Adile Hanım: In Kobanî, the Doors Stayed Shut, and the Truth About 'Integration' Comes Out

Rastinews — The world first learned this city's name in 2014, through images of men and women resisting ISIS fighters who beheaded their captives. Twelve years later, smoke rising from the same city tells a different story — not of resistance, but of despair. Back then, the enemy laying siege was outside, and the gates were shut against it. This time the gates were bolted from within, and it was no longer clear who was besieging whom, or who held the key.

Those inside were people who had taken to the streets after the killing of Kurdish soldier Sami Şeyhmus Heso, known by his code name Sîpan Hiznî, and who were then detained. Witnesses say the detainees resisted being transferred to Aleppo. According to a statement one injured detainee gave to the press, one of them set himself on fire rather than accept the transfer, and the fire spread from there. There is testimony that the doors were not opened in time and that help was delayed. Large gaps remain between official statements and the accounts given by families and the injured. Sources put the death toll at 10 and the number of wounded at 17, four of them in serious condition.

But no number can capture a father's cry in a hospital corridor:

"They burned before my eyes. They wouldn't open the door."

The episode itself has layers. According to some sources, Heso's killing traces back to a tribal feud from two years earlier, linked to the deaths of members of the Baggara tribe in Deir ez-Zor. But that detail doesn't change the real question: how did a tribal matter turn into state intervention, mass detentions, a 72-hour curfew, and ultimately nine deaths in one city? How does a personal feud, once it passes through the hands of the state, turn so quickly into a tool of collective punishment? The real issue isn't who pulled the trigger — it's how the state manages a crisis.

The smoke rising over Kobanî is a picture of the vulnerability Kurds find themselves in today. In a city that only a few years ago stood as a symbol of resistance against ISIS, people no longer know whose orders detain them, where they will be taken, or who will protect them.

A new future was placed in front of the Kurds, under the name "integration." Armed forces were disbanded or folded into the Syrian army. Institutions were handed over to Damascus. The defense structure Kurds had built at the cost of their lives for years was placed under the control of the central state. At the end of this process, SDF Commander Mazlum Abdi became an adviser to the Syrian presidency. After blood was spilled in Kobanî, Damascus-aligned units pulled back two kilometers from the city center, and Abdi came to the city to meet with local officials. Tension was defused, for now.

But the underlying question was not.

A post was granted.

But a people's guarantee of security was taken away.

The question that now must be asked is this:

Were Kurds truly integrated into Syria, or were they turned once again into a defenseless minority?

Whose will is the will on İmralı?

The trail of this question runs far beyond Damascus — all the way to İmralı.

Abdullah Öcalan has been held at İmralı Prison since 1999 — close to 27 years now. He is 77 years old. He is not free. The Turkish state decides whom he may meet, what news reaches him, and when and how much of what he says is passed on to the outside world. His meetings with lawyers and family have reportedly been blocked for years at a stretch. His only link to the world runs through a door that the state holding him captive opens and closes at will.

Can we really speak of free will for a man in this position?

Colonial history offers a familiar pattern: instead of dealing with a people as a whole, the central power designates a single figure it can control as the "local representative." However respected or historically significant that figure may be, their power now flows not from the people but from the center that controls them. Everything between the people and the center must pass through that one door. This is the classic technique of "indirect rule" in colonial administration: rather than subjugate directly, you designate someone you have already subjugated as the one who "speaks." You present the voice you control as the voice of the people.

None of this means Öcalan's ideas are worthless. There is no denying his weight in Kurdish political history, his influence over millions, or his standing as the founding leader of a movement now approaching half a century. But precisely for that reason, a harder question needs to be asked:

Can a people's future be tied to the words of a single man who has been stripped of his own freedom?

Öcalan is a prisoner. But the will of the Kurdish people must not be.

This is the core contradiction playing out today. The Turkish state, having held one man in near-total isolation for years, now treats him as the sole decision-making authority on the entire Kurdish question. Rather than conduct an open negotiation with the elected representatives, civil society, women, young people and diverse political currents of millions of Kurds, the state manages the whole matter through a single person on İmralı.

In this way, Öcalan is not merely the state's prisoner — he is turned into a political instrument that substitutes for the Kurds' collective will.

The point here is not to blame Öcalan or to place the entire burden of responsibility on his shoulders. On the contrary, loading a whole people's future onto one imprisoned man is a grave injustice — to that man and to the people alike.

The real responsibility lies with the political structures that treat Öcalan's every word as an indisputable order.

Acknowledging a person's historical weight is one thing; handing him sole authority to decide the future of millions is another. Respect is one thing — surrendering one's own will is another.

Peace with whom, and in exchange for what?

The silencing of guns is, of course, valuable. No people should have to send its children to war forever. Kurds, too, need life rather than death, and a dignified, equal peace rather than conflict.

But peace is not simply one side laying down its arms.

Peace has a legal framework, a quid pro quo, guarantees. It means education in one's mother tongue. It means trustees are not appointed to replace elected mayors. It means political prisoners are released and democratic politics stops being treated as a crime. It means Kurdish identity gains constitutional protection. It also means the state itself changes — its powers bound by law, and its past crimes confronted.

It is not peace when one side disarms while the other merely makes promises. That is the one-sided dismantling of a balance of power.

The PKK's decision, on Öcalan's call, to end its armed struggle and dissolve itself is a historic one. A decision like this affects the lives of millions. Yet the public has never been clearly told what concrete democratic guarantees the process is tied to, what the state has committed to, or what the talks actually cover.

Kurds are asked to live with the consequences, yet they are not allowed to know the conditions under which the decision was made.

Secrecy may be a tactic for the state. For a people, it is a loss of agency.

If the Kurdish language, political status, local governance and security are what's on the table, then Öcalan is not the only party with a stake in that table. So are the mother in Diyarbakır, the child in Kobanî, the teacher in Qamişlo, the family driven out of Afrin, and the person who spent years fighting in the mountains. None of them should have to learn, after the fact, about decisions that shape their lives.

No negotiation conducted in the name of the Kurdish people can be kept hidden from the Kurdish people.

In whose name was Rojava handed over?

The heaviest consequence of this process is visible in Rojava today.

Throughout the Syrian civil war, Kurds defended their own region. In fighting off ISIS, they protected not just their own land but a shared human interest. In Kobanî, women and men resisted one of the darkest organizations in the world. Thousands lost their lives. Out of that struggle came a de facto autonomous administration — imperfect, but real — along with institutions where women held strong representation, and a society able to defend itself.

That structure was not beyond criticism. Single-party dominance, pressure on rival Kurdish movements, conscription practices, transparency problems and excessive dependence on outside support all deserved scrutiny. Defending Rojava should never have meant sanctifying every decision its administration made.

But a flawed self-administration is not the same thing as submitting to the command of a centralized state.

What is happening today under the name "integration" has resulted in the military and administrative power Kurds built being handed over to Damascus. In return, what binding guarantees have Kurds received for their constitutional status, the political character of their territory, their right to education in their mother tongue, and their collective security?

There is no convincing answer to that question.

More importantly, Syria's new military and security structures have not fully shed their political-Islamist past. A pluralist constitutional order guaranteeing the future of Kurds, Alawites, Druze, Christians and other communities has not yet been built. In such an environment, Kurds surrendering their weapons and security institutions is not a technical merger — it is an existential risk.

Who can guarantee who the weapons taken from Kurds today won't be turned against tomorrow?

What happens if Kurds who joined the same army through integration are one day sent to fight other Kurds? If the structure called the "national army" turns out to be not the army of a pluralist country but a tool of repression for the central power, whose orders will Kurdish soldiers carry out?

At that point, "integration" could become just a new name for making Kurds kill Kurds.

Mazlum Abdi's political responsibility

Mazlum Abdi was no ordinary commander in Rojava. He was one of the most visible faces of the international legitimacy that grew out of the Kobanî resistance and the war against ISIS. Kurds trusted him not just as a military officer, but as a political representative who would safeguard what they had won.

That is why he has no right today to say, "I was just following orders."

Anyone holding a post that affects a people's fate is judged not by the instructions he received, but by the consequences of his decisions. Mazlum Abdi was never meant to be a functionary of Öcalan or Kandil — he was supposed to be the representative of the community whose responsibility he took on.

If the decisions shaping Rojava's future were made according to a political line coming from İmralı or Kandil, then there is a serious problem of representation. The people of Rojava never delegated the authority to decide their own future to either İmralı or Kandil.

Rojava is not a bargaining chip in another region's organizational strategy.

Mazlum Abdi's appointment as adviser to the Syrian presidency can be presented as a personal promotion. But a commander who once represented a people's autonomous will turning into an adviser to the central state is not merely a change of title — it is a change of political direction. His arrival in Kobanî to call for calm after nine people had died is the starkest picture of what this new role means: managing, on behalf of the state he now serves, the mourning of people who were once his comrades-in-arms.

A man who was yesterday the commander of a structure his own people built, and who is today an adviser to the power that took it over, owes answers to the following questions:

What did Kurds gain?

What rights were placed under constitutional guarantee?

What institutions were preserved?

Why was the public never told which weapons were handed over, to whom, and under what conditions?

In whose hands has Kurdish security now been placed?

Until these questions are answered, no one can speak of a "historic achievement." One man gaining a post in Damascus is not the same as a people gaining political status.

The future on display in Kobanî

What happened at Kobanî Prison cannot, for this reason, be treated as an isolated incident.

Kurdish soldier Sami Şeyhmus Heso was killed. Residents took to the streets in response. Footage circulated showing Damascus-aligned security forces deployed to the city, with cries of "Allahu akbar" audible during the crackdown. More than seventeen young people were detained; some were released, but the real breaking point came when part of the group was to be taken to Aleppo in a convoy of dozens of vehicles. The detainees refused. A fire then broke out in the prison, killing nine people and wounding seventeen.

Every one of these accounts must be examined through an independent, transparent investigation. How the fire started, why security personnel failed to intervene in time, the full camera footage, and the true death toll all need to be disclosed. In a case where a person reportedly chose death over surrender, the state's responsibility cannot be reduced to the question of who started the fire — the real question is who drove that person to make such a choice.

But the political meaning of the event is already clear:

When a people's own security apparatus is weakened, the state's security forces are under no obligation to become its protector. They can turn into an opposing force very quickly.

If the people of Kobanî, who once defended the world against ISIS, cannot today demand accountability for their children dying behind locked doors in their own city, then what we're witnessing is not progress but a serious regression.

People's fear at hearing the words "Allahu akbar" is not a fear of faith itself. It is a memory shaped by those words being used as a herald of death during ISIS attacks. Hearing the same words now from uniformed forces leads Kobanî's residents to suspect that the war hasn't ended — only the uniforms have changed.

Anyone who dismisses this fear has failed to understand Kobanî's recent history.

Criticizing a prisoner, or rejecting guardianship?

Criticizing Öcalan is not denying the Kurdish struggle. On the contrary, it is defending the Kurds' political will.

Defending Öcalan's freedom does not require handing him the will of every Kurd.

Presenting Öcalan's every word as "the free will of the Kurds" only reproduces the system of control the Turkish state has built. The state that guards İmralı's door can, whenever it chooses, present whatever message emerges from that door as an order to all Kurds.

In such a system, it becomes unclear who is actually governing whom.

Is Öcalan steering the process — or is the state governing Kurdish society through Öcalan's historical influence?

No peace process can be genuinely democratic until this question is asked.

Kurds don't have to start over again

It is not the Kurds' fate to resist endlessly, to die endlessly, and to start from zero with every generation. That isn't fate — it's institutionalized helplessness.

The way out is not to search for a new savior, nor to put another untouchable leader in Öcalan's place. What Kurds need is a pluralist political order in which no single person can decide alone.

Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and the diaspora don't need to belong to the same organization. But they do need to unite around shared principles under which no one part can be bargained away for another.

If decisions are to be made about the Kurdish future, women, young people, different parties, independent intellectuals, local governments, victims' families and civil society must all be part of that decision. If weapons are to be laid down, the legal and political guarantees received in return must be disclosed to the public. If there is to be integration into an army, the chain of command, local security powers and the protection of civilians must all be secured constitutionally.

Peace cannot be made in spite of the people.

"Integration" cannot become a nicer word for surrender.

A leader's freedom cannot substitute for a people's freedom.

The real issue facing Kurds today is not loyalty to or opposition against Öcalan. The real issue is whether they can hold on to their own collective will. A new path can open by placing Öcalan in his rightful historical position without surrendering the future to his words alone; by judging Mazlum Abdi not by his past role but by the consequences of his present decisions; and by seeing those who died in Kobanî not as material for a new lament, but as witnesses to a political rupture that demands accountability.

A people's fate does not fit inside a prison cell.

A people's will cannot be reduced to one man's voice.

And no people should have to surrender its power to protect itself without knowing what rights it has gained in return.

What burned in Kobanî was not only a prison. It also pulled back the curtain on the unguaranteed future being offered to Kurds. Twelve years ago, this city's walls bore the message of a resistance that said "you shall not pass." Today, behind those same walls, it isn't even clear anymore who is protecting whom.

Kurds no longer face a choice between dying again and quietly surrendering. There is a third way: holding on to their own judgment, their own institutions, and their pluralist will.

A new beginning for Kurds will become possible not on the day they wait to hear what a leader will say, but on the day they begin speaking for themselves about their own future.