By Dr. Adnan Bozan

No unity without justice... and no justice without federalism

For more than a decade, the entire region has been writhing in the flames of radical transformations and profound collapse. The Middle East is no longer what it once was; its fabric torn by betrayed revolutions, proxy wars, and maps disintegrating to the echoes of popular cries for freedom, dignity, and democracy. What unfolded was not merely a change of faces, but a political and moral earthquake that reshaped the very foundations of regimes built for over a century on authoritarianism, tyranny, denial of the other, and the suppression of peoples who did not conform to the imposed ethnic, religious, or linguistic mold.

We witnessed regimes fall and others rise from the ashes more brutal than before. We saw leaders flee their palaces, while others climbed over corpses, barbed wire, and tanks. The masses that once chanted for liberty found themselves trapped again in new prisons with different masks. Tyrants escaped through the doors of palaces, only for new tyrannies to creep in through the windows of religion, militarism, weapons, and stolen hope. The faces changed, but despotism remained—shifting from flag to banner, from military uniform to turban, from nationalist rhetoric to religious decree. The outcome was the same: broken peoples, lost identities, and a stolen homeland.

Today, we face a complex reality, yet its core is painfully clear: the chauvinistic regimes that ruled Iraq, Syria, and other states in the region—built upon denying the Kurds, marginalizing the Syriacs, assimilating the Assyrians, annihilating the Armenians, and melting all diversity into a myth of "unity"—have collapsed morally and historically, even if they still stand militarily. These centralized states that claimed to represent the "nation" have done nothing but turn citizens into suspects, culture into a security apparatus, and identity into iron chains. And what replaced them is no better: extremist "Islamist" regimes that donned the mask of religion to rule in the name of God, to oppress in the name of Sharia, and to reproduce the same machinery of tyranny in even more violent and treacherous terms.

Amid these collapses, and with escalating regional confrontations—from Israeli-Iranian clashes to U.S. threats, to sectarian wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon—inescapable questions confront us as peoples and liberation forces: Where are we headed? What form of the state can ensure life, justice, and the right to self-determination? And how do we break this infernal cycle that regenerates every decade under new names and flags, yet crushes the same people?

For the Kurdish people, this historical moment leaves no room for half-measures or submissive slogans within the confines of centralized states that have always served as machinery of their erasure. It is time to propose a comprehensive project—not one that begs for recognition but imposes it as a historical, existential, and political right. The days of waiting or negotiating from a subordinate position are over. The Kurds are not less than any other people in this region, and they ask for nothing more than their full and natural rights: to govern their land, culture, language, resources, and political destiny within a federal democratic system that ensures justice and partnership—not subjugation and submission.

The Kurds cannot afford to witness the collapse of centralized regimes and then reintegrate into their reconstruction under the same mindset that denied them for decades. What we seek is not a fragile form of autonomy granted behind closed doors, but a genuine federal political system that regards the Kurds as partners in state-building—not subjects. We do not call for detachment from geography, but rather for the reformation of geography on the foundations of rights, justice, diversity, and respect for distinct identities.

In Syria specifically, we can no longer remain silent about the hijacking of the revolution and its mutation into a sectarian nightmare or regional instrument. Syrians did not rise up in 2011 to topple Assad’s idol only to worship that of Jolani. They did not sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, or endure mass displacement and destruction, for the slogan of “freedom” to become just another sword over their necks. The revolution was never about replacing one tyrant with another, but about a people claiming dignity, rights, voice, land, and a homeland for all.

Today, after more than a decade of blood and betrayal, Syrians have every right to ask: Was freedom merely a front for exchanging prisons? Does democracy mean choosing the color of your cell? Or is it time to fundamentally redefine the state? The Syria we dream of is not the Syria of the “eternal leader,” nor the “eternal banner,” nor the “immortal party,” but a civil, democratic, federal state that recognizes Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Assyrians, Muslims, Christians, secularists, believers, and Unitarians—all those who carried this land in their veins, not just on their tongues.

The solution is not to reproduce centralism but to dismantle it—not through division, but by building a decentralized federal system that redistributes power, decision-making, and wealth based on justice and citizenship. Federalism is not a sectarian or separatist threat—it is a necessity to preserve diversity from extinction and to protect unity from tyranny. A just state is not built from above, but from the ground up—from real partnership, institutions, and respect for the distinctiveness of every component, not its annihilation in the name of "the whole."

We stand at a final crossroads: either we reproduce the same devastation, or we summon the historical courage to dismantle the very system that created it. A true homeland is not founded on exclusion but on recognition—not on fear, but on dignity—not on slogans, but on citizenship. It is time to declare without hesitation: the homeland belongs to all, freedom belongs to all, dignity belongs to all. And the state is not the property of a sect, tribe, or family—but of everyone who inhabits it with rights and honor.

This will not be possible without a new political project—one not based on wishful thinking but on action. Progressive forces, oppressed peoples, and all those burned by the fire of despotism must unite around a new vision: no to ethno-nationalist tyranny, no to religious tyranny, no to military tyranny. Yes to federalism, yes to citizenship, yes to a partnership that respects and empowers the human being.

If the Middle East has a future, it is the one crafted by its peoples—not its regimes. And if a new map is to be drawn, let it be inked with truth and justice—not with gunpowder and fear.

Either we become free—or we remain ashes in the tyrants’ furnace.