Undoubtedly, major transformations and historical turning points compel a person to stop and feel their head to ensure it is still firmly resting on their shoulders. We, as Kurds, are passing through momentous historical crossroads, particularly those of us in Rojava, having witnessed over the past decade—and especially this past year—profoundly historic transformations. The context of the Syrian Revolution and the location of the Kurds within it, the rise and end of the Autonomous Administration, alongside other major developments over the last ten years, all serve as compelling reasons to feel our heads and re-examine many long-held assumptions, questions, and vital missions.
What if the question we asked—or had forced upon us in one way or another—throughout the past century was fundamentally flawed at its core? What if the real dilemma was not that the Kurds failed to build their state or establish their own sovereignty, but rather that we remained trapped in searching for liberation within a ready-made political template that was never originally designed to fit our complex reality?
This query might appear jarring at first glance, yet it asserts itself urgently when we read history through the lens of the present and view the present in light of historical facts. From the fall of the Kurdish emirates in the nineteenth century, through the Republic of Mahabad, the September Revolution, and the 1991 uprising, down to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Rojava in northern and eastern Syria, the scene seems to reproduce itself in nearly identical detail. Every time the Kurds succeed through their blood and sacrifices in building a cohesive political and administrative entity, the interests of regional and international powers converge at a calculated, deliberate limit to prevent that entity from morphing into full sovereignty or a recognized state.
This strikes me not as a passing coincidence, but rather as the inevitable outcome of the geopolitics of Kurdistan. The Kurds were never a people living on the margins of events; they have always stood at the heart of red-hot fault lines. Since the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514—and indeed there are indications that the matter predates this, originating when the region served as a arena of conflict between the Mamluk State and the Mongols—Kurdistan was transformed into a zone of permanent friction and clash between the Ottoman and Safavid Empires. It later became, in the nineteenth century, part of what was known as the “Eastern Question,” leading up to today, where it sits trapped between four nation-states fiercely protective of their borders (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria), with the intersecting interests of major international powers playing out in the skies above its land. That is to say, the Kurdish cause at its core is not merely a matter of identity and culture; it is a geopolitical dilemma par excellence.
From Soran, Botan, and Baban, to Mahabad, the Kurdistan Region, and Rojava, the tragedy recurs with painful consistency: whenever a stable Kurdish authority approaches the dream of sovereignty, it becomes a source of anxiety for its neighbors and major powers, prompting rapid realignments of alliances to force it back beneath a ceiling that poses no threat to the regional balance. This Kurdish drama—built on refusing defeat while repeatedly experiencing it—is vividly captured in those immortal words spoken by Mulla Mustafa Barzani at the height of his heartbreak and defeat in the 1970s, after his revolution was crushed by the Algiers Agreement, leaving him a refugee in Iran. He told an Arab journalist in a tone that encapsulated the philosophy of survival:
“The Kurdish revolution has not ended. We are merely taking a breath to gather our strength. My role has ended. But the Kurdish people remain, and they can choose a leader to continue the resistance.”
This statement captures the core of Kurdish tenacity; the Kurdish nation’s existence is independent of the figures of its leaders and the nature of its temporary political entities. A leader may pass away, and a revolution may be besieged, but “society” endures and regenerates its strength. However, while courage and the refusal to surrender have shielded the Kurds from annihilation and assimilation through centuries of wars and divisions, the fatal error of our political thought throughout the twentieth century was remaining captive to a single idea: that the sole path to protecting the nation inevitably passes through the European-style “nation-state” and its sovereign derivatives.
Yet we never lived under the conditions in which that state model was born; instead, we lived in a region where borders and alliances shift constantly under the weight of powers far greater than ourselves. History itself reveals a truth we often overlook: the Kurds did not wait for the modern state to become a nation. Under the ancient Kurdish emirates, a mature consciousness of land, language, administration, and collective belonging had already formed long before the advent of the modern nation-state. The great Kurdish poet Ahmad-i Khani articulated this early consciousness in his epic poem Mem û Zîn, weeping over the dispersion of the Kurds and searching for a unifying force centuries before modern border treaties were drafted. In other words, the Kurds succeeded in formulating a comprehensive vision of the nation even in the absence of a Kurdish state.
Two centuries after the fall of those emirates, the picture appears familiar yet complex. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq succeeded in constructing institutions, an economy, and a model of self-governance that stands as the most stable and prosperous in modern Kurdish history, yet it remains bound and constrained by the delicate balances of Baghdad, Ankara, Tehran, and Washington. Meanwhile, the Autonomous Administration in northern and eastern Syria, despite its success in managing territory and defeating ISIS, collided with the reality that international alliances are not permanent guarantees, and that the support of major powers shifts with changing interests and maps, culminating in its current reality.
The painful lesson repeats itself: whenever the Kurdish project approaches a certain threshold of strength, efforts begin to recalibrate it back under a ceiling that poses no threat to the regional order. For this precise reason, it appears imperative today that we think in an entirely different manner. This does not mean abandoning the right to self-determination, nor shattering the dream of statehood as a future horizon, but rather reordering our strategic priorities; the state, after all, is merely one tool for protecting the nation, not the nation itself.
If history teaches us anything, it is that geopolitical storms have repeatedly stripped us of our fortresses and emirates, yet the mountains were not our only allies; our language, culture, collective memory, and social bonds were the true shield that prevented our assimilation and preserved our identity through the centuries. But in the twenty-first century, traditional culture or raw military valor alone are no longer sufficient to safeguard existence. Today’s world is governed by new, rigorous instruments of power: the language of numbers, the scale of a productive economy, technological advancement, capital, smart institutions, and cross-border networks.
Therefore, the most rational and courageous choice for the Kurds at this stage is to convert this “breath-taking pause” into a massive workshop for accumulating elements of “non-sovereign power.” What is meant by this is building a robust society that possesses a productive, non-rentier economy, an advanced educational system, scientific elites capable of innovation, major corporations, efficiently managed institutions, and the capacity to exert influence within the states where we reside—without making our entire national and political existence hostage to the declaration of legal sovereignty.
The project of statehood and legal sovereignty, under current regional dynamics, may begin by relying on the will and shifting balances of others more than on our own will. By contrast, building society—empowering it economically and intellectually—is something no power in this world holds a veto over, nor can any international treaty prevent it.
This orientation is not a surrender to reality; rather, it is a long-term, offensive strategy. A state that does not rest upon a strong, self-sufficient society remains fragile and collapses at the first turn, whereas a strong society can dictate its terms and assert its presence even in the absence of a state. A strong society is not merely a group preserving its folklore and identity, but one capable of continuously regenerating its power; it produces new elites, builds independent institutions, generates knowledge, creates wealth, and maintains its internal cohesion regardless of shifting governments, borders, and alliances.
Perhaps what we need most today as Kurds is not the replication of ready-made state models from elsewhere, but the invention of our own political philosophy. A people who have lived for five centuries in the interregnum between empires, and later between nation-states, cannot think with the mindset of stable peoples who have lived within fixed, secure borders for hundreds of years. We require a new and innovative concept of sovereignty—a sovereignty measured not merely by international recognition or lines drawn on paper, but by society’s actual capacity to protect itself, regenerate its strength, and project its economic, cultural, and intellectual presence, regardless of how alliances and maps shift.
The experiences of Baban, Botan, and Soran taught us that military courage alone is not enough, and the experiences of the Kurdistan Region and Rojava taught us that an excess of power without deep internal strategic depth remains threatened. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing us in the twenty-first century is formulating a new political theory stemming from our specific Kurdish reality, answering a different question: How does a nation acquire actual sovereignty on the ground and the capacity to protect itself before acquiring legal sovereignty as a deed from the international community?
A day may come when the nation-state becomes viable, and the international system may shift, altering traditional concepts of sovereignty as it has throughout history. But waiting for that moment should not be a passive endurance or a lamentation over ruins; it must be a time of quiet, meticulous construction.
Building the human being, the economy, institutions, knowledge, and existential self-confidence. Perhaps the greatest civilizational and political achievement for the Kurds in this century will not be merely declaring a new state to be added to the map, but inventing a self-sustained civilizational project that makes the state—should it arrive in the future—the natural fruit and inevitable maturity of a society’s genuine strength, rather than a temporary and precarious gift from shifting international balances of power.
