The renewed attacks on the Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo are not perceived by many Kurds as just another brutal episode of the Syrian war. They are experienced as a national trauma. More precisely, as the reopening of a national trauma that has been accumulating for centuries. Aleppo today is not merely a battlefield. It is a place where history, memory, and the present collapse into one another. A place where it becomes clear whether the suffering of a people will continue to be treated as a footnote of global politics—or finally recognized for what it is: a profound injury to humanity.
The national trauma of the Kurds is rooted in a historical experience that is almost without parallel. Few peoples have lived for centuries in their homeland and yet have never been allowed to exist as a nation on that land. Kurds have learned what it means to be strangers in their own country. They have been oppressed by stronger powers and marginalized by states that at best tolerated their existence and often actively fought it. They were discriminated against for speaking their language, for living their culture, for naming their identity. In Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, openly identifying as Kurdish was repeatedly criminalized, punished, or met with violence. This experience has shaped not only individual lives, but entire generations.
What does it mean for a people never to live as a nation? It means living in permanent existential insecurity. It means having no political home in one’s own homeland. No place where belonging is taken for granted. Kurds carry Iraqi, Turkish, Syrian, or Iranian passports—documents issued by states that often deny or suppress their identity. This formal citizenship stands in sharp contrast to an inner certainty: that Kurdish language, history, and culture are older than these nation-states themselves. This contradiction creates deep alienation. One may stay. But one never truly belongs.
This national trauma is not abstract. Kurds often describe it in physical terms. It is the feeling of not being allowed to truly touch one’s own land, of never being able to work the soil with one’s own hands, of not feeling the pain of labor and, at the same time, the hope that plants will grow in their own time. Land here is not property, it is a relationship—a relationship that requires trust, time, and continuity. Precisely this continuity has been repeatedly destroyed through displacement, burned villages, military zones, and borders drawn without regard for the people who lived there. The loss of land is therefore always also the loss of dignity, meaning, and future.
Aleppo fits seamlessly into this history. The violence there is not a new wound. It is a retraumatization. The massacres of the 1930s in Turkey, the chemical attack on Halabja in in what is now the Kurdistan Region in 1988, the Anfal campaign in the same Kurdish region with tens of thousands of victims, the genocide against the Yazidis in the disputed district of Shingal (Sinjar), the siege of the Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria (Rojava), and the war against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS)—in which more than 12,000 Kurdish fighters lost their lives—form a collective memory of suffering. These events do not stand side by side—they overlap and merge. Together they constitute a national trauma that is transmitted across generations, unresolved and ongoing.
This trauma produces contradictory emotions. There is anger over continuous injustice, the indifference of the world, and deep helplessness in the face of political powerlessness. For decades, many Kurds have described themselves as the “orphans of the universe.” Psychologically, this metaphor is precise. Orphans lack a reliable authority that takes responsibility for them. This is how many Kurds experience international politics. Protection is promised but not guaranteed. Solidarity is proclaimed but not delivered.
What makes Syria’s Aleppo particularly painful is that the violence is carried out by actors who now present themselves as a so-called interim government in Damascus, despite their clear roots in jihadist movements. This is not a democratically legitimized government, but a power structure emerging from groups that have themselves practiced terror. The fact that these actors now wear suits and use diplomatic language does not change their ideological origins, nor does it change the threat they pose to minorities. Terror is being carried out against Kurdish civilians in the name of Syria.
For ethnic groups like Kurds as well as religious ones like Yazidis, Christians, Druze, Ismailis, Alawites, and others, this is a bitter experience. Perpetrators are politically upgraded, while victims are once again left unprotected. Even more troubling is that the European Union supports this so-called interim government with hundreds of millions of euros—at the very moment when jihadist forces are attacking Kurdish neighborhoods. What is described in Brussels as stabilization and humanitarian aid is experienced on the ground as a reward for perpetrators. Politically, this is highly problematic. Psychologically, it is devastating.
Such perceptions are further reinforced by developments in Iran and Turkey. Brutal repression of Kurds in Iran, executions, and military control of entire regions, along with the apparent collapse of the once hopeful peace process in Turkey, have shattered hopes for political security. Many Kurds have come to a painful conclusion: they are safe in none of the states in which they live. Aleppo is therefore not an isolated site of suffering. It is a symbol of a structural condition.
International political decisions are not neutral acts. They directly shape how violence is psychologically processed. When survivors of war, displacement, and genocide see international actors knowingly cooperate with heavily compromised or perpetrator-adjacent structures while victims remain invisible, a deep moral injury occurs. This leads to the chronicization of trauma, collective resignation, and lasting loss of trust in law, justice, and the international order. The feeling “the world has abandoned us again” is confirmed—with long-term consequences for peace and stability.
This is where the responsibility of Europe and the United States begins. The European Union likes to present itself as a community of values, as a moral actor in global politics. The United States emphasizes its democratic tradition and its role as a protector of freedom. Yet in the globalized world, priorities have shifted. Economic stability, energy security, and military power increasingly dominate political decision-making. Regions such as Syria and Kurdistan are viewed functionally: as buffer zones, spheres of influence, security variables. Human rights matter only as long as they do not conflict with geopolitical interests.
This approach is not only morally troubling. It is historically shortsighted. Europe knows what national trauma means. The Second World War is not a distant history. Its psychological and social consequences continue to shape European societies—often suppressed, but far from resolved. The United States also carries national traumas: from its founding history and slavery to Vietnam and Afghanistan. These were not merely military failures, but deep moral and psychological ruptures that damaged trust, values, and social cohesion. Anyone who takes these experiences seriously should understand what collective trauma does to other societies.
Yet this understanding seems to be fading within the logic of global power politics. Ethics, morality, and human rights risk becoming negotiable. That is dangerous. Without universal ethical orientation, the world loses its moral foundation—and its compass for what it means to be human. Human rights are not a luxury of stable societies. They are fundamental principles of human survival.
Aleppo makes this painfully visible. And yet another dimension emerges there, one that is often overlooked. The violence has triggered a new wave of Kurdish solidarity worldwide. Kurds of different religious backgrounds, political views, and generations are coming together. The slogan “Long live the resistance in Rojava” is not primarily a military statement. It is an expression of a collective struggle for dignity. A refusal to be reduced to the role of eternal victim.
The national trauma of the Kurds is therefore not only a story of suffering, it is also a story of survival. It has been passed down to future generations not only as pain, but as strength. As resilience. As heightened sensitivity to injustice. As a deep belief in democracy, diversity, and coexistence. Precisely because Kurds know what exclusion means, many defend these values with particular determination.
In the streets of Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsood, more is at stake than the fate of a few neighborhoods. What is decided there is whether ethics, morality, and human rights remain universal principles—or whether, in a world driven by economic interests and military power, they are reduced to empty rhetoric. How Europe and the United States respond will show whether they have learned from their own traumas—or whether they are willing to produce new ones.
Dr. Jan Ilhan Kizilhan is a psychologist, author and publisher, an expert in psychotraumatology, trauma, terror and war, transcultural psychiatry, psychotherapy and migration.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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