As the balance of power on the ground shifted after Aleppo, not only a military but also a new political process was set in motion. This process, carried out through different channels of the Turkish state mindset, has advanced through statements, calls, and references to a “new era” that at first glance appears independent of one another. However, when the timing is examined closely, it becomes clear that this flow of discourse is not a spontaneous debate but part of a planned and gradual political agenda.
Immediately after a moment in Aleppo when Kurds were placed under military and political pressure, the Turkish state mindset circulated the same framework through different actors. Technical statements delivered in the language of law, references to “opportunity” coming from the political sphere, and calls for “normalisation” directed at the public may appear different in content, yet they all convey the same message: “a new balance of power has been formed,” and that this reality must be accepted. What is decisive here is not the content of individual statements but their timing and simultaneity. Similar messages produced at short intervals from the fields of security, law, and politics show that the process is being advanced through a daily and phased timetable. This is not an environment of open debate; it is a process of preparing a psychological ground.
One of the most striking examples of this planned flow of discourse has been the lengthy texts and legal framework statements issued from circles close to the Presidency. The text authored by Mehmet Uçum in particular, which repeats the same framework in different formulations across six pages, is significant less for its content than for its language and the intensity of its repetition. The core message conveyed throughout the text is clear: a new situation has emerged, and this situation must be internalised and adapted to.
Such repetition does not indicate persuasive power, but rather the need for persuasion. Those who are strong speak once. Those who possess legitimacy engage in debate. The reconstruction of the same message across pages shows an awareness of the existence of a will to resist on the other side.
In a similar vein, the technical explanations made under the heading of the “right to hope” should also be read within this framework. Presented as a discussion of a legal arrangement, this approach does not, in essence, offer a perspective of freedom; rather, it produces a framework that narrows the political space through a limited, conditional, and uncertain possibility. This language reflects not an approach that proposes a solution, but a management of expectations kept under control and stretched over time.
For this reason, what needs to be discussed here is not the individual statements in isolation, but the fact that these statements are circulated in the same period, within the same political context, and according to a timetable that complements one another. The overall picture points less to a will for a solution than to an effort to psychologically prepare for the acceptance of a new balance of power. The aim is to produce a sense of inevitability without creating the appearance of direct imposition. Through the rhetoric of “realism,” “opportunity,” “a new era,” and “hope,” the political space is being narrowed, while surrender is being presented as a rational choice. For this reason, the primary risk today lies not so much in the content of the statements as in the atmosphere that is being sought to be created. The language that is constantly repeated seeks to render the new situation unquestionable and inevitable. The first necessary step is to clearly expose that this process is not a search for a solution, but an attempt to prepare the psychological ground for liquidation. However, exposure alone is not sufficient.
The picture that has emerged after Aleppo serves as another reminder of a hard truth: the world will not mobilise on its own for the Kurds. Expecting international law, values, or norms to overcome their own internal crises and open a space in favour of the Kurds is no longer a political choice, but an illusion. For this reason, what is needed today is to accelerate the reorganisation of the Kurdish dynamic that has been pointed to before. Over the past fifty years, the social, political, and institutional networks patiently and persistently woven through the diaspora have become one of the most critical fields of strength in the new period. These networks must be re-coordinated and transformed into a more visible, more effective, and more continuous line of international political pressure. The world takes seriously not those who are right, but those who produce costs. Being right yields results only when it is organised. Legitimacy finds a response only when it is made visible. Most recently, in the agreement signed between the Syrian Interim Government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the fundamental factor that enabled the Kurds to return to the table as actors was the space of mobilisation created by the Kurdish people and their allies.
At this point, the greatest miscalculation of the Turkish state mindset becomes apparent. Throughout history, Kurds have endured and carried many hardships imposed upon them. Yet within Kurdish political and social memory, there is only one threshold that is not accepted, and that is surrender. This is not merely a political stance, but a historical and cultural boundary. Pressure may be seen as manageable; harsh conditions may be adapted to, but the denial of will and the imposition of surrender are unacceptable.
Today, the state mindset of the Republic of Türkiye still refuses to see this reality. Despite economic collapse, social polarisation, institutional decay, and deepening moral crises, its priorities have not changed: preventing the Kurds from attaining any form of status. The preference shown before and after Aleppo for nationalist and jihadist Arab currents in Syria over the Kurds is the regional reflection of this approach. This line, supported by short-term security calculations, will deepen regional instability in the long term and produce a boomerang effect. What confronts us today, however, is a state mindset so dulled that it is incapable of even perceiving these risks.
For this reason, the process being pursued is not a search for a solution, but an attempt at limitation. As long as the social reality it confronts is not read correctly, every plan that is constructed is doomed to collide with its own limits.
Today, the very ground of debate has itself become part of this process. Comments spread rapidly across digital media; assessments torn from their context, and organised waves of reaction are creating a field of noise rather than producing thought. This environment encourages not the deepening of words but their hardening, not the multiplication of meaning but the inability of sides to listen to one another. The constant pressure to generate reactions eliminates the distance and calm required for thinking. Yet what is needed in such periods is not speed but the ability to take distance, not reaction but cool-headed assessment. As noise increases, words become inaudible and the collective mind weakens.
Characterising the reactions that have emerged today as merely “emotional” is misleading. The war, security policies, and the constant environment of rupture experienced over the past two decades have produced a strong state of vigilance and sensitivity within Kurdish society. This condition does not stem from an individual state of mind, but from collective memory and experience. What needs to be discussed is not so much the intention behind the words that are spoken, but how these words are heard within a particular historical context.
The problem is not the scope of the demands, because just as the demand for an independent Kurdistan was fiercely rejected in the past, even the most minimal demands today are rejected with the same intensity. The problem lies in the continuity of a mindset that still defines the Kurdish question within a framework of security and threat. For this reason, the reactions expressed are not directed against peace itself, but against the aims and language that render peace impossible. The core issue is not the demands, but whether the Kurds are recognised as equal political subjects.
The planned flow of discourse initiated after Aleppo is not part of a peace process, but of an attempt to manufacture an atmosphere of surrender. What disrupts this plan, in every condition of total assault, is the dignified stance and collective mobilisation demonstrated by the Kurdish people.
For this reason, three tasks are clear today: to expose the true nature of this process as one imposed by the state mindset; to accelerate the reorganisation of the Kurds on the basis of their own strength; and, at a time when the cost of acting in fragmented ways is increasing, to make Kurdish political and social unity the fundamental guarantee of existence.
What is decisive in this period is not intention or moral rightness alone, but the reality of where power is being produced.
The picture that emerged after Aleppo clearly shows that the centre of gravity of the struggle has shifted in a radical way. The international system now operates less through military balances on the ground than through political legitimacy, visibility, and the capacity to generate costs. Under these conditions, the most effective and result-producing field for the Kurds is the line of global political and social organisation. The networks-built step by step through the diaspora over the past fifty years have today become not merely a field of support, but the strongest and most decisive front of the struggle.
In this period, what is decisive is not the power of weapons, but the political weight that can be produced internationally and the long-term strategic relationships to be established with real centres of power.
If there is a period that has closed for the Kurds after Aleppo, it is the period in which power was defined solely through military means. The new period that has opened makes the following imperative: to transform moral rightness into an organised, continuous, and result-producing global pressure, and to institutionalise this in a lasting way.
Today, the strongest and most effective ground available for the Kurds to rely on is precisely here.
Leave a Reply