Today we release Part II — The States Against the Dream of Kurdistanî Azad, available exclusively in Summer 2026 on Guerre and Shalom. Sign up as paid to read the work in full.
Part 1 followed the Kurdish dream before the modern states: a lived world of mountains, villages, languages, memories, religious networks, principalities, and imperfect forms of self-rule. It ended with the irreversible passage from empire to state, when Sèvres briefly opened a door, Lausanne closed it, and Kurdish life was divided among recognized sovereignties.
Part II asks what happened next. The dream did not disappear. It was enclosed. Turkey answered it in the name of civilization and national homogenization. Iraq answered it through mandates, monarchy, broken promises, and later Arab nationalism. Iran answered it through openings that became traps when the center recovered. Syria answered it through silence, statelessness, Arabization, and administrative invisibility.
The chapters in this part are: Part II Introduction; The States Against the Dream; In the Name of Civilization; Kings, Mandates, and Broken Promises; Republics, Revolutions, and Traps; and Syria: Silence, Denial, and Survival.
The methods differed. The structure repeated: Kurdish self-rule was renamed as rebellion, backwardness, separatism, disorder, or danger. Part II follows that state vocabulary, not to flatten four histories into one, but to show how different states protected different maps by making Kurdish correction appear as a threat.
Kurdistanî Azad: The Long Dream of Kurdish Self-Rule
by Ann-Catrin Emanuelsson & Khaled Salih
Part II — The States Against the Dream
The modern state did not only divide Kurdistan; it taught Kurdish life to appear through the categories of others.
Part II Introduction
This introduction has one task: to state the comparative claim of Part II without flattening four different states into one identical story.
Once the modern Middle East had been drawn into states, the Kurdish dream did not disappear. It was enclosed inside states that claimed the right to define its limits.
Part II follows that enclosure.
The given is the postwar state system established in Part I: Kurdish life was now divided among recognized states whose sovereignty converted Kurdish self-rule from a frontier question into an internal problem.
The same Kurdish demand — to live with dignity, language, memory, security, and some form of self-rule — was forced through four different state systems, each with its own ideology, fears, institutions, and methods of control. Turkey answered through homogenizing nationalism and the language of civilization. Iraq answered through mandate construction, Arab monarchy — later socialist Arab nationalism — and the unresolved contradiction of a state built over Kurdish land without Kurdish consent. Iran answered through recurring openings and traps: negotiate when the center is weak, punish when the center returns. Syria answered more quietly, through administrative erasure, statelessness, Arabization, silence, and the slow violence of non-recognition.
These are not four illustrations of the same regime. They are four tests of one comparative proposition: different states can protect different maps through the same move of treating Kurdish demands for error-correction as disorder.
This is the state-vocabulary form of false fungibility. Each state made Kurds appear through the category most useful to its own map. In Turkey, Kurdishness could be redescribed as backwardness, rebellion, or a defect in civilization. In Iraq, Kurdish self-rule could become a minority problem inside a state-building project. In Iran, Kurdish openings could become temporary disturbances to be contained once the center recovered. In Syria, Kurdish existence could be made administratively faint: counted, denied, silenced, or left without public standing. The methods differed, but the reduction was similar: the Kurdish person was made legible through the state’s need before being heard as a political subject.
