> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://otherwise.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Who Fills the Vacuum? Perhaps That Is Already the Wrong Question - URL: https://otherwise.ghost.io/who-fills-the-vacuum-perhaps-that/ - Published: 2026-10-03T11:01:20.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-03T11:01:20.000Z - Description: A First Conjecture on Kurdistan After the American Withdrawal - Author: Khaled Salih - Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1792244264359, #Import 2026-10-17 14:38 3 October 2026 --- # Note The article is prompted directly by Dania Koleilat Khatib’s recent *Arab News* column, “Turkiye poised for a bigger role in Iraqi Kurdistan.” Rather than arguing against closer relations with Turkey, I question the deeper premise that the end of the Coalition mission necessarily creates a “vacuum” that another regional power must fill. I propose a different framework: moving from **protection to capability, responsibility, partnership and resilience**, while asking what Iraq’s sovereignty obligates the Federal Government to provide and what the Kurdistan Region must increasingly build for itself. The essay also explains why I prefer **“Kurds in Iraq”** and **“the Kurdistan Region”** to “Iraqi Kurds” and “Iraqi Kurdistan,” and uses that linguistic question to open a broader argument about political agency: who defines the political space before the Kurds enter it? --- # Who Fills the Vacuum? Perhaps That Is Already the Wrong Question A First Conjecture on Kurdistan After the American Withdrawal My first reaction to Dania Koleilat Khatib’s *Arab News* [article](https://www.arabnews.com/opinion/turkiye-poised-for-a-bigger-role-in-iraqi-kurdistan-3003909?ref=otherwise.ghost.io), “Turkiye poised for a bigger role in Iraqi Kurdistan,” came before I reached its argument. I stopped at two words: “Iraqi Kurdistan.” And elsewhere in the article: “Iraqi Kurds.” Why? Why *Iraqi Kurds*? Why *Iraqi Kurdistan*? The Kurds did not come into existence when Iraq came into existence. Kurdistan did not acquire its history from the Iraqi state. Both Kurds and Kurdistan predate modern Iraq by centuries. This may appear to be a linguistic objection. I do not think it is. Language carries political explanations long after we have forgotten that they are explanations. When we say **“Iraqi Kurds,”** the modern state quietly becomes the adjective and the older people becomes the noun it qualifies. Iraq becomes the apparently permanent category; the Kurds become a population located inside it. The same happens with **“Iraqi Kurdistan.”** A historically much older geographical and political idea is linguistically made derivative of a state created in the twentieth century by United Kingdom with a king from Arabian Peninsula. I prefer a simpler and, I think, more accurate formulation: **Kurds in Iraq**. And when discussing the constitutional entity created within contemporary Iraq: **the Kurdistan Region**. This does not settle any argument about sovereignty, borders, independence, federalism, or the future of Iraq. It does something more elementary. It refuses to allow grammar to settle those questions before the argument has begun. That small linguistic discomfort prepared me for the much larger problem I found in the article. Because the same architecture returns at the geopolitical level. Kurdistan appears everywhere in the article. Yet Kurdistan repeatedly appears as something **located inside other people’s explanations**. ## The Map Shows Up Before the Argument Starts This is one of the questions that has increasingly occupied me. Political maps do not merely describe reality. They can become explanations of reality. After sufficient time, an arrangement produced by war, diplomacy, empire, collapse, negotiation and power acquires the appearance of nature. What was historically constructed becomes linguistically invisible. The map enters the sentence before the argument begins. *“Iraqi Kurds.” “Iraqi Kurdistan.” “Turkish Kurds.” “Syrian Kurds.” “Iranian Kurds.”* The terminology appears innocent because the map has become familiar. But familiarity is not the same thing as truth, and longevity is not the same thing as legitimacy. This does not mean that the states are unreal. Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria are powerful temporary political realities. Their institutions, borders and sovereignty have consequences that no serious analysis can ignore. My point is different: **States are political arrangements. Peoples are not their possessions**. The Kurds in Iraq live within the internationally recognized state of Iraq. That is an important political fact. But Iraq does not therefore become the author of Kurdish historical existence. Once I noticed this in the language of the article, I began noticing it everywhere in its argument. ## Then Came the Word “Vacuum” Khatib’s argument is important because it captures a familiar way of imagining the Kurdistan Region after the end of the Coalition mission. America leaves. A vacuum appears. Iran might fill it. Turkey might fill it instead. The Kurdistan Region, worried about Iran and lacking adequate defensive capabilities, would therefore have reason to deepen its relationship with Turkey. Khatib describes that as the “natural course of action.” I stopped again. **Why is there a vacuum?** More precisely: ***Why must the political space left by America be imagined as a vacuum waiting for another power to fill it?*** This is where my linguistic objection and my political objection become the same objection. In both cases, Kurdistan is placed inside somebody else’s architecture before Kurdish agency has entered the analysis. First Iraq supplies the adjective. Then America supplies the protection. Then its departure supplies the vacuum. Then Iran and Turkey supply the alternatives. And Kurdistan? Kurdistan adapts. That is precisely what I want to question. ## Something Strange Is Happening to Iraq’s Sovereignty There is an additional puzzle. The article begins with the Iraq’s account that the departure of American forces marks a historic milestone in completing Iraq’s sovereignty. Let us take that proposition seriously. If Iraqi sovereignty has been restored, why does Iraq almost immediately disappear from the security architecture? America leaves. Iran may fill the vacuum. Turkey may fill the vacuum. But what happened to the sovereign state whose sovereignty has supposedly just been completed? This is not a rhetorical trick. It may be the most important institutional question created by the withdrawal. The Kurdistan Region does not possess international sovereignty. There are therefore important security functions it cannot independently perform in the same way as a sovereign state. Airspace is an obvious example. The Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs has publicly connected the Region’s vulnerability to aerial attacks with the responsibilities of the Federal Government over Iraqi airspace. That suggests a very different starting point: ***If Iraq possesses sovereignty over the Kurdistan Region’s airspace, what responsibility follows from possessing that sovereignty?*** Now the architecture changes. Instead of: ***American protection → American departure → vacuum → new protector*** we can begin testing: ***American protection → transition → Iraq’s sovereign responsibility + Kurdish capability + international partnership + regional diplomacy.*** That is not an answer. It is a different problem. And choosing the correct problem may be more important than prematurely choosing the answer. ## Sovereignty Is More Than Authority This is why I found one formulation in President Nechirvan Barzani’s Baghdad speech on September 30 particularly interesting. He did not define sovereignty merely as the absence of foreign soldiers. He connected sovereignty with responsibility, constitutional institutions, federalism, legitimate authority, and the capacity of peoples of Iraq themselves to carry responsibilities previously supported by international partners. That distinction deserves to be pushed much further. For Kurds, sovereignty has historically appeared largely from the receiving end. The sovereign state tells Kurds what they may do. Where authority lies. Which borders cannot be questioned. Which security decisions belong to Baghdad. Which international agreements require federal authority. Which resources fall under which jurisdiction. In other words: **sovereignty as authority**. But authority has another side. **Sovereignty is also responsibility**. If Baghdad claims sovereign competence, it acquires corresponding sovereign obligations. That is the proposition we now need to test. Let us call it, provisionally, the **Federal Sovereignty Conjecture**: **The Kurdistan Region’s lack of international sovereignty need not be understood only as a strategic vulnerability. The same absence of sovereignty that limits Kurdistan’s independent capabilities may create corresponding responsibilities for the sovereign federal state. The crucial question is whether those responsibilities can be converted from constitutional language into operational institutions, capabilities and guarantees.** We do not know whether this conjecture will survive reality. Good. Then it is a conjecture rather than a declaration of faith. Let us try to break it. ## Who Created the Menu? Now return to the article’s apparent choice. America leaves. Iran becomes more dangerous. Turkey becomes more important. Therefore the “natural course” is closer cooperation with Turkey. Perhaps closer cooperation with Turkey would indeed be useful. But nothing about that conclusion is *natural*. It is a political proposition. And political propositions should be criticized. My first question is therefore one I have increasingly learned to ask whenever politics presents me with two doors: ***Who created the menu?*** Why must the alternatives be: Iran or Turkey? Where is Kurdish capability? Where is Iraqi federal responsibility? Where is continued American partnership without permanent American guardianship? Where are European security relationships? Where is Peshmerga institutionalization? Where is air defense? Where is intelligence cooperation? Where is economic resilience? Where is energy diversification? Where is diplomacy? Where are relationships with other regional actors? Where is the possibility that Kurdistan does not replace one protector with another at all? Suddenly the two doors become a corridor containing many doors. And perhaps some doors have not yet been built. That is what political agency means to me: not merely choosing among alternatives somebody else has placed before us, but developing the knowledge necessary to create alternatives that do not yet exist. ## Turkey Is Not My Objection I want to be precise here because otherwise the argument can easily be misunderstood. I am not arguing against Turkey. Turkey is one of Kurdistan’s most important neighbors. Geography will not change because American soldiers leave. Trade, energy, transportation, security and regional diplomacy make a functioning relationship with Ankara enormously consequential. Nor am I suggesting that Kurdistan can ignore Iran. It cannot. Nor should Kurdistan exchange American partnership for some fantasy of complete self-sufficiency. That would merely be another bad explanation. The objection is to something deeper: **the protector-replacement model itself**. If America leaves and our answer is simply to locate another state upon which Kurdish security becomes critically dependent, we may have changed the protector without correcting the architecture. Yesterday: Washington. Tomorrow: Ankara. Another day: Baghdad. The names change. The dependency survives. That is not necessarily strategic maturity. It may simply be strategic substitution. ## Kurdistan Needs Relationships, Not Another Guardian The distinction I want to introduce is between **partnership** and **dependency**. A partnership enlarges capability. Dependency substitutes for it. A partnership enlarges choice-space. Dependency gradually narrows it. A partnership can survive disagreement. Dependency makes disagreement existentially expensive. A partnership can be revised. Dependency becomes frightening to reconsider. This gives us a simple test for every Kurdish external relationship—not only with Turkey: ***What happens if the relationship fails?*** What happens if Washington changes policy? What happens if Ankara changes policy? What happens if Tehran changes policy? What happens if Baghdad refuses an obligation? What happens if an agreement survives on paper but disappears in implementation? If the failure of one relationship produces catastrophic vulnerability, we have discovered not merely a diplomatic problem. We have discovered **a single point of failure**. **Kurdistan Is Everywhere in the Article—and Strangely Absent** This brings us to what should be considered as the deepest problem. Look at who acts in the geopolitical story. America withdraws. Iran calculates. Turkey calculates. Israel calculates. Baghdad possesses sovereignty. And Kurdistan? Kurdistan worries. Kurdistan is attacked. Kurdistan seeks reassurance. Kurdistan chooses among relationships created by stronger actors. Kurdistan is geographically everywhere in the article while remaining strangely weak as a political author. This distinction has become central to my work: **Presence is not agency**. A people can appear in every paragraph while remaining absent from the explanation as an author of its own future. That is the old Kurdish predicament in a remarkably modern form. The vocabulary changes. The structure survives. ## Who Gets to Interpret Kurdish Political Possibility? One sentence in Khatib’s article makes the underlying problem unusually visible. She argues that Turkey and Iran have overlapping interests in preventing Kurdish militancy toward neighboring countries, limiting an Israeli foothold, and ensuring that **“Kurdish nationalism is contained.”** These categories cannot simply be bundled together. Armed attacks are one question. Foreign intelligence operations are another. Kurdish nationalism is another. Federalism is another. Autonomy is another. Peaceful advocacy of independence is another. Language is another. Culture is another. Political organization is another. When all of them enter the same security vocabulary, the political preferences of surrounding states can quietly become the boundaries of legitimate Kurdish possibility. And then we arrive at a question much older than the American withdrawal: ***Who gets to define what Kurds are legitimately allowed to want?*** Turkey? Iran? Iraq? Syria? Washington? A Kurdish party? A Kurdish leader? I do not want to replace these interpreters with another final interpreter. That would reproduce the same architecture. The problem is the assumption that somebody must possess the final word. ## A Different Architecture So here is my first public conjecture about this new phase. I offer it deliberately as something to criticize: **The most important Kurdish question after the end of the Coalition mission may not be which power fills the American vacuum. It may be whether Kurdish political thinking can escape the protector-replacement model altogether.** **If America leaves and the principal question becomes whether Turkey, Iran, Baghdad or another actor assumes the decisive role, Kurdistan remains an object inside somebody else’s strategic architecture.** **A different possibility is to build overlapping layers of Kurdish capability, Iraq’s sovereign responsibility, continuing international partnership, relations with Turkey and other neighbors, economic resilience and regional diplomacy—so that the failure of any single layer does not become an existential Kurdish failure.** The movement I want to investigate is therefore: ***Protection → Capability → Responsibility → Partnership → Resilience*** Not isolation. Not anti-Americanism. Not anti-Turkish politics. Not trust in Baghdad. Not hostility toward Iran. And certainly not the fantasy that Kurdistan can somehow escape geography. It is an argument for something much more demanding: **Redundancy**. Kurdistan should have enough capability, enough relationships, enough institutional depth and enough alternative pathways that no single government, leader, pipeline, military protector, party, agreement or geopolitical alignment becomes indispensable to its continued existence. ## Where Does the Error Go? This is where my Open Correction Framework enters. I keep returning to one question: ***Where does the error go?*** Suppose Baghdad fails. Where does the error go? Suppose Kurdish institutions fail. Where does it go? Suppose Washington changes its mind. What compensates? Suppose Ankara’s interests diverge sharply from Kurdistan’s. What remains? Suppose an agreement is signed and then quietly postponed for twenty years. Who can press Backspace? Suppose my own Federal Sovereignty Conjecture is wrong and Baghdad proves structurally incapable of performing the responsibilities I think should follow from sovereignty. Then I want the conjecture discarded. Not protected. That is the point. A resilient Kurdistan will not be one that finally discovers an infallible friend. There are no infallible friends. There are no infallible leaders. There are no infallible parties. There are no infallible states. There are no infallible maps. And there are no infallible Kurdish explanations either. A resilient Kurdistan will be one capable of surviving the errors of fallible actors—including its friends and itself. ## Perhaps There Is No Vacuum This brings me back to the word that started the larger argument. **Vacuum**. Perhaps that word itself misleads us. A vacuum invites somebody to fill it. But what if the departure of an external protector creates something else? **Responsibility**. Then the questions change. What must Kurdistan now build? What must Baghdad now provide? What should international partners continue to contribute? What relationship with Turkey enlarges Kurdish capability rather than replacing it? What relationship with Iran reduces danger without granting Tehran authority over Kurdish political possibility? What institutions must Kurdistan reform? What dependencies must be reduced? What capabilities have we postponed because somebody else provided them? What should remain impossible for any single actor to control? These are different questions because they restore Kurdistan to the analysis as an agent. For decades, history has given Kurds terrible reasons to ask: ***Who will protect us?*** I understand that question. We must not ridicule it. But perhaps September 2026 requires another question beside it: ***What must we build so that no single protector becomes indispensable to Kurdistan’s future?*** That is the conjecture I want to put into the public space. Not because I know it is right. Because I think it is now important enough to try to prove wrong. The article asks, in effect: ***Who fills the vacuum after America?*** I want to begin somewhere earlier: ***Why “Iraqi Kurds”? Why “Iraqi Kurdistan”? Why must Iraq define the Kurds linguistically, America define the protection architecture, and Turkey or Iran define the post-American alternatives?*** The same question runs through all three. ***Who defined the political space before the Kurds entered it?*** An alternative question is: ***Who is responsible for what after America—and what happens when any one of them fails?*** The first question searches for the next protector. The second searches for a political architecture. And perhaps the deepest Kurdish transition now before us is exactly this: **from being protected inside other people’s architectures to becoming increasingly capable of authoring, testing and correcting our own.**