The Kurdish Dream, A Hundred Years of Waiting: A People Without a Country on the Map

A Country That Doesn't Exist on the Map

Imagine this: your people number around 40 million, yet there is no country anywhere in the world that belongs to you. That is the reality the Kurds live every day. Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria — the borders of four nations have mercilessly carved up their homeland of Kurdistan, and a century has passed.

The Treaty of Betrayal, One Hundred Years Ago

In 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres — which dismantled the Ottoman Empire following its defeat in World War I — explicitly included provisions for establishing a Kurdish autonomous region. For the Kurds, it was a document of hope. Yet just three years later, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, negotiated between the major powers and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Turkey, fresh off its victory in the Turkish War of Independence, erased those provisions without a trace. The great powers threw the Kurdish future onto the bargaining table in pursuit of their own strategic interests.

Over the century that followed, the Kurds faced oppression under different labels in each country. In Turkey, they were called "Mountain Turks" and banned from using their language. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein murdered thousands of Kurdish people with chemical weapons during the Halabja massacre of 1988.

Heroes Who Defeated ISIS, But Received Nothing in Return

When ISIS (the Islamic State) cast a shadow of terror across the Middle East in 2014, the fighters who stood against them most fiercely were the Kurdish militia YPG and its all-female combat unit, the YPJ. In Rojava, northern Syria, they embarked on a remarkable experiment: democratic confederalism based on the philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan — a system of self-governance rooted in direct democracy, joint female leadership, and multiethnic coexistence.

The United States joined forces with them to defeat ISIS. But in 2019, Trump's sudden announcement of a US withdrawal from Syria effectively stabbed the Kurdish fighters in the back, and Turkish forces crossed the border almost immediately. The words of one Kurdish female fighter — "We fought for them, and they threw us away like dogs" — were widely reported by media around the world.

As of 2026, the Rojava autonomous region continues to exist in a fragile balance. Caught between the reshuffled power dynamics following the Syrian civil war, Turkey's relentless military pressure, and the United States' inconsistent Middle East policy, the future of the Kurds remains shrouded in uncertainty.

🎬 The Middle East in Film and Television

Son of Babylon (2009) follows a grandmother and her grandson in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, as they travel to find the boy's father — one of the countless Kurds who disappeared during Saddam Hussein's massacres. It is a deeply human portrayal of the wounds of war and the tragedy of a Kurdish family. Though the film deliberately restrains its political commentary in favor of focusing on individual emotion.

Mosul (2019) is based on the true story of an Iraqi police special forces unit fighting ISIS, and offers a glimpse into the complex identities that exist between Kurdish and Arab worlds. As a Netflix production, it's worth keeping in mind that the film carries a distinctly Western perspective.

Do Border Lines Outlive the People They Divide?

The story of the Kurds is not simply the story of one ethnic group. It is a story about how a single line drawn by great powers can define the lives of tens of millions of people — and about how those who resist that line find ways to write their own history. Before any map is redrawn, there are names that must first be remembered in the hearts of people.