Who holds the fate of nations?

Despite the fierce objection of all the elements in the region, the KRG under Barzani went ahead with the referendum. With this referendum, the claim that a region belongs exclusively to one ethnic group has found one more step of encouragement and courage. It is quite obvious that it found this courage neither in itself nor in the local forces of the region.

In the places that this referendum seeks to register as Kurdistan, all kinds of people have lived for centuries. Moreover, all of them are local elements of the region. For an element that has happened to obtain a demographic majority somewhere to claim ethnic dominance over the rest is not, in fact, a logic that international law recognizes and paves the way for.

Kirkuk is a region whose population was 70 percent Turkmen according to the 1957 census. How this demographic structure developed amid the wars in between, the US occupation, then the ISIS threats and a constant state of emergency is unknown, but even if the Kurds have become the majority there today, that must be a very recent development. The only name for trying to hand a place over to an ethnic identity by putting forward a mere numerical majority within this short period is usurpation, occupation.

With this referendum, the Barzani administration, displaying this audacity because it trusts certain parties, is in effect taking on the task of opening, from within, the door to successive attempts at occupation in the region as well.

It is obvious that the result of this referendum will not be an immediate separation, or rather cannot be. It cannot be, because the matter has a geography as much as a sociology. With this geography, it is in any case impossible for a community of people to remain standing alone. By no objective assessment is it possible for a country opposed by all the countries around it to survive.

Therefore, no one can of course expect an immediate separation the day after a referendum whose results were known in advance to be close to one hundred percent "yes". Nechirvan Barzani, too, aware of how impossible a task they have undertaken, felt the need to make this statement at the very hours when the vote was being held. He says the referendum is not against anyone in the region, in particular not against Türkiye. He explains that no separation will come as a result of the referendum.

Wasn't everyone issuing warnings precisely because of this reality, which is as clear as day? What, then, was the point of embarking on such a referendum, which cannot be realized and can have no outcome other than provoking the peoples of the region and sowing discord among them?

Some may have been made to believe the story of "the right of nations to self-determination" a little too much. Of course, this is not something that can be entirely dismissed. But we must honestly ask whether there is, in the modern world, a nation that has truly determined its own destiny. In today's world, states unfortunately cannot be founded without the patronage, intervention or struggle of other states. The oppression the Syrian people have been witnessing for six years has become blatant. The Syrian people tried to hold on to their will to determine their own destiny, and there is no oppression they have not suffered from their own ruler and from the seven powers.

The Egyptian people, too, wanted to determine their own destiny; they expressed the will of society in the most peaceful way and by the most democratic means, and what happened? Their own pharaohs, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US and EU countries did not let them have their claim to determine their destiny. Despite all their honorable stance and resistance, they could not obtain their freedom. There are the examples of Yemen and Libya as well.

The real thing is that there is such a reality as the enslavement of nations. The right to determine the destiny of nations is the most important claim and reality of the world's rulers. They do not let go of this right, which comes only from their power and tyranny.

Meanwhile, do not suppose that they have liberated the peoples for whom they have had nations established and granted them the freedom to determine their destinies. The real slavery begins after that. Today the scene is filled with states that consider themselves sovereign nations, or that put on such airs, but whose will is entirely dependent on their owners. And they do not neglect to feed those nations with a strange identity pride, giving them the illusion of a strong nation.

Otherwise, we wish the Kurds of northern Iraq or northern Syria could truly have the power and the will to determine their own destiny. We would say, may it be blessed.

Because we know that the Kurds, or any people in the region, would not covet seeking to determine their destiny to the detriment of their own brothers, neighbors and co-religionists.

No one should expect that giving the Kurds this right, which is today withheld from the majority of the peoples of the region, by straining all of history and sociology, will bring the Kurds freedom and honor.

The claim of "determining the destiny of nations" on which those trying to manage this process rely is no different from an insolent claim to divinity. In effect, they are claiming that they themselves determine the destiny of nations in this way; this is an impudence that contains the claim that they can bring whomever they wish onto the stage of history by making them a nation, and erase whomever they wish from it.

On 15 July they saw very well what the will of a people is and how it is shown. They did not give up. They will know again, they will see. Then they will see once more with certainty the destiny above the destiny they thought they had determined, and its Owner...

Then how utterly nothing they are before those who live freedom as it deserves to be lived...

And then how, in turn, the peoples whose destinies they presumed to determine prepare an end for them within their own destinies…