History sometimes fits into a single scene, a single frame. In that frame, the entire contradiction, the entire hypocrisy of an era, is crystallized. 

The person who recently entered the heavy doors of the White House was Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of what was once al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, and now known as the Emir of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—or Ahmed al Sharaa by his real name. 

The welcoming of a figure once considered a “symbol of global terror” as a legitimate interlocutor in the corridors of Washington demonstrated how much the international system’s foundations, not only strategic but also moral and ontological, have collapsed. 

And in that frame, the same question echoed in the eyes of millions of Kurds watching from afar, silently: 

“Why can’t we, who defended the honor of humanity against the barbarity of the ISIS gangs, enter the gates of the White House? 

Why isn’t General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazlum Kobane, there?” 

This question is not a simple diplomatic grievance. It is an interrogation into the moral burden of statelessness. 

Because the issue is not just the identity of Jolani or the position of Commander Mazlum Kobane. 

The issue is about to whom, under what conditions, and according to what criteria the international system’s understanding of “legitimacy” operates. 

While state-backed violence is deemed legitimate, the people’s self-defense is reduced to a “security risk.” In the eyes of the West, the heroes of a stateless people do not carry “representation authority” at the diplomatic table. This is the natural consequence of a power-centric world order choosing to manage rather than recognize justice. 

Manageable Radicalism and the Moral Bankruptcy of Realpolitik 

Jolani’s presence at the White House signifies a new form of Realpolitik: the politics of Manageable Radicalism. 

This is a new phase in the global strategy of the 21st century where “the management of terror” replaces “the fight against terror.” The goal is no longer to eliminate the

threat but to control and utilize it. 

Jolani’s Western attire and his talk of “local governance” and “stability” in interviews with Western journalists are no coincidence. This is the diplomatization of violence, the translation of jihad into the language of governance. 

This picture is the real-world equivalent of Foucault’s concept of “governmentality”: violence is not eliminated; it becomes the management of behavior, limits, and possibilities. Gang organizations like HTS are no longer just enemies but laboratories where order is reproduced. 

The West’s “war on terror” ideology has turned terror into a manageable system variable. Jolani’s legitimization in Washington is like the storefront of this laboratory. 

But at the same time, the picture is completely different for the Kurds. The resistance led by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), YPJ, and YPG against ISIS was a de facto “war against modern barbarism” against one of the bloodiest jihadist gang movements in human history. 

It was a process where Kurdish women, led by the YPJ, fought shoulder-to-shoulder with men at the front, and a new form of governance based on social equality and ecological democracy blossomed in Rojava. 

However, winning this war demoted the Kurds from the status of “ally” to “annoying subject.” Because the Kurdish victory questioned the boundaries of the regional and global status quo. 

Statelessness and Invisibility: The Blind Spot of the International System Commander Mazlum Kobane’s inability to enter the White House cannot be explained solely by Turkey’s diplomatic pressure or Washington’s regional balancing acts. 

This is a more fundamental issue: the invisibility of statelessness. Since Westphalia, the international system has defined political existence through the “state form.” 

A subject without a state is considered either “unrepresented” or “temporary.” Thus, the Kurds, as a people “presumed non-existent” for centuries, cannot find a place on the world order’s epistemic map. 

Commander Mazlum Kobane represents the memory of a people’s resistance. Jolani, on the other hand, represents a threat that global powers can control. 

This difference is not merely diplomatic; it is ontological. Jolani conforms to the logic of violence anticipated by the system. Mazlum Kobane overturns this logic. The former can be kept within the system as an “enemy.” The latter is excluded from the system because it is an “alternative.” 

For an ordinary Kurd, this situation is as tragic as it is instructive. Because they know that even when the world speaks on behalf of humanity, it acts on behalf of the state. 

The international community’s language of “human rights” protects the boundaries of

the state-based order, not the freedom of the stateless. The Kurds’ sacrifice in war is praised. Their demands in peace are deemed dangerous. This is the institutionalized form of a moral paradox. 

Democratic Modernity and Systemic Fear 

The “Democratic Modernity” paradigm developed by the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan targets this very contradiction at its root. 

Leader Öcalan emphasizes that the modern state’s hierarchical, male-dominated, and centralized structure is the source of the crisis of humanity. According to him, true freedom is possible through the construction of a communal, ecological, women’s liberation-based social organization instead of the nation-state. 

The model built in Rojava, Northern and Eastern Syria, is the practical expression of this philosophy. 

A multi-layered social contract based on direct democracy, gender equality, and ecological sensitivity. This is an alternative not just for the Middle East, but for global capitalist modernity as well. 

It is precisely for this reason that this model is ignored, criminalized, and encircled. Because its existence shakes the legitimacy not only of states but of an entire civilizational paradigm. 

Washington’s acceptance of Jolani and exclusion of Commander Mazlum Kobane is the result of this fear. 

For the US and the West, the manageable danger that is Jolani is safer than the system-alternative and unmanageable freedom represented by the Kurdish Freedom Movement and Commander Mazlum Kobane. 

Jihadism is functional only insofar as the system can recognize its own enemy. But Rojava, Northern and Eastern Syria, is too alien for the system to recognize. In one, there is the language of power; in the other, the language, voice, and breath of freedom. 

Moral Blindness and Global Decay 

Lying deep beneath this double standard is the disintegration of humanity’s universal moral references. The West’s approach to Jolani clearly shows that the “fight against terror” has now turned into “compromise for profit.” 

The wars once waged in the name of “exporting democracy” have today evolved into the perpetuation of chaos under the name of “managing stability.” The Kurds are paying the moral price of this new Realpolitik. Their freedom is considered “too costly” for regional balances, “too principled” for geopolitical bargains. 

But the existence of a people cannot be measured by a diplomatic equation. Through

their statelessness, the Kurds have built a new form of politics for humanity: the ethos of self-defense. This ethos is oriented neither by revenge nor by profit. It is the ethics and morality of protecting life. 

On a philosophical level, this situation is a striking example of Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the “state of exception.” 

The Kurds are held both inside and outside international law. “Usable” in war, “excludable” in peace. 

Their status is fixed as a permanent exception, an unrecognized subject. This is the most naked form of violence in the global order: the politics of “invisibilized labor and sacrifice.” 

The Honor of Statelessness 

If a people is penalized for not having a state, no system that speaks on behalf of humanity can claim legitimacy. 

The statelessness of the Kurds is not a weakness but a moral superiority. Because this statelessness is the expression of a model that has organized its own self-governance at the popular level, substituting participation for hierarchy. 

Jolani’s reception at the White House is more than a media gesture. It reveals the international system’s state of mind: the moral exhaustion of an order that manages chaos. 

Mazlum Kobane’s absence is the quietest yet deepest echo of this exhaustion. Because Mazlum Kobane is the voice not just of a movement or an army, but of a people. 

For an ordinary Kurd, the matter is clear: “We fought for humanity. Humanity is not seeing us.” 

This statement is not desperation, but a warning. Because if humanity ignores a people who defended its honor, it loses its own conscience. 

Today, the world stands on the verge of a new moral rupture. On one side, the hegemonic powers legitimizing manageable radicals. 

On the other side, the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the Kurds, striving to institutionalize freedom. 

History will not forgive those who remain silent in this division. Jolani may be welcomed at the White House. But those who find a place in the conscience of humanity are the defenders of Rojava and the people of Northern and Eastern Syria: YPG, YPJ, and SDF, and their military and political vanguards. 

True politics is not written by the balance established by states at the table, but by the price paid by the people on the ground.

Mazlum Kobane’s steps may not be on the White House stairs, but they are taken in the heart of human history. Because freedom speaks not the language of the state, but the language of resistance.

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