Mehmet believed that the Syrian Kurdish model, called Democratic Confederalism, with its emphasis on an “educated and ecologically self-conscious” society employing direct democracy beginning at the neighborhood level, offered the Kurds and other ethnic groups the chance to have true autonomy across existing state borders that, even if they were redrawn, would never adequately represent all the peoples of the region.

He was convinced what Kurdistan was witnessing was a “great crisis” of the state system, a vast global proxy war that, he wrote, “culminated in the rise of ISIS, an evil jihadist force that turned Syria and Iraq into a burning hell and threatened the lives of millions here and abroad.” It was only the rise of that democratic movement, and its effective fighting forces, the People’s and Women’s Protection Units, that halted it, and today are on the verge of forcing the Islamic State from its de facto capital of Raqqa.

“But these victories came at a terrible cost,” he reminds us. And it’s true, thousands of young Kurds have died fighting a war against the Islamic State that, we shouldn’t forget, benefits those in the West that fear the group’s attacks. “Why is it,” he asked, “that the sacrifice of such selfless souls is not receiving the attention it deserves in the media?”

And what will happen once the Islamic State is banished from Raqqa? Do Western leaders really care what happens to the Syrian people once the threat of the Islamic State is gone? “Syria will remain a hotbed of war if a truly multiethnic and multireligious society is not established,” Mehmet wrote. And what he and the movement he was part of offer is a vision of hope for the region: “We believe we can only be human if we live under a humane system, humane social structures based on humane ideas.” This is the system they are building.

Despite this, representatives from the Syrian Kurdish movement were not invited to peace talks in Geneva over the last few years largely because of Turkish and Iranian opposition. And the United States, though happy to support the Kurds militarily when it needs them, has kept them at arm’s length diplomatically in deference to its Turkish allies, even as Turkey has labeled Syrian Kurds “terrorists” and unleashed unprovoked attacks on forces trying to focus on the Islamic State.

If this continues, Mehmet wrote, “like the Kurdistan Regional Government’s vote of independence, the negotiations will be over the form and borders of states, the creation of more divisions, more walls, more hatreds — even as those who have fought the hardest against such forces, who have worked to propose a different model and vision of society, are frozen out.”