Politics & Power Quote by Jalal Talabani

Talabani’s line reads like a civics textbook, and that’s the point: it weaponizes the plainness of international norms. By framing Kurdish self-determination as a right enjoyed “like every other nation,” he isn’t arguing for special treatment; he’s indicting the exception that has quietly governed Kurdish life for a century. The sentence’s moral force comes from its refusal to bargain. It doesn’t plead for sympathy, cite suffering, or flatter foreign audiences. It asserts parity, then leaves everyone else to explain why parity shouldn’t apply.

The subtext is aimed as much at capitals as at Kurdish rivals. For Ankara, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus, it’s a reminder that Kurdish identity has been managed as an internal security problem rather than a political constituency. For Washington and European powers, it’s a gentle but pointed mirror: you can celebrate self-rule in the abstract while funding the regional order that blocks it in practice. “Every other nation” is a quiet accusation of hypocrisy.

Context matters. Talabani built a career balancing armed struggle, coalition politics, and diplomacy, eventually becoming Iraq’s president after 2003. That experience shows in the phrasing: maximal principle, minimal provocation. He doesn’t say “statehood,” which would trigger alarms; he says “self-determination,” a broader claim that can include autonomy, federalism, or independence depending on what history makes possible. It’s a statement designed to travel: legible in UN language, combustible in the Middle East, and unignorable to anyone who benefits from pretending the Kurdish question is permanently unsolvable.