The states of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are undergoing changes perhaps as momentous as those in the period when most of them were founded following World War I. A variety of basic features of the state are being questioned from within. Should the state present itself as ethnic, or should it embrace ethnic diversity? Should the state promote or retreat from religion? Should the state’s authority reside mainly in a center, or should it devolve and cede much of its power to federated regions? Should women have the same rights as men, or continue to have fewer rights? How does the state define citizenship, and how does it acquire new citizens? In this paper, I focus on roles that I see Kurdistan, the non-state ethnic homeland of the Kurds, playing in this process of questioning. I argue that one of its quadrants, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, is currently playing the role of heuristic. Since 1991, it has been the site of questioning along the aforementioned lines following the withdrawal of a dictatorship and the assumption of leadership by new actors. In the Kurdistan Region, observers in the surrounding states can see and learn from a self-governing breakaway region. Many have pointed out that it is a model or possible model for the other three Kurdistans, and this is especially evident in the case of Rojava. But I posit here that the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is and will be a model for others as well, as Iraq, Syria, and other MENA states continue to move away from a centralized state model. Some are currently sites of violent conflict, and contests that may rage on for decades. In this process, new units of sovereignty will be seen to emerge and new questions about the rights or duties of citizens will come to the fore. Because it was an early example of regional self-governance within the modern Middle Eastern state, leaders and citizens in these new units will then continue to learn from the example of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, even as the Region itself continues to be a place of evolving forms of citizenship and governance.