Kepari: The Kurdish Wild Caperberries Foraged Under Airstrikes

Dala Sarkis
May 29
4 min read

Kepari: The Kurdish Wild Caperberries Foraged Under Airstrikes

Kepari are wild caperberries foraged from the mountains of Kurdistan, preserved in vinegar with garlic and salt, and served as a pickle alongside grilled meats and rice. They are the fruit of the caper bush (Capparis spinosa), which grows wild across the Zagros and Taurus ranges. Dr. Jihan Mohammed, a Kurdish sociologist, writes in Muslim Voices (2025): “Foraging today is no longer a safe practice. Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish villages have claimed the lives of several civilians while they were foraging for wild plants.” She describes how “political instability, combined with the Kurdish government’s neglect of agricultural investment, has discouraged many people from returning to their villages and has placed this old practice at risk of disappearing.” This series has documented Kurdish foraging in çiriş (mountain plant), avelik (wild leaf dolma), kelane (herbed bread), and kengerli pilaf (wild thistle). Kepari is the preserved form of the foraging tradition: wild fruit picked in summer, pickled in vinegar, and eaten year-round. But the tradition that produces kepari is now endangered — not only by habitat loss (as documented for kenger), but by war. Kurdish foraging is not just a food practice. It is an act of presence on land that others want empty.

Key Takeaways

• Wild caperberries foraged from Kurdish mountains, preserved in vinegar with garlic and salt

• Kurdish foraging is now endangered by Turkish airstrikes — civilians killed while picking wild plants

• Part of a broader foraging tradition: çiriş, avelik, kelane herbs, kenger, and now kepari

• Foraging is an act of presence on land others want empty — food as resistance

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Kepari (کەپاری) — wild caperberries

Type: Pickle/appetiser — preserved in vinegar with garlic and salt

Source: Wild caper bush (Capparis spinosa) growing on Kurdish mountain slopes

Threat: Kurdish foraging endangered by Turkish airstrikes and political instability

Foraging Under Fire: When Picking Plants Means Risking Your Life

Dr. Jihan Mohammed, a Kurdish sociologist who published Nashville the Little Kurdistan to educate children about the Kurdish diaspora, wrote two articles for Muslim Voices in 2025 on Kurdish vegetarian food and wild plant foraging. In them, she documents a reality that no food article usually acknowledges: Kurdish foraging can kill you. Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish villages have targeted areas where civilians were gathering wild plants. The strikes do not distinguish between combatants and grandmothers picking herbs. The result is that many Kurdish families have stopped foraging — not because they don’t want the plants, but because they cannot safely reach them. Dr. Mohammed describes this as a double loss: the loss of the food itself, and the loss of the cultural knowledge that comes with foraging. When a grandmother stops teaching her granddaughter which plants to pick and where, the tradition dies in one generation. Kepari — wild caperberries picked from exposed mountainsides — is exactly the kind of food that this erasure threatens.

Traditional Preparation

Wild caperberries are picked in summer from caper bushes growing on rocky mountain slopes. The berries are the fruit of the plant — larger than the buds (which are sold as Mediterranean capers), with a milder, tangier flavour and small edible seeds inside. The freshly picked berries are washed and placed in jars with vinegar, whole garlic cloves, and salt. Some families add black peppercorns or dried chili for heat. The jars are sealed and left to pickle for at least a month, though the flavour improves with time. The finished kepari are sharp, tangy, garlicky, and crunchy from the seeds. They are served as a condiment alongside grilled meats — ciger şîş, shifta, büryan — where their acidity cuts through the richness of the meat. They also appear on the breakfast table alongside cheese, olives, and bread. Kepari are the Kurdish equivalent of Mediterranean capers but bigger, wilder, and made from the fruit rather than the bud.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is kepari?

Kepari are wild caperberries — the fruit of the caper bush (Capparis spinosa) that grows wild on Kurdish mountain slopes. They are foraged in summer, preserved in vinegar with garlic and salt, and served as a pickle alongside grilled meats and on the breakfast table. They are larger and milder than Mediterranean capers, which use the flower bud rather than the fruit.

Why is Kurdish foraging endangered?

Dr. Jihan Mohammed documents in Muslim Voices (2025) that Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish villages have killed civilians while they were foraging for wild plants. Political instability and the Kurdish government’s neglect of agricultural investment have discouraged many people from returning to their villages. When foraging stops, the cultural knowledge of which plants to pick, where, and when is lost within one generation.

How many foraged foods has this series documented?

Six: çiriş (mountain plant in soup), avelik (wild leaf for dolma), kelane herbs (wild greens in bread), kenger (wild thistle in pilaf — facing extinction), kepari (wild caperberries pickled), and the wild herbs used in borakê panêr. A 2019 peer-reviewed study recorded 54 wild plant taxa foraged by Kurdish communities and described Iraqi Kurdistan as “a special hotspot for bio-cultural diversity.”

Conclusion

Kepari is the seventy-seventh article in this series, and the one that finally names what has been implicit in every foraging article: Kurdish food gathering is an act of survival on contested land. The kengerli pilaf article documented a plant facing extinction from overharvesting. Kepari documents something worse: foraging communities facing extinction from airstrikes. A grandmother picking caperberries on a Kurdish mountainside is doing something her grandmother did, and her grandmother before that, back to the Neolithic. She is also doing something that a Turkish F-16 may interpret as a reason to bomb the hillside. The pickle in the jar is not just a condiment. It is evidence that someone climbed a mountain, picked a fruit, and came home alive. Seventy-seven articles in, kepari proves that Kurdish food is not only culture, memory, and identity. It is presence. And presence, on Kurdish land, requires courage.