Why Should the Kurds Demand Independence?

 

For more than a century, the Kurds have lived primarily within four states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Over that century, regimes and governments have changed, monarchies have fallen and republics have emerged, coups, revolutions, and wars have reshaped the region, and international alliances have shifted repeatedly. Yet one fundamental question remains unresolved: How can a stable and just relationship be built between the Kurds and the states within whose borders they live?

 

For decades, answers to this question have almost always been sought within the boundaries of the existing states—through various forms of cultural and political rights, autonomy, decentralization, or federalism. Yet the Kurdish question has remained unresolved, resurfacing with every major crisis or transformation in the region.

 

Perhaps this is precisely why the time has come for the Kurds to frame the question differently. Instead of continually asking how the “Kurdish question” can be resolved within the existing states, why should the Kurds not first ask themselves: Why should an independent state not be considered one of the legitimate political options for their future?

 

But this question does not concern the Kurds alone. Any fundamental change in their political status would inevitably affect the states and societies around them. This leads to an even more important question: Would the establishment of a Kurdish state necessarily be a catastrophe for Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, as it is often portrayed? Or could a historic settlement of the Kurdish question, in the long run, prove less costly for these states than allowing the conflict to continue in different forms for decades to come?

 

 

A Century Is Long Enough to Judge the Experience

Since the modern regional order was established in the aftermath of the First World War, there has not been a single Kurdish experience with the centralized state. There have been many, differing in form, intensity, and outcome from one country to another and from one historical period to another.

 

Throughout these periods, Kurdish identity itself was denied and Kurds were subjected to severe forms of persecution. Later, some states and periods witnessed varying degrees of change, during which limited cultural and political rights were granted. In Iraq, this process eventually developed into constitutional recognition of a federal region with extensive powers. In Syria, the war produced a different model of self-administration. In Turkey, the Kurdish question moved between denial, armed conflict, attempts at political opening, and dialogue. In Iran, meanwhile, the Kurdish question remained closely tied to the centralization of the state and its security concerns.

 

Despite the differences among these experiences and political trajectories—and despite the varying degrees of progress Kurds achieved in each—the fundamental outcome has remained the same: none has yet produced a final and mutually accepted settlement of the Kurdish question.

 

This is why these experiences should be considered collectively rather than in isolation. Advocating independence does not require claiming that coexistence between the Kurds and the peoples of the region is impossible, nor does it require dismissing the rights and achievements secured during certain periods. But after a century of moving between denial, conflict, partial recognition, autonomy, and federalism, it is reasonable to argue that one hundred years of experience gives the Kurds legitimate grounds to consider another political alternative.

 

 

Independence Is Not a Declaration of War

There is a fundamental problem with the way the idea of a Kurdish state is discussed. The moment independence is mentioned, the debate quickly shifts to maps, wars, and the partition of existing states. Yet independence in the twenty-first century should not mean sending armies to draw new borders.

 

 

The Kurds can assert their right to self-determination and make independence a long-term political objective while insisting that it should be pursued through popular will, negotiation, agreements, and international guarantees—not by imposing borders through force.

 

There is an important distinction between claiming a political right and determining the method, timing, and final form through which that right is exercised.

 

The process may take years or even decades. It may begin with unions, federal arrangements, transitional frameworks, or economic and security agreements with existing states. But the fact that independence may not be achievable tomorrow does not mean that the Kurds should abandon their right to place it on the political agenda today.

 

 

The World That Divided the Kurds Is No Longer the Same

There is another reason why discussing Kurdish independence today is different from doing so several decades ago: the geopolitical environment in which the regional order was created has changed fundamentally.

 

The states within which the Kurdish question was contained more than a century ago no longer possess the same strength or cohesion, and regional and international balances of power are no longer fixed. Iraq was transformed after 2003. Syria was transformed after 2011 and again following the fall of the Assad regime. Turkey and Iran are undergoing their own domestic and regional transformations, while the wider region has become an arena of competition among multiple regional and global powers.

 

Amid these transformations, the Kurds are no longer merely communities demanding rights within powerful centralized states. To varying degrees, they have become political, military, and economic actors in the region’s geopolitical equations.

 

In Iraq, the Kurdistan Region has maintained its own political and security institutions and direct international relations for decades. In Syria, Kurdish forces became an important military partner of the international coalition during the war against ISIS, while Kurdish-majority areas have become part of any serious discussion about Syria’s future. Even in Turkey and Iran, the Kurdish question can no longer be treated simply as an isolated domestic security issue disconnected from developments in Iraq, Syria, and the wider region.

 

Yet this experience has also revealed a harsher reality: the strategic importance of the Kurds to major powers does not mean that those powers will guarantee their future.

 

Modern Kurdish history is filled with temporary alliances that ended when the interests of states changed. In recent decades as well, international powers have cooperated with the Kurds when their interests converged, only to shift priorities or scale back commitments when regional calculations changed.

 

The lesson from these experiences is not that the Kurds should avoid alliances with international powers or build their political project around hostility toward the United States, Europe, Russia, or anyone else. Politics ultimately operates through interests and alliances, and the Kurds, like any other people, will continue to need strong international relationships and partnerships capable of protecting their interests.

 

The problem begins when an alliance ceases to be an instrument serving a political project and instead becomes a substitute for that project—when the Kurdish future becomes dependent on whether one state or another chooses to maintain its commitment to them. There is a fundamental difference between forming an alliance with a major power and entrusting the political destiny of an entire people to that power.

 

Governments change. Presidents change. Wars end. Strategic priorities shift from one region to another. What appears to be a strategic alliance today may become a secondary issue in a major power’s calculations a decade from now.

 

Perhaps, then, one of the most important lessons the Kurds should draw from the past century is that a people without its own center of political decision-making will remain part of other powers’ calculations.

 

The establishment of an independent Kurdish state would not provide absolute security, nor would it necessarily shield the Kurds from foreign intervention or external threats. But it would fundamentally change their position within the international system: from a people searching for a protector to a state capable of making its own political decisions, building its own alliances, signing its own agreements, diversifying its relationships, and assuming responsibility for its own choices.

 

That is the fundamental difference.

If the regional order itself is entering a period of restructuring, then the question for the Kurds should no longer be only: Who will protect us in the emerging order?

It should also be:

What position do we want to hold within that order?

Major powers may be important allies, but they cannot substitute for an independent Kurdish political project. Experience has repeatedly shown that alliances change as interests change, while peoples remain rooted in their geography.

 

 

Why Do the Kurds Need to Make This Demand?

Because peoples that do not define the limits of their own political aspirations often find themselves negotiating within limits defined for them by others.

 

If the highest Kurdish demand is limited cultural rights, then negotiations will revolve around the extent of those rights.

 

If the demand is decentralization, the debate will revolve around how much authority the central government is prepared to devolve.

 

But once self-determination and independence become legitimate political options, the very nature of the relationship itself becomes subject to negotiation.

 

This does not mean that every Kurd must support independence, nor that every part of Kurdistan will necessarily choose the same path.

 

But independence should be a Kurdish option open to legitimate political debate—not a political taboo that others have decided in advance the Kurds are not even permitted to contemplate.

 

 

But What Would the Neighbors Gain?

For decades, states in the region have viewed the prospect of a Kurdish state as an existential threat. But it is legitimate to reverse the question: What has the absence of a solution cost so far?

 

Wars, uprisings, military operations, displacement, the destruction of cities and villages, border tensions, foreign interventions, conflicts over resources, enormous security apparatuses, and persistent tensions between central governments and Kurdish regions—and after all of this, the Kurdish question has not disappeared.

 

Perhaps that is because the problem cannot fundamentally be resolved through security measures.

An agreed Kurdish state would not suddenly make Kurds, Arabs, Turks, and Persians neighbors for the first time. They have been neighbors for centuries.

 

The difference is that their relationship could shift from an internal struggle over power, identity, and sovereignty to a relationship between political entities capable of negotiating clearly defined interests.

 

 

Turkey Is a Clear Example

Consider the issue without slogans.

A stable Kurdish state could not magically transport its trade to the sea. It would need the roads, ports, and markets of surrounding states.

 

Turkey, because of geography and economics, could become one of its most important partners.

 

In return, the Kurdish market, energy resources, investment opportunities, and trade corridors could be of considerable importance to Turkey.

 

A smaller-scale example of this logic already exists in the economic relationship between Turkey and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

 

Political disagreements have not prevented the development of extensive interests in trade, energy, investment, and cross-border relations.

 

In other words, the same geography that appears today to be a source of conflict could tomorrow become a basis for cooperation.

 

A Kurdish state cannot move the Zagros Mountains away from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Nor can those states relocate the Kurds to another continent.

 

Everyone will therefore continue to need a framework for coexistence.

The only question is: Which framework carries the lower cost?

 

And Iraq as Well

Since the establishment of the modern Iraqi state, the relationship between Baghdad and the Kurdish movement has been one of Iraq’s most complicated political questions. Even after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the establishment of a federal system under the 2005 Constitution, disputes did not disappear.

 

The budget, oil, public-sector salaries, the powers of the federal government, disputed territories, Kirkuk, the Peshmerga, and the management of natural resources have repeatedly become sources of political crisis between Baghdad and Erbil.

 

It is therefore legitimate to ask: What if two neighboring states, connected through economic and security relations and governed by clear agreements, could ultimately be more stable than a single state that spends decades renegotiating the boundaries of power within itself?

 

There is no guaranteed answer. But the question itself is legitimate.

From Internal Conflict to Mutual Dependence

One of the perceived weaknesses of a prospective Kurdish state could, in fact, become one of the foundations of its stability: it would be landlocked.

 

Without seaports, it would inevitably depend on its neighbors. But that dependence would not run in only one direction.

Kurdish regions lie between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, along important trade and energy routes, and possess resources, markets, and significant geographic value.

 

A rational Kurdish state would therefore have little interest in maintaining permanent hostility with its neighbors. Quite the opposite.

 

Its economic security would depend on good relations with them, and it would need borders to function as gateways for commerce rather than front lines of conflict.

 

The Kurdish question could therefore gradually move away from a zero-sum equation—in which either the Kurds win or the central state wins—and toward a network of shared interests.

 

 

But What About Minorities?

If the Kurds demand the right to self-determination for themselves, they cannot morally or politically deny the same principle to others.

 

This is fundamental. Any project for a Kurdish state based on the idea that the land belongs exclusively to one ethnic group would simply reproduce the very problem it claims to resolve.

 

Kurdish regions are also home to Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrians, Syriacs, Armenians, and other communities, alongside substantial religious and sectarian diversity within society itself.

The question, therefore, cannot simply be:

What rights should the Kurds have in the states that govern them?

It must also be:

What rights will the Kurds guarantee to non-Kurds in a state they govern?

If the answer is not convincing, the project of independence loses a significant part of its legitimacy. A Kurdish state worth defending must therefore be a state of citizenship, constitutional government, and institutions—not a Kurdish version of the centralized nationalism from which the Kurds themselves have suffered.

 

 

And What About the Borders?

This may be the most difficult issue of all.

Historical Kurdistan is not a territory inhabited exclusively by Kurds, nor are there clean ethnic lines on the ground that can simply be converted into international borders.

 

There are mixed cities and regions, overlapping identities, resources, water systems, roads, and economic interests that cannot be divided with a ruler.

 

Any serious project for independence must therefore abandon, from the outset, the illusion of a “perfect map.”

 

Realistic borders cannot be drawn on the basis of history alone. They must also take into account present-day populations, local consent, negotiations, economic interests, and security guarantees.

 

Some areas may require special arrangements, joint administration, constitutional guarantees, or even borders that remain open to residents and commerce.

 

The purpose of independence should be to resolve a historic conflict, not to create a new border conflict.

 

 

The Kurdish Question Is Not the Kurds’ Problem Alone

For nearly a century, states in the region have treated the Kurdish question as though it were primarily a Kurdish problem. The history of the region suggests otherwise.

 

When the Kurdish question erupts, it does not remain confined to Kurdish areas. Governments, armies, neighboring states, and international powers become involved, while the issue intersects with democracy, systems of governance, oil, water, borders, migration, terrorism, and regional alliances.

 

In other words, the failure to resolve the Kurdish question carries a regional cost. Its solution must therefore have a regional dimension as well.

 

 

Independence Is Not a Magic Wand

It must also be understood that independence would not automatically solve the Kurds’ problems.

Internal conflicts could emerge.

Institutions could fail.

 

Party competition could develop into a crisis of statehood.

Corruption and democratic weakness could prove more dangerous to a new state than any external enemy.

 

Political and geographic divisions within Kurdish societies themselves are also real and cannot be concealed behind nationalist rhetoric.

 

A state is not merely a flag, an anthem, and a seat at the United Nations.

 

A state requires institutions, an independent judiciary, an economy, accountability, peaceful transfers of power, and the capacity to protect its citizens.

 

For that reason, the demand for independence must be accompanied by another question of equal importance:

What kind of state do the Kurds want to build?

Why, Then, Should the Kurds Demand Independence?

Not because coexistence with Arabs, Turks, or Persians is impossible.

Not because history grants any people eternal ownership of a territory.

And not because an independent state would solve every problem.

But because a people numbering in the tens of millions, with their own language, identity, political memory, and historic regions, and after more than a century of different political experiences, have at the very least the right to place full self-determination among the political options available to them.

 

Then the people themselves can decide what they want.

More importantly, neighboring states should not ask only:

What would we lose if the Kurds became independent?

They should also ask:

What have all of us lost because the Kurdish question has remained unresolved for a century?

 

The answer may ultimately be a new union, a confederation, more flexible borders, an independent Kurdish state, or different arrangements reflecting the particular circumstances of each part.

 

What must end, however, is the assumption that the status quo is sacred—that everything can be discussed except the right of the Kurds to determine their own future.

 

Borders exist to organize relations between peoples, not to imprison them within conflicts without end.

After a century spent trying to manage the Kurdish question, perhaps the time has come to think seriously about resolving it.

Not for the Kurds alone.

But for the Kurds and their neighbors alike.

*Renas Sino
Chief Executive Officer
Tevin