28/03/2026
THE NATION WITHOUT STATE:
The history of Kurdish people had been one of the most horrible and terrifying in the middle East after the world war 1.
By Mabior Wek.
The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a sovereign state of their own. Numbering between 30 and 45 million people, they exist as a nation in the heart of the Middle East, yet their "home" is a cartographic ghost—a region known as Kurdistan that is partitioned across the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. To be Kurdish in the modern world is to carry a homeland in your heart while living under the flags of four different masters.
• The Architect of a Broken Promise
The modern tragedy of the Kurds began not with a war, but with a pen. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres promised the Kurds a path to independence. For a brief moment, a "Kurdistan" appeared on the diplomatic horizon. However, three years later, Western powers pivoted. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne redrew the map to stabilize the new Republic of Turkey, completely erasing the mention of a Kurdish state.
In an instant, a single people was severed into four. The Kurds became "mountain Turks" in the north, "separatists" in the east, and "foreigners" in the south and west. This original sin of 20th-century diplomacy turned the Kurds into a perpetual minority within four states that were often hostile to their very existence.
• Four Borders, Four Sorrows
The Kurdish journey is defined by a paradox: they are a remarkably sharp and resilient people who remember everything, yet the world often asks them to forget who they are.
In Turkey: For decades, the Kurdish language was banned in schools and public life. To speak your mother tongue was a political act. The state's attempt to forcibly assimilate them led to a brutal, decades-long insurgency, leaving the Kurdish southeast scarred by conflict.
In Iraq: The Kurds faced the ultimate horror in 1988 during the Anfal Campaign. Saddam Hussein’s regime used chemical weapons against the town of Halabja. An estimated 5,000 people—mostly women and children—died in minutes, their bodies frozen in the streets. Today, though the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has achieved a high degree of autonomy, they remain tethered to a volatile Baghdad.
In Syria: Long denied citizenship and treated as "stateless" within their own villages, the Kurds rose to global prominence during the Syrian Civil War. They became the primary ground force against ISIS, only to be abandoned by international allies once the immediate threat subsided, facing renewed incursions from the north.
In Iran: The Kurdish struggle is often met with the gallows. Kurdish activists face disproportionate rates of ex*****on, yet the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement that recently shook Iran was ignited by the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a young Kurdish woman.
There is a saying among the Kurds: "The Kurds have no friends but the mountains." This isn't just a poetic line; it is a tactical reality. The mountains have been their fortresses, their hideouts, and their burial grounds.
Because they have been denied archives and state-run museums, the Kurds have developed an incredibly sharp collective memory. They remember the exact village names that were changed to Turkish or Arabic; they remember the songs that were sung in secret; they remember every promise made by a Western power that was later retracted. A Kurdish grandfather in Erbil can recount the betrayals of the 1970s as if they happened yesterday. This sharpness is their greatest defense against erasure.
Despite the poison gas, the hangman’s noose, and the redrawn maps, the Kurds are not giving up. They have become masters of the "long game." In Iraq, they built a semi-state with its own parliament and military (the Peshmerga). In Syria, they experimented with radical grassroots democracy. Even in the diaspora—from Berlin to Nashville—Kurdish intellectuals and artists are using the internet to bypass physical borders, creating a "digital Kurdistan."
The reality of their existence is a daily act of defiance. It is seen in the Newroz (New Year) fires they light on mountain peaks every March, a symbol of Kawa the Blacksmith’s victory over a tyrant. To be Kurdish is to know that while you may not have a seat at the United Nations, your culture is a fire that four different armies have failed to extinguish. They remain the world’s most resilient ghost—a nation that refuses to vanish into the borders that seek to contain them.
