As Iran’s latest crisis rapidly expands through a snowball effect into a process reaching millions, it is in fact deepening not where it is most discussed, but in the geography that has been suppressed the longest. Reading the political, social, and geopolitical ruptures shaking Iran today solely through power struggles centered in Tehran means overlooking the core dynamics of the crisis. The place where these dynamics have accumulated most clearly and are once again forcing themselves to the surface is a geography that has long been systematically ignored: Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan).
Rojhilat is not the periphery of Iranian politics; it is, in fact, a threshold zone where every crisis is first suppressed but ultimately erupts last.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution was not, as it is retrospectively presented, a monolithic “Islamic revolution.” In its initial phase, the forces that came onto the scene represented a pluralistic terrain of dissent shaped by workers, students, leftist movements, and by the decisive role played by Kurds. Kurds were not a secondary element in this process, but one of the founding dynamics of the revolution. What was lost shortly thereafter, however, was not only a revolution, but also Iran’s possibility of becoming a pluralistic and secular state. A rigidly centralist and religiously ideological power, led by Ruhollah Khomeini, quickly filled this vacuum, narrowing the political sphere. The harsh repression imposed in Rojhilat created a historical rupture that limited not only the Kurds’ capacity to act as political subjects, but that of all peoples in Iran. A significant part of the crises surrounding Iran today are the deferred consequences of this usurped moment.
Addressing the Kurdish question as fragmented headings confined within the borders of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria is no longer sufficient to understand what is unfolding today. While this question carries country-specific dynamics, it must be considered within a historical and political totality that transcends these borders. That Rojhilat has long been neglected within this whole, left almost as a blind spot, is no coincidence. Yet two of the most critical rupture moments in Kurdish history, the Mahabad experience (the Republic of Mahabad, 1946) and the 1979 process, were shaped directly by the dynamics of Rojhilat. To assess the crisis unfolding in Iran today and possible future scenarios in a sound and meaningful way, taking this historical center seriously once again is no longer a choice, but a necessity.
For Kurds, the 1979 process, together with the memory of Mahabad, also marked a period in which the rupture experienced by the Barzani movement after the 1975 Algiers Agreement was re-examined. This reassessment led to a more cautious and critical questioning, particularly in Rojhilat, of the relationship Kurds had established with the center.
In Iran’s history, moments of crisis have often been trapped between two extremes: either the renewed consolidation of central power through harsher means, or fragmented uprisings that emerge in response to this rigidity but fail to acquire a lasting political foundation. In the long run, both paths have produced the same outcome, the removal of society from the position of political subject and the reconstitution of state legitimacy through coercive force. One of the areas where this cycle has been experienced most intensely is Rojhilat. The Mahabad experience and the post-1979 period clearly demonstrated the narrow limits within which the state could tolerate pluralism.
During the early years of the Syrian crisis, the political and social vacuum that emerged in Rojava led to the active participation of a younger generation from different parts of Kurdistan. In this process, the contribution of young people moving from Rojhilat to Rojava was undeniably significant. For this generation, Rojava functioned not merely as a front line, but as a historical laboratory in which political memory and collective experience were shaped. The accumulation gained there, in areas such as organization, local governance practices, social solidarity, and a sense of political responsibility, now forms the backdrop to the social and political dynamism felt in Rojhilat today.
For this reason, interpreting developments in Rojhilat as a temporary fluctuation would be an incomplete assessment. What is unfolding here is the reconfiguration of long-suppressed energy through historical experiences acquired on a regional scale. When discussing possible scenarios in the aftermath of Iran’s crisis, Rojhilat’s pivotal role does not stem from its geographic or demographic weight. Rather, it arises from its historical memory, political experience, and plural social fabric, which together create a testing ground for how a new order might be built and from the capacity of its internal dynamics to organize themselves.
Another dimension of Rojhilat’s invisibilization in Kurdish political memory lies in the tendency to read the struggle in this geography as if it were limited solely to armed conflict. In reality, Rojhilat has also been a field of struggle where a strong intellectual current, public intellectuals, organizational networks, and civilian political actors have paid heavy prices. The execution of Hasan Hikmet Demir, one of the first cadres of the Kurdish Freedom Movement to be executed in Iran after severe torture, and of Ferzad Kamangar, who was executed after a show trial as a teacher, trade unionist, and intellectual, stand among the most striking examples of this reality. These executions were not merely punishments directed at individuals; they were manifestations of a colonial and systematic state logic aimed at crushing social will, critical thought, and organized life in Rojhilat.
Recalling these highly symbolic figures is not a call for mourning the past. Rather, it is a responsibility to remember under what conditions and at what cost the struggle in Rojhilat has been carried out. Collective memory is shaped not only through armed resistance, but also on gallows, in prison cells, and in ideas that authorities have sought to silence. Bringing Rojhilat back to the center today is only possible through an accurate and complete remembrance of this multilayered history of sacrifice.
Should central power weaken or transform, the political vacuum that emerges will not automatically produce a democratic order. How this vacuum is filled will be determined by societies’ capacity for organization and their accumulated political experience. Rojhilat is neither a space that can be easily centralized nor a passive periphery.
To the extent that it can link its own demands with the broader search for freedom and justice among other peoples in Iran, Rojhilat can become one of the balancing and constituent forces of a new political equation across the country. In this sense, the experience of Rojava still stands before us as a rich and comprehensive experiment that remains unfinished.
Contemporary geopolitical analyses conducted at the regional level indicate that Iran has weakened militarily and diplomatically yet is likely to remain a decisive actor in the years ahead. However, the question of which internal dynamics will shape this decisiveness cannot be answered without taking historically suppressed centers such as Rojhilat into account.
Contrary to how it is often portrayed in Europe-centered Western narratives, this latest uprising did not originate in the Tehran Grand Bazaar. Rather, it advanced through the Bazaar, drawing it in along the way. In other words, tensions within Tehran’s Grand Bazaar are neither the point of origin nor the primary explanation for the current wave of dissent. What these developments reflect is the fact that social anger, accumulated earlier in different parts of the country, particularly in areas long excluded politically and economically, has reached central and symbolic spaces. Western readings that place the Bazaar at the center therefore reflect a reductionist perspective that conflates the source of the crisis with the moment it became visible.
Although different regimes and ideologies prevail across the four parts of Kurdistan, hostility directed at Kurds is repeatedly reproduced as a shared state reflex. This demonstrates that the problem confronting Kurds is neither local nor episodic, but rather a historical and structural condition, a shared fate. For this very reason, the fundamental task facing Kurds today is not to accept this common fate as a passive destiny, but to reverse it by reconstructing it based on political consciousness, solidarity, and collective action. History has shown time and again that every will be subjected to repression simultaneously generates the potential for strengthening through resistance and experience. As Friedrich Nietzsche famously put it, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
In the final analysis, what is unfolding in Iran is far more than a temporary regime crisis. It is the exposed form of a deep state–society rupture. Suppressing this rupture will not resolve it; on the contrary, it will continue to assert itself by taking on new forms. Rojhilat stands out as a center that contains both the historical memory of this process and its still unfinished possibilities.
Just as Woman, Life, Freedom (Jin, jiyan, azadî) became more than a slogan and transformed into a form of collective memory, Rojhilat, like Rojava, must now take its rightful place in Kurdish political and social consciousness. This is no longer merely a necessity; it is imperative.
Note: In this text, the term “Rojhilat” is used deliberately to reflect the historical designation employed in Kurdish political and social literature for Eastern Kurdistan.