I first met Leyla Uysal at an event at Harvard University in remembrance of the Halabja chemical attacks. We had a long conversation over dinner afterward, during which we bonded over our shared interests and convictions.
Uysal is a Kurdish woman, mother, entrepreneur, designer, urban planner, researcher, and soon to be landscape architect. Most recently, she entered the advanced master’s program in landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, supported by a full scholarship from the Harvard Aga Khan Foundation. Concurrently, she is also enrolled in a PhD program in environmental planning and policy at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Born in the Kurdish town of Pirsus (Suruc) in Turkey, Uysal brings a deep-rooted connection to land, ecology, climate, and cultural heritage to her academic and professional work. During her master’s in design studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, she had the opportunity to weave her Kurdish cultural heritage into her design practice, exploring the intersections of place, identity, and ecological resilience.
Prior to that, she earned her undergraduate degree in urban and regional planning from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, where she focused on permaculture and ecological restoration. “My research today continues to explore the intersections of ecological restoration, climate adaptation, indigenous knowledge systems, and planning, particularly in Mesopotamian communities like my own,” she says.
Stateless and strong
I wanted to know more about Uysal’s childhood and how those early experiences have affected her perspective on urban spaces and community. “My childhood was shaped by contradiction: the beauty of a rich, oral culture grounded in ancestral knowledge, and the weight of political oppression, war, and displacement,” she says.
Uysal still remembers those days growing up in Pirsus and witnessing the deep communal bonds of Kurdish life – the way neighbors cared for one another, the way stories and knowledge flowed through women, and the way land and memory were one. But sometimes growing up and living in a place where language was suppressed brought sadness and constraint, where the right to simply exist was constantly questioned, and where her people had to face consequences for who they are. “Because of this, I’ve always been attuned to the ways that urban spaces can hold trauma or joy, exclusion or belonging,” she notes.
Uysal grew up in a town fragmented by borders and militarization, where even roads and rivers carried the marks of state control. These experiences instilled in her a lifelong sensitivity to how space reflects power and how communities resist through care, imagination, and resilience. “My work as an urban planner is grounded in this lived understanding, and this painful experience found expression in my business, Bajer Watches,” she says.
I was curious how her experience as a stateless Kurdish woman had shaped her identity and influenced her work as an entrepreneur. “Statelessness is not just a legal condition – it’s a psychological and spatial one,” she maintains. “It means growing up with a fractured sense of place, always knowing that the land under your feet is both yours and not yours. At least, the ‘not yours’ feeling was constantly the message we have been given.
“As a Kurdish woman, my body, language, and traditions were politicized from birth,” she shares.
Yet, living on the border, in a state of emergency for the first 20 years of her life, shaped Uysal into who she is today. These realities forged her deep commitment to cultivating a life in harmony with nature, and it is reflected in her academic and entrepreneurial skills, as well as her qualities as a parent.
Moreover, in her academic work, she shines a light on marginalized voices, indigenous ecological traditions, and inclusive planning and design methods. In entrepreneurship, she carries the same ethos.
Bajer means city
In founding Bajer Watches, she aimed to create not only a product, but a platform – something beautiful that could also carry memory, resistance, and empowerment. “My stateless identity gives me a global sense of solidarity, and I see both planning and design as tools for liberation and self-determination,” she says.
Before I met Uysal, I was aware of Bajer Watches, and I was curious why she chose to name her popular watch brand “Bajer.” Bajer is, in fact, a Kurdish word meaning “city,” so it is rich with layered significance. “For me, the name symbolizes movement, strength, and rootedness at the same time. The city, like a river, holds the energy of people, their stories, their struggles, and their creativity,” she shares.
During her childhood in the brutal 1990s, residents were not allowed to leave their town except for festivals like Eid al-Adha. “My mom made me and my siblings clothes that we wore while walking to the bus station to visit the city during one Eid. My hair was nicely put together, I had a new pair of shoes, and my mom made beautiful clothes. I felt like a star while walking on the street. I felt like everyone was looking at me, like I was the model at that moment. That childish innocence, amid such challenging circumstances, was my main inspiration for choosing this name for my brand,” she says.
She chose the name Bajer to ground the brand in the Kurdish context from the outset. It was a way to affirm their right, as Uysal described, to beauty, design, and entrepreneurship – things that are often denied to them or seen as luxuries they don’t deserve.
Bajer is thus a celebration of Kurdish urban life and feminine creativity. It’s a quiet form of resistance. “I wanted everybody who wears Bajer Watches to feel the same level of excitement, innocence, and strength that this little child had in her very short moment of walking down the street,” she affirms.
A watch, a world
Uysal incorporates elements of Kurdish culture and women’s stories into her watch designs. Each Bajer timepiece carries within it stories, patterns, and textures drawn from Kurdish rugs, deq (tattoos), and oral histories. The dials are intentionally minimalistic and sleek, complementing the richness of the motifs designed on the leather wristbands. The wristbands feature three different traditional motifs that symbolize protection, clarity, and resistance. “We worked with multicultural researchers and designers across five different countries to interpret these forms respectfully and ensure that we are not just aestheticizing culture, but embodying it,” she says.
The brand is also committed to honoring the resilience of Kurdish women and features their stories, supports educational initiatives in rural Kurdish areas, and designs collections inspired by figures of strength from Kurdish history. “Each collection is named after one of our ancient Kurdish names for the territories of the Kurds in Mesopotamia,” she added.
The Sophene watch, for instance, was the name of the region where modern-day Amed/Diyarbakir is located; the Artemita is the name of the Wan/Van territories; the Basenia refers to modern-day Bayazid/Dogu Beyazit; and finally, the Corduene, which is a limited special collection, is the name for the region that encompasses Siirt, Bitlis, and Sirnak in the ancient Mesopotamian geographies.
Education and collective liberation
Leyla is the only woman in her family to graduate from high school and attend college. I can see in her eyes that she has faced challenges and overcome them. “I faced resistance at every step – sometimes out of cruelty, and most of the time out of fear. My parents worried for my safety, my reputation, and my future,” she shares.
Uysal began to tell me the story of how education for girls, especially in rural Kurdish families under constant scrutiny, is fraught with barriers. There were times when people came to her house specifically to urge her parents to withdraw her from school because she was seen as a symbol of dishonor for her tribe, simply by going to school.
It was difficult, but as she said, “nothing is impossible.” It took her five years to be able to go to college after graduating from high school at the age of 16. But she finally made it. “And my hard work, resistance, and persistence are paying off already,” she says.
Uysal believes that education is not just for personal growth – it’s a form of collective liberation. “I was fighting against injustice, discrimination, and constant daily insults, but my weapon was my pencil,” she says.
She sees her success not as her own, but as something that could ripple outward. She often says she walked through the door so she could hold it open for others. “Well, I had to break some doors, and I did. This is why all my siblings and younger cousins are now educated, even the children of my relatives who fought so hard to stop me from going to school. So, it’s all worth the fight and pain I had to go through,” she adds.
Beside her journey in life and education, our conversation covered other topics. We had a deep discussion about challenging traditional gender roles and how that influences her work today. As Uysal points out, facing these roles involved not only anger, but also observation. She mentioned not once, but twice, that she has been through a lot, and it was not easy to survive or overcome.
That anger grew within her, and she used it as fuel to pave the paths for the next generations. That anger turned into passion, resistance, persistence, and motivation. Apart from her personal experience, she watched the women around her carry the weight of family, memory, and labor, yet remain invisible in decision-making. “I began to ask why – and what would happen if we walked out of those doors that keep us in, if we designed differently, planned differently, built differently? I guess this became my motivation to create a timepiece,” she says.
Time: to heal, rise, and reclaim
In both her academic and entrepreneurial work, Uysal aims to center women not as passive recipients of development, but as leaders and knowledge holders. That’s why her business, Bajer, is staffed predominantly by women, and their designs are guided by the question: What does time mean to a woman who has had to fight for every moment of it? Her motto for Bajer became “Time to change, time for change!”
When I asked Uysal how she sees her work contributing to the preservation and celebration of Kurdish culture, especially in a global context, she answered without hesitation and pointed out that Kurdish culture has survived erasure, assimilation, and violence across modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Yet it continues to thrive through song, stitch, seed, and story. “My work seeks to carry these threads into new spaces – whether through watch design, academic research, or environmental restoration projects,” she says.
Globally, she hopes Bajer challenges the way people see Kurdish identity – not only through the lens of conflict, but through the lens of beauty, wisdom, and resilience. “Every timepiece we release is a counter-narrative. Every paper I write on river restoration or indigenous planning methods is part of a larger mosaic that says: We are here. We have always been here. And we’re not done dreaming. We dream of a more peaceful yet strong nation. We are beautiful. We are native to our land.
“We are more than just warriors – a stereotype that has become the single definition of Kurds across the globe. I am committed to strengthening our bond with our heritage, land, waters, roots, and history. We are proud fighters, but we are more than just fighters,” she says.
Kurdish culture flourishes through Bajer, which serves as an invitation for her team to unite, connect, and collaborate more deeply. She envisions Bajer growing into a platform that supports not only design, but also education, cultural preservation, and economic independence for women in stateless and marginalized communities like her own. “I hope to launch ateliers, fellowship programs, creative incubators, and continue building partnerships that empower others across Mesopotamia. Bajer is focused on empowering from the local scale. It will grow slowly but steadily.”
When I told Uysal about the wonderful hopes she has for the future of her business, she was optimistic. If her story speaks to other Kurdish girls and women – if it makes them feel less alone, more seen, and more powerful – then, as she told me, she has done her job, partially.
Finally, Bajer is not just about timepieces; it’s about honoring the time it takes to heal, to rise, to reclaim. It’s about belonging. Uysal wants every Kurdish woman to know there is a place for them, and their time is now. The next step would be to provide economic tools to them, training in artisanship and craftsmanship, and to give them access to global market platforms, ultimately allowing them to become more resilient, powerful, and independent.
Goran Shakhawan is a Kurdish-American journalist and author based in the United States. He has covered news for several Kurdish news outlets and was a former senior correspondent for Kurdistan24 in Erbil and Washington D.C. He has published several books in Kurdish.
