2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(2) for human rights — a consequence of the modern state system — has been acknowledged. However, although the 29-year-old participant’s citizenship crucially enabled him to access education and other rights, equal inclusion as a citizen in the Syrian national community cannot be assumed. In moving away from looking at citizenship primarily in terms of the relationship between the citizen and the state, Barry Hindess argues that the concept of citizenship must also be considered in terms of its role within the modern system of dividing the world population into subpopulations under the governance of territorial states. 85 It is through recognition as a citizen by a sovereign state that an individual is recognised as a member of the current world order and thereby — through the recognition as such a member rather than as ‘merely human’ — as a rights holder. 86 In the narrative of a 25-year-old woman from Kurdistan-Turkey, the participant reflects on the necessity of formal legal citizenship for recognition within the modern state system and explains that, ‘[f]or me, having a Turkish ID or Turkish passport … was a matter of having a certificate or a card to exist in the given world’. Conversely, the 25-year-old participant implies that if she were to not possess her Turkish or any other citizenship and thereby be rendered de jure stateless, she would not only be excluded from the Turkish state, but from membership to and recognised existence within the current world order. However, understanding nations, and thereby also nation-states, to be artefactual constructions conceptualised as an ‘imagined community’, rather than organically deriving from pre-existing ethnic groups, the status as a citizen of a particular state does not inherently imply affinity. Situating her Turkish citizenship within the context of her Kurdish identity, the 25-year-old participant elaborates: ‘[t]he reason why I have a Turkish passport is because there is no Kurdistan, not because I live in another country as a minority. I live in my own land, man. I’m Kurdish, end of. Period.’ Thus, in light of her previous statement, the participant suggests that the reason for her possession of Turkish citizenship is not primarily because she is Turkish, but because possession of citizenship is a fundamental requirement on both a domestic and global level. She suggests that she has Turkish citizenship precisely because Kurdistan is not a sovereign state, but that Turkey, in its capacity as an internationally recognised sovereign state, has the power to grant globally recognised citizenship, and thereby to provide a certificate to acknowledge and legitimate the existence of its citizens within the current world order. The acquisition of Dutch citizenship is a valuable consideration where citizenship is coloured as a ‘certificate … to exist in the given world’, whilst acknowledging the migratory history embedded within Kurds’ recognition as citizens in the Netherlands. In particular, in cases where citizenship has been granted following recognition of an individual’s refugee status, Dutch citizenship becomes intimately associated with protection within a context where the impossibility of individuals accessing rights and protection in the country of origin has been established. The Dutch citizenship is like, it’s great, and I appreciate it, but at the same time it’s a reminder that I only have this because I can’t have my own … I feel like I only have Dutch citizenship because I’m actually stateless … And because of the 85 86 Hindess (n 34) 1488. Arendt (n 11) 373–75; Hayden (n 10) 256. 296