Lebanese-American thinker and mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb proposes three concepts to understand the age of uncertainty: weak signals, fragility, and antifragility.

Weak signals are early warnings of major changes; fragility refers to structures dependent on external shocks; antifragility, meanwhile, describes systems that draw strength from crises. Though challenging at first reading, Taleb offers clues to grasp the new structure of our modern age, which is built upon uncertainty.

According to Taleb, the real issue is not “to predict” but to avoid fragility and build antifragile systems. His core warning is this: attempting to foresee the future through grand prophecies is futile; what truly matters is to read the sum of small signs and weak signals.

The developments in Syria over the past decade are among the most concrete examples of this framework.

 In particular, the democratic, secular, and participatory experiment of Rojava, alongside the rise of the Ahmed Al-Sharaa (Al-Jolani) regime, exposes the hypocrisy of hegemonic powers and of Turkey.

Rojava emerged in 2012 as both a de facto autonomy and a laboratory for the Kurds east of the Euphrates amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war. With local councils, the co-mayorship system, women’s participation in politics, and multi-ethnic representation, it offered not only the Middle East but also the world an original democratic model. Rojava filled the security vacuum, strengthened social participation, transformed the role of women, and became a source of hope for Kurdistan. In short, it succeeded in becoming a political innovation that produced legitimacy and value for society.

All of this is, in fact, the present link in a long chain woven with the struggle the Kurdish people and their leadership have carried out for more than half a century, built upon the sacrifices and efforts of those who paid the price.

Why was Rojava not chosen for post-Assad Syria?

At this point, the values listed above turned into a perception of threat for the international system. Rojava’s pluralistic and horizontal institutionalization was a structure that could not be directed from outside. What the hegemonic powers sought, however, was “manageable stability.” Because of its unpredictable nature and potential to pursue an independent agenda, Rojava could not cross the threshold of becoming a strategic partner.

The Turkey factor was also decisive in the choice of hegemonic powers. Ankara defined the democratic autonomy in Rojava as contrary to its own security paradigm and as an existential threat, a position it could not abandon. For this reason, every support given to Rojava meant a direct crisis with Turkey.

Hegemonic powers therefore chose to avoid conflict with Turkey rather than side with democracy. In the end, the West’s discourse of democracy was sacrificed to geopolitical engineering on the ground. Rojava was praised but not protected; it was not supported because it produced value, but because it was deemed uncontrollable.

Although Al-Jolani is thought to possess a kind of antifragility and the ability to draw strength from crisis, the role played by Turkey and the United Kingdom in this matter was decisive.

In the same period, Al-Jolani, whose background lies in Al-Qaeda and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was brought to the forefront and presented as an indispensable actor. Expected to weaken under isolation, sanctions, and military pressure, he instead managed to emerge stronger from each crisis. This represents the political equivalent of what Nassim Taleb calls antifragility: hegemonic powers actively played a role in enabling him to use shocks as opportunities and to produce legitimacy.

The developments at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 became the showcase of this transformation:

The United States dismissed its senior diplomats responsible for the Syrian file. These diplomats had been working within the Syrian Regional Platform (SPR), which had replaced the U.S. Embassy in Damascus closed since 2012.

Thomas Barrack increased the pressure for integration.

Foreign Minister Shaybani, a graduate of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, was escorted in Washington and introduced to senators.

Al-Jolani, meanwhile, prepared to take the podium at the United Nations and did so.

For ten years, a figure who had been on the “terror list” suddenly became a counterpart of the international system. Al-Jolani offered a centralized, single-interlocutor, and negotiable authority. Even his extremely radical jihadist past served to increase his usability. His meeting with former Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) General David Petraeus was part of this scenario.

As the March 10 Agreement approaches its end, despite growing risks, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) still exist as a de facto administration east of the Euphrates. Security, service, and local governance institutions continue to function. Yet as the end of the March 10 Agreement draws nearer, signals pointing to a new conflict are multiplying:

The perception that U.S. support for Rojava is visibly diminishing,

Barrack’s pressure for integration and efforts to grant legitimacy to questionable authorities,

Shaybani’s reception in Washington, alongside Turkey’s constant retention of the option of a military operation against Rojava.

This situation increases Rojava’s fragility, as dependence on external guarantees grows while its room for maneuver narrows. For Turkey, the possibility of short-term gains continues to be kept on the agenda at the expense of long-term costs.

Although Al-Jolani’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly appeared to be the most visible stage of this antifragility, the reality was different. As the first interim Syrian leader to speak from the UN podium in 58 years, he demanded the lifting of sanctions, declaring: “The shackles on our feet must be removed.”

By thanking Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, he also revealed where he stood within the new regional equation.

That speech carried three messages:

To the West: “We have left the radical past behind, we are here for justice and reform.”

To the region: “Turkey and the Gulf are now our partners.”

To the international system: “We have emerged from crisis and are a centralized authority ready for negotiation.”

Yet this scene does not hide the fact that Al-Jolani is merely a “usable actor.” He remains an interim president; in the civil war he took part in, more than one million people were killed, millions of Syrians were forced to flee, and the United Nations, the very institution where he spoke, did little more than watch.

Therefore, the speech applauded at the UN was not legitimacy, but rather the staging of a figure displayed by the international system in line with its interests. Al-Jolani’s presence at the UN podium was nothing more than a symbolic showcase, one that cannot erase the massive destruction and deep anxieties within the country.

In Taleb’s words, this moment marks the peak of Al-Jolani’s antifragility: sanctions, isolation, and a radical past are not shackles but turned into a stage of legitimacy. Yet this antifragility is a theater serving the interests of power relations, not justice.

In the same days that Al-Jolani took the stage at the United Nations, Ankara was also investing in its own equation. President Erdoğan’s address to Trump as “my friend” revealed the new bargaining issue in the Middle East: hostility toward the Kurds.

The most critical agenda item of Erdoğan’s meeting at the White House was the exclusion of the SDF and the dismantling of the Autonomous Administration. Ankara, which has raised the March 10 Agreement even more than HTS, places this agreement on the table not as a solution but as a tool of conflict.

Under the discourse of “integrating the SDF into the army,” the plan is to leave Rojava defenseless and at the mercy of a rigid centralized structure stamped with the label of HTS.

This picture clearly exposes Turkey’s hypocrisy: not democracy and peace, but hostility toward the Kurds has become the main capital on the bargaining table. If Trump has accepted this expectation, it would constitute not only a heavy blow for Rojava, but also for the entire peace and democratic society perspective initiated through the call of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Abdullah Öcalan.

In the final analysis, if today’s picture is assessed through Taleb’s concepts: The Al-Jolani regime is antifragile: it emerges stronger from crises, is pragmatically supported and legitimized by the international system, and is presented to the Syrian peoples as a poisonous gift.

Rojava is fragile: valuable for its democratic and pluralistic values, yet vulnerable because of its dependence on external guarantees. Still, its internal dynamics and determination provide serious resilience, grounded in the reality that Rojava is the heart of Kurdistan.

Turkey is pursuing a fragile strategy: choosing to deepen regional instability as a strategy for the sake of domestic political interests.

Since 2012, the story of Rojava has revealed the gap between the hegemonic powers’ discourse of democracy and their geopolitical interests. The Kurdish democratic model was praised in rhetoric but not supported in practice; instead, a radical, jihadist, yet centralized and usable figure was preferred.

Today, the critical question is this: Will Rojava which created existence out of nothing, did not shy away from paying the price, is nourished by a deep political tradition, and holds a cherished place in the heart of every Kurd, break under these hypocritical balances, or will it, despite all pressures, manage to build its own antifragility and open a new path?

This path binds us across both time and space; it is woven with the efforts of those who paid the price, coming from the past and extending into the future. And precisely for this reason, the answer lies not only in the future plans of the hegemons, but in the present link of the chain.