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# When a People Are Told What They Want
- URL: https://otherwise.ghost.io/when-a-people-are-told-what-they/
- Published: 2026-06-01T19:35:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-17T13:39:37.000Z
- Author: Khaled Salih
- Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1792244264359, #Import 2026-10-17 14:38

*By Khaled Salih & Ann-Catrin Emanuelsson*

1 June 2026

Today we begin sharing the first public reflections from our forthcoming book, *Kurdistanî Azad: The Long Dream of Kurdish Self-Rule*.

This book has been with us for many years — in memory, family, research, argument, grief, hope, and the old unfinished sentence: Kurdistan — Let it be.

But “let it be” cannot mean only let it survive. It must also mean: let it speak, let it govern, let it remember, let it correct, let it become a home.

This first article begins from an unexpected place: a discussion about AI, agency, manipulation, and what it means to “help” someone. But the question quickly becomes Kurdish. What happens when a people repeatedly says, “We want our affairs in our own hands,” and states, empires, and major powers keep renaming that demand as danger, disorder, separatism, or inconvenience?

The Kurdish dream has survived brutality, betrayal, genocide, exile, disappointment, internal discord, and the recurring coldness of outside powers. Yet it has not disappeared. It has returned through language, memory, sacrifice, song, resistance, children, and the stubborn refusal to let the name die.

This article is an invitation into the heart of the book: self-rule is not only the right to raise a flag. It is the right of a people to correct the systems that injured them — and to build institutions that remain answerable to their own citizens.

Kurdistan — let it be.

But let it be in its own hands.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d6/2c/d62cdd13-a476-41c5-8f2c-29270c99d95d/content/images/2026/10/6ce5976c-236b-44c4-b580-41b5fccfa52c_1024x1536-jpeg.jpg)

———

Steven Byrnes [recently](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vzHtHHBJoKATi5SeK/empowerment-corrigibility-etc-are-simple-abstractions-of-a?ref=otherwise.ghost.io) argued that words such as empowerment, agency, helpfulness, obedience, manipulation, and corrigibility are harder than they look.

In AI alignment, we may say we want artificial intelligence to “help” human beings achieve their goals. But what if those goals can themselves be shaped? What if the system does not merely help me do what I want, but quietly changes what I want? Where is the line between counsel and manipulation? Between guidance and control?

This is not only an AI problem.

It is also a Kurdish problem.

In our upcoming book, *Kurdistanî Azad: The Long Dream of Kurdish Self-Rule*, we follow a people who have repeatedly asked for something simple and radical:

“We want our affairs to be in our own hands.”

That sentence, associated with Sheikh Ubeidullah of Nehri in 1880, contains the center of the Kurdish political experience. It is not only a demand for territory. It is a demand for agency. It says: do not decide our life entirely from elsewhere. Do not rename our demand before hearing it. Do not call our language danger, our autonomy separatism, our survival foreign interference, our memory disorder.

The Kurdish dream has been constrained by four cages: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Each state used its own vocabulary.

Civilization.

Unity.

Monarchy.

Revolution.

Security.

Arab nationalism.

Persian centralization.

Socialism.

Islam.

Territorial integrity.

Administrative necessity.

The words differed.

The structure often returned.

Kurdish self-rule was not answered as a legitimate political demand. It was renamed as rebellion, separatism, backwardness, disorder, terrorism, or foreign manipulation. Once renamed, the demand could be suppressed without being understood.

This is where Byrnes’s problem becomes illuminating. Manipulation is not only when someone forces your hand. It is also when someone changes the frame in which your desire can appear.

If a people says, “We want self-rule,” and the state answers, “You want chaos,” the state is not merely disagreeing. It is replacing the people’s description of its own goal.

If a people says, “We want language rights,” and the state answers, “You threaten national unity,” the state is not merely governing. It is manipulating the moral vocabulary through which the demand can be judged.

If a people says, “We want protection,” and outside powers answer with praise in war but silence in diplomacy, then admiration becomes another form of non-recognition.

Again and again, outside powers discovered the Kurds in moments of crisis. They praised Kurdish courage. They used Kurdish geography, fighters, intelligence, sacrifice, and suffering. Then, when Kurdish demands required enforceable guarantees, the same powers hesitated, withdrew, or called for “stability.”

This is the pattern of unprotected hope.

Sèvres opened a door. Lausanne closed it. Britain acknowledged Kurds when useful, then folded Kurdish regions into Iraq. The Soviet presence made Mehabad possible, then Soviet withdrawal left Qazi Muhammad exposed. The United States and others praised Kurdish sacrifice against ISIS, but praise did not become recognition. The 2017 referendum revealed both dignity and danger: a people can be morally right and strategically defeated at the same time.

The Kurdish dream has therefore been shaped not only by oppression, but by broken corrigibility. The people harmed by borders, treaties, censuses, language bans, statelessness, genocide, and abandoned promises were repeatedly denied the power to correct the systems that injured them.

That is why self-rule matters.

Self-rule is not only the right to raise a flag. It is the right to maintain a correction channel. It is the right of a people to say:

this border was drawn over us;

this census erased us;

this schoolbook lied about us;

this treaty forgot us;

this army destroyed our villages;

this party betrayed our trust;

this institution must be corrected.

But Kurdistanî Azad also argues that Kurdish agency must not stop at external criticism. A free Kurdistan cannot mean only that Kurds escape domination by others. It must also mean that Kurdish institutions do not dominate in their own name.

A party, leader, armed movement, ministry, security service, family, tribe, or national myth can also close the Backspace Key when it treats criticism as betrayal.

So the Kurdish dream has two enemies of correction.

The first is external: states and outside powers that deny Kurdish self-rule, use Kurdish courage, break promises, or treat Kurdish existence as a problem to be managed.

The second is internal: Kurdish authorities, parties, and myths that treat accountability as disloyalty.

A free Kurdistan must defeat both.

This is what we can learn from the alignment problem. Empowerment is not real if the person — or the people — cannot correct the system shaping their choices. Help is not help if it makes the helped party more dependent, more silent, or more available for use and abuse. Recognition is not recognition if it disappears the moment the stronger party’s interests change.

The Kurdish dream is therefore not only:

Let us exist.

It is also:

Let us correct.

Let us govern.

Let us criticize.

Let us remember.

Let us become a home.

Kurdistan becomes free only when the dream becomes a home, and the home keeps its Backspace Key.

Kurdistan — let it be.

But let it be in its own hands.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d6/2c/d62cdd13-a476-41c5-8f2c-29270c99d95d/content/images/2026/10/090dd284-3fb9-4367-96d0-7d9ca476ae11_1024x1536-jpeg.jpg)