’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee. You can reach Adelia at adelia@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
Why would you want to be a sister city in a country that hates us and would kill us in a heart beat?? Or is Nashville sending money there too??
Nashville city fathers brought the Somali’s in to work as cleaners and maint people 4 the hotels downtown and called it amnesty. That alone was a costly venture for the taxpayers of the city, county & state. Now it’s the Kurd’s. What will they use them for? They have proven to themselves to be fierce fighters. Men & women both. Guess they will provide security to the same city fatber’s ruining a beautiful city! Again the taxpayers lose.