Kurdistan is being fought today as an independent state is fought, even if its state sovereignty has not yet been formally recognized. This is the paradox revealing the nature of the current stage: the occupying states deny its existence in their rhetoric, yet engage with it in their meetings, agreements, and military deployments as a reality capable of shifting the region’s balances.
The conflict has surpassed the targeting of Kurdish figures and the striking of political organizations; it has become a confrontation with Greater Kurdistan as a transboundary geopolitical reality that cuts across the borders that divided it, emerging from the shadows of denial to impose its presence in the calculations of those waging war against it.
For over a century, the confrontation progressed from targeting the individual Kurd who named his homeland to targeting the movement carrying his cause. In the first stage, writers, intellectuals, and politicians were pursued as the source of danger; their books were banned, their voices confiscated, and their absence was intended to restore silence. As the Kurdish presence expanded, political parties, uprisings, and institutions became targets of suppression and siege. Today, while leaderships and organizations change, Greater Kurdistan remains at the center of the confrontation. This endurance reveals the true scale of what is being fought: a homeland whose presence has become greater than the entities speaking in its name.
On September 20, 2017, the Foreign Ministers of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey met in New York to discuss the independence referendum of the Kurdistan Region, scheduled for the 25th of the same month. They declared their explicit rejection of the referendum, agreed to consider coordinated counter-measures, and called for international efforts to convince the region’s leadership to cancel it. Here, the confrontation was not with an armed operation or a clandestine organization; it was with a ballot opening the door to sovereignty. Three states convened to prevent the possibility of a fourth state.
That was a revealing moment: as soon as the question shifted from the rights of Kurds within Iraq to their right to determine their political future, the response transcended Iraq’s borders. Ankara and Tehran treated the referendum as an issue directly concerning them. Reading this stance clearly shows that the division of Kurdistan did not end its interconnectedness in the calculations of the states dividing it; they fear that recognizing the sovereignty of one part would set a precedent altering the meaning of the cause in the other parts.
In Western Kurdistan (Rojava), the confrontation manifested in a different form, yet revealed the exact same geopolitical weight. On October 17, 2019, the U.S.–Turkish agreement regarding northeastern Syria provided for a temporary pause in the Turkish military operation, a 120-hour window for the withdrawal of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the collection of their heavy weapons, and the disabling of their fortifications, with Turkish forces primarily overseeing the implementation of the “safe zone” arrangements. Washington and Ankara were negotiating over deployments, weaponry, fortifications, and territorial control—that is, over existing elements of power, not a marginal issue that could be ignored.
Five days later, on October 22, 2019, Putin and Erdoğan reached a memorandum in Sochi stipulating the entry of Russian military police and Syrian border guards to facilitate the removal of YPG elements and their weapons to a depth of 30 kilometers, alongside patrol arrangements and their removal from Manbij and Tel Rifaat. Thus, the Kurdish military presence became the subject of an agreement between two heads of state, complete with defined distances, deadlines, and execution mechanisms.
These agreements do not grant Kurdistan legal recognition as a state, but they reveal that its presence now mandates international negotiation over the geography it influences. What was intended to be reduced to an “internal problem” became an item on the agenda of major powers. And the borders that were said to settle the issue became the subject of military arrangements designed to prevent its evolution.
The political dimension manifests even more clearly in the statements of the Astana process. In the meeting of November 11–12, 2024, Russia, Iran, and Turkey rejected the creation of new realities on the ground in northeastern Syria, explicitly including autonomous administration initiatives—which they described as illegal—as well as the local election initiative. They also emphasized confronting what they termed separatist agendas. Here, the objection expanded to governance and elections—to the tools that render societal presence institutional and sustainable.
The rifle is no longer the sole source of apprehension; the ballot box has become one as well. This is a highly significant distinction: when local governance and elections become subjects of joint rejection among states, the conflict has entered a battle over sources of legitimacy and the form of the political entity that could emerge from them. They are confronting the potential for sovereignty in its earliest institutions, before it even bears the name of an independent state.
In relations between Turkey and Iraq, coordination transformed into a recurring security mechanism. According to the official presentation by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was designated a “common threat” during the December 2023 meeting, and Iraq subsequently listed it as a banned organization in March 2024. On August 15, 2024, a memorandum on military, security, and counter-terrorism cooperation was signed in Ankara. While these facts pertain to a specific organization in their texts, they demonstrate how the Kurdish file compels two states to establish arrangements transcending the internal handling of either country.
On the Iranian–Iraqi axis, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani announced on August 28, 2023, that Baghdad had committed to disarming Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, closing their bases, and relocating them prior to September 19, within the framework of the security agreement signed in March. Tehran’s demands thus extended to dictating the conditions of existence for Kurdish dissidents inside the Kurdistan Region through obligations imposed on Baghdad.
These developments differ in their parties and immediate objectives, but in my reading, they reveal a single shift: the Kurdish presence has become a transboundary factor around which agreements are signed, coordination mechanisms are created, withdrawal and deployment zones are demarcated, and forms of governance and representation are rejected. This is the precise political meaning of fighting Kurdistan as though its state already exists: dealing with its capacity for influence as a power that must be contained, and with its potential for sovereignty as a reality whose completion must be prevented.
Kurdistan exists now. Its geopolitical existence does not mean its legal sovereignty is complete, but it means it has become present in the decisions of states, even when excluded from their decision-making tables. It holds no seat at the United Nations, yet its future is debated in New York, Ankara, Moscow, and Astana. Such is the paradox of a homeland present as a subject of negotiation, while denied the right to be present as a party to it.
From here, Kurdistan transitioned from a “ghost state” to a heavyweight geopolitical reality. The ghost was a name they tried to erase; the reality is a presence they are unable to ignore. The more they coordinate to restrict this presence, the more they expose the extent of its influence over them. And the more they cross their borders to confront it, the more they demonstrate that those borders have failed to dismantle its meaning.
Yesterday, they fought the individual Kurd who spoke in the name of his homeland, then they fought the movement carrying his cause. Today, they fight Kurdistan as the coming state, treating the possibility of its sovereignty as an active force in the present. They do not recognize it in law, but their conflict with it is an acknowledgement of its weight in politics. This is what terrifies them: that the Kurdistan they wished absent has become an imposed partner in their calculations, long before they grant it a seat among them.
United States of America
October 2, 2026
Note: This text is translated from the original Arabic version… Read the Arabic version:Click here
