By Dr. Adnan Bouzan

The civil and educational rights of the Kurdish people in Syria have never been a sudden demand, nor a secondary issue that can be postponed indefinitely. They are the culmination of centuries of struggle and the direct result of immense sacrifices made by a people who long confronted denial and tyranny, and who actively participated in the revolution for freedom and dignity.

Yet, after all this history—after more than a decade and a half of confrontation, and after the fall of more than twenty thousand martyrs—these rights still fall short of the blood that was shed and the magnitude of sacrifices that cannot be reduced to courteous speeches or temporary solutions.

Here, clarity is imperative: what is happening today is not a passing shortcoming, but a continuation of the same exclusionary policies, even if faces have changed and language has softened. The Kurdish people who rose up against the denial of their very existence now find themselves once again facing partial recognition, diminished rights, and an educational system devoid of legal protection—as if the revolution merely served to reproduce injustice in a gentler form.

Ignoring Kurdish civil rights, or treating them as a negotiable file, is a political and moral insult to a people who have asked for nothing more than to be recognized as they are. As for tampering with educational rights—leaving Kurdish education hostage to political moods and a pathological fear of language—this is nothing but a direct extension of the policies of forced assimilation against which Syrians originally revolted.

We say it without equivocation:
Whoever rejects explicit constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people is complicit in injustice.
Whoever denies the Kurdish child the right to education in their mother tongue participates in the manufacture of a new generation of oppression.
Whoever demands Kurdish silence in exchange for partial rights demands that they abandon the very essence of their struggle.

We do not want cosmetic fixes, deferred promises, or committees where issues are buried. We want full citizenship, clear national recognition, an officially recognized educational system, and genuine partnership in decision-making. A state that fears a language cannot reassure its people, and a state that denies one of its components condemns itself to failure.

For rights that are long deferred turn into an insult,
and justice that does not include the Kurds is not justice at all.