By: Dr. Adnan Buzan

There are peoples who lose themselves in history, and there are peoples who lose themselves from history. Between these two forms of loss lies a dangerous distance called Tiehocracy: the condition in which a people loses its political compass, then begins to justify that loss, and ultimately reaches the point of renaming things and people, until what was once a political disgrace becomes a form of social prestige. Perhaps part of the current Kurdish scene offers a striking example of this state of disorientation. The political discourse has moved, through contradictory paths, from the unification and liberation of Kurdistan to the project and approach of the Democratic Nation. Yet the matter did not stop at changing slogans and concepts. In some circles, it went further, reaching the glorification of aghas and figures historically associated with the Ba'athist power structure, followed by the rehabilitation and polishing of old Ba'athist figures and their presentation today as “community figures,” “notables of the region,” and “respected members of society”—as if history were merely a worn-out notebook whose pages could be torn out whenever expedient, and as if Kurdish memory had neither owners nor victims.

There is nothing inherently wrong with ideas changing. Living political thought does not turn into a rigid doctrine, and movements and parties have every right to reconsider their projects and slogans and to move from one conception to another. The catastrophe begins, however, when positions change without revisiting history, without questioning oneself, and without offering an honest explanation for such a reversal in standards. A person has every right to abandon a nationalist slogan and embrace a democratic project; he has the right to criticize nationalism or redefine it. But no one has the right to turn such an intellectual transformation into a license to erase memory, nor to use changing political discourse as a pretext for rehabilitating those who were part of a political and security system for which generations of Kurds paid a heavy price.

Let us be even more explicit: what did it mean, during that period, to be an active member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party? In the context of the Syrian Ba'athist state, it was not merely a passing party affiliation or an organizational card without consequences. The party was a fundamental component of the structure of power and political loyalty, while party membership and ties to party institutions, to varying degrees, were intertwined with the machinery of the state, administration, privileges, and surveillance. Within the security environment under which the country was governed, party and security reports, denunciations, and informant networks were real instruments of repression and social control. A piece of information, a report, or a political classification could alter a person's entire life: he could be denied employment, excluded from an institution, socially isolated, placed under surveillance, arrested, tortured, or shut out from public life. That is why this period cannot today be approached with the naïve argument that “he was merely a Ba'athist, and that is the end of the matter.” The issue is not simply the name of the party, but the political and security context in which it operated and the consequences that system had for thousands of Syrians, particularly Kurds.

Kurds in Syria lived through decades of discrimination, exclusion, and deprivation. Many families experienced what it meant for employment opportunities to be closed to their children, for political dissent to become grounds for persecution, and for identity, language, and political positions to be turned into files subject to surveillance and classification. Memory, therefore, is not a literary luxury; it is the right of victims not to have the past presented to them as a celebration. So how can those who were associated with that system suddenly become “notables”? How can a person once identified with the party and the authorities become the object of social recognition, while those who refused to join it, paid the price for their positions, lost employment, were arrested, or lived for years under fear and marginalization are forgotten? What kind of reversal in the hierarchy of values is this?

More painfully still, the problem is no longer confined to the remnants of Ba'athism. It also lies in the existence of a politically and historically ignorant segment of society that, knowingly or unknowingly, contributes to polishing these figures and socially rehabilitating them. The Ba'athist past suddenly becomes a minor detail; an old relationship with power is transformed into “experience”; the former holder of influence becomes a “community figure”; and the title “notable” is bestowed upon him as though social prestige were a certificate issued by councils rather than a reputation built upon trust, integrity, and respect. At this point, the question is no longer merely about the past; it becomes a question of who possesses the authority today to redefine the past.

The most dangerous thing Tiehocracy does is not to erase history directly, but to rewrite its language. It does not tell you: “Forget the informant.” It tells you: “Call him a notable.” It does not tell you: “Remember his relationship with power.” It tells you: “He was merely a community man.” It does not tell you: “Ask what the regime did to people.” It tells you: “Let the past remain in the past.” Thus, forgetting becomes a virtue, scrutiny becomes an annoyance, and memory becomes a problem, while polishing individuals is presented as a supposed form of “reconciliation.” But what kind of reconciliation begins by erasing the victim and ends by honoring the person who once held influence? And what kind of justice asks the oppressed to forget while granting the person with a controversial past a new platform?

True reconciliation does not mean washing away the past; it means acknowledging it. Nor does it mean turning every person who made a mistake into an eternal enemy. It means knowing the past as it was and requiring every individual to bear his moral and political responsibility for it. Repentance is one thing; rewriting one's record is another. Review is one thing; whitewashing is another. Whoever changes his political position, acknowledges his past, and respects his victims has every right to participate fully in society. But erasing the past and then presenting its bearer as a symbol of social prestige is not reconciliation; it is an act of falsifying memory.

The irony is that those who once raised the banner of liberation and spoke of the dignity and rights of the people may today find themselves sitting in the same councils with figures whose political histories stood on an entirely opposite side, and then ask people to regard this as a natural development within society. No, not every reconciliation is betrayal, and not every political transformation is a fall. But when the criterion of judgment becomes social influence rather than political record, when prestige is measured by the number of relationships rather than the depth of integrity, and when forgetting becomes the price of admission to the council, we must stop and ask: What happened to the compass of this society?

In some manifestations of this transformation, we have moved from a great question such as “How do we unite and liberate Kurdistan?” to another question: “Who is the notable?” We have moved from a project concerned with homeland, history, identity, and liberation to a reality in which local social prestige is reproduced, even when some of those who possess it emerged from a political system of which Kurds themselves were among the victims. The distance between these two questions is not merely political; it reveals the extent of the confusion that has afflicted the collective consciousness.

Nor does this mean that history should be frozen or that every person should be judged for every detail of his past. But those who joined the Ba'athist school of thought were part of a system that practiced repression, produced reports, and harmed people, contributing to the deprivation of thousands of Kurds of employment, as well as their arrest and displacement. What must be rejected is the transformation of affiliation with an authoritarian system into an automatic certificate of good character, and the acquittal of the past merely because time has changed. If someone engaged in denunciation, wrote reports, or contributed to harming others, that responsibility does not disappear simply because he has today acquired a council, wealth, influence, or a social title.

The problem, then, is not merely that “yesterday's informant” has become “today's notable.” The deeper problem is that some people want to convince us that we should no longer remember that he was yesterday's informant in the first place. This is the very peak of Tiehocracy: asking about the past becomes an act of insolence, memory becomes an offense, and exposing contradictions becomes an attack on “social prestige.”

The slogans have changed, projects have shifted, regimes have fallen, and others have risen. But one thing must not fall: memory. A people that forgets how the honorable were punished, how the loyal were deprived, how opponents were excluded, and how reports and political loyalties were used to manufacture fear may one day find itself reproducing the same system under new names, new faces, and more elegant titles.

Here lies the tragedy: we are not facing merely a people that has changed its political project. We are facing the danger that changing the project becomes changing memory, that changing memory becomes changing standards, and that changing standards becomes the recycling of the very faces that history should have held accountable.

That is Tiehocracy: to move from the unification and liberation of Kurdistan to the Democratic Nation and its approach; then from criticizing power to praising some of its men; then from rejecting Ba'athism to polishing some of its faces; and finally to wake up one morning and discover that the man who was once associated with the machinery of power has become “a notable of the region,” while those who paid the price for their convictions now need permission from the men of yesterday to speak about patriotism.

And then the question is no longer:

How did yesterday's informant become today's notable?

But the more bitter question:

How much of our memory did we have to lose before we allowed him to become one?