Kurdish Society: Between Numbness and Waiting!
Dana Sherzad Mohammed – Activist
If we look at the current situation in the Kurdistan Region, the first thing that becomes apparent is a condition that can be described as “collective numbness” — the death of people’s awareness of and sensitivity to their rights.
Kurdish society today finds itself in a situation where it can neither fully accept and live with corruption, nor does it possess the energy and determination necessary to bring about real change. Our silence does not stem solely from fear of those in power; it also comes from a collapse of trust. When citizens see that the very systems created to organise and protect their lives — the courts, institutions, and parliament — have themselves become instruments for reinforcing corruption, as even officials acknowledge, individuals begin to feel hopeless. This hopelessness has driven people either towards migration, as a form of physical escape, or towards withdrawing from society, as a form of psychological escape.
The problem is that corruption has penetrated from the highest levels of power into the smallest details of citizens’ everyday lives. When values are replaced by price tags, and when opportunities are determined not by ability and merit but by “proximity to power,” society gradually adapts itself to corruption simply in order to survive. This is the condition we call the “normalisation of corruption.”
One of the weaknesses of the Kurdish political reality is that the opposition, like those in power, has also suffered a crisis of public trust. Citizens find themselves trapped between those who govern and an opposition that has already been tested, with both sides ultimately coming together around the same table when their interests align. This has caused people to lose faith in grand slogans promising change.
From another perspective, silence and corruption in the Kurdistan Region have become closely intertwined. One example is what might be described as the “commercialisation of suffering.” In public hospitals, citizens are deliberately neglected, while medicines and essential medical supplies remain insufficient. At the same time, private hospitals and pharmacies are operated by individuals close to those in power. The individual remains silent: they know their money is being taken from them; they know that the service they need is their legal right; yet without protest, they pay high prices and turn to the private sector.
When corruption becomes a “law of nature” in the mind of the individual, change can no longer be expected. This is the point at which the system gains complete control over the mentality of society.
These examples, along with many similar practices — such as manipulating people’s salaries, neglecting public schools, and many others — demonstrate that silence is not merely a passive act; it becomes a form of participation in corruption. When individuals behave in this way, the system continues without even needing to make any significant effort to preserve itself.
The path towards breaking this cycle begins when we stop treating wrongdoing as something normal and stop choosing silence. Ultimately, this depends on the awareness and consciousness of individuals.
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