The lesson from Rojava: What the Kurds need to learn now

Northeast Syria (Rojava) is not a marginal episode of recent history, nor is it a local conflict that can be explained only in military terms. Rojava is a magnifying glass. Within it, historical decisions, geopolitical interests, and the structural weaknesses of Kurdish politics come sharply into focus. Anyone who sees Rojava merely as a military escalation misses its deeper meaning. Rojava was a political experiment - and precisely for that reason, it became a target.

The vulnerability of this project did not begin with the Syrian war. Since the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Kurdistan has not existed as a political subject but as a managed problem. The division of Kurdish-inhabited territories between Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran was no historical accident. It was a deliberate geopolitical order. A fragmented people is easier to control than a united one. This logic has never disappeared. Every Kurdish achievement remains local, isolated, and therefore attackable.

At the same time, Kurdistan is far from a peripheral region. Oil, gas, water, and strategic mineral resources make it a key geopolitical space. The sources of the Euphrates and Tigris lie in Kurdish regions. Major energy and transit routes pass through Kurdish territory. A Kurdish political entity with real control over these resources would shift regional and international power relations. That Kurdish self-determination is therefore rhetorically supported but practically blocked is not a contradiction - it is the expression of interest-driven politics.

Rojava crossed a red line. Not militarily, but politically. It showed that order is possible beyond authoritarian state models: plural, multiethnic, gender-equal, and participatory. This social alternative, despite a lot of criticism, is what made Rojava dangerous, not to the local population, but to states and actors whose power depends on homogeneity, control, and fear.

This logic becomes especially visible in the behavior of Western states. While Rojava, as a democratic project, was increasingly isolated, Western governments invested considerable effort in making a Syrian transitional government and its president internationally acceptable, despite a well-documented past involving participation in violence, massacres, and terrorist structures. Moral standards were applied selectively. Once again, Western values proved conditional: democracy, human rights, and self-determination are defended only when they serve strategic interests and do not generate political costs.

Values are negotiable. Interests are not.

In this process, the Kurds were abandoned. Not because they failed, but because they became politically inconvenient. Rojava no longer fit the desired regional order. It complicated negotiations, power arrangements, and geopolitical compromises. This experience is not new. In none of the four parts of Kurdistan have the Kurds ever been treated as strategic partners by the West. They were temporary allies, military actors, buffer zones - but never equal partners with an independent political agenda.

Rojava makes this reality unmistakably clear. Military relevance creates attention, but not loyalty. Democratic quality creates sympathy, but not protection. Alliances emerge from usefulness and end with it. Confusing solidarity with interest-based politics leads to strategic self-deception.

At the same time, Rojava reveals an internal Kurdish weakness. The reactions to the escalation were solidaristic, committed, and emotional - but fragmented. There were no overarching structures capable of pooling information, coordinating political positions, or influencing international responses effectively. Visibility existed; impact did not. Outrage mobilizes, but it does not protect.

Not a National Congress, but a Kurdish Crisis and Strategy Council is needed

A traditional National Congress would not have protected Rojava. Such congresses are slow, heavy, and deeply shaped by party rivalries. They react when facts have already been created. They generate symbolism rather than operational capacity. In acute crises, they are often expressions of political powerlessness rather than instruments of effective intervention.

What is needed are not grand national performances, but flexible, transnational, and permanently operational structures. A Kurdish Crisis and Strategy Council could serve such a role. Not as a government in exile, not as a state-in-waiting, and not as a competitor to existing parties, but as a functional political hub.

Such a council would bring together politics, civil society, religion, economy, culture, academia, and the diaspora. Its task would not be representation, but coordination: rapid information sharing, joint political positioning, international networking, diplomatic engagement, and strategic crisis response - before military escalation creates irreversible facts.

Not reacting when everything is already over. Acting while political space still exists.

Another central lesson from Rojava concerns the fixation on territory. Territorial autonomy projects remain vulnerable as long as they are not secured by broader political and diplomatic networks. Territory creates responsibility, but also predictability - and thus vulnerability. A political future built solely on spatial control becomes militarily calculable.

The aggressive response of authoritarian states, especially Turkey, is particularly revealing. Policy toward Rojava has been driven less by concrete security concerns than by a deep-seated fear that a functioning Kurdish political entity could undermine national identity narratives. This fear is not rational, but it is politically powerful. It produces a permanent psycho-political state of emergency in which aggression is framed as self-defense.

Rojava was not attacked because it was unstable, but because it worked. Because it demonstrated that diversity, participation, and self-governance are not weaknesses. For authoritarian systems, this is the real threat.

The lesson from Rojava is therefore not a moral lament and not an argument for resignation. It is a call for political maturity. Rojava shows how much is possible and how dangerous political projects remain when they are not institutionally secured. The decisive question is not whether Rojava was lost. The decisive question is whether its experience will be taken seriously.

One thing is certain: the next crisis will come. And it will once again reveal whether the Kurds have learned the right lessons from Rojava, or whether history will repeat itself.


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.