Erbil, Iraq – The merger of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the federal government forces final month has sparked a debate amongst many Kurds in Syria in addition to in neighbouring Iraq and Turkiye about the way forward for their rights.
Although Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has promised constitutional safety for Kurdish language and political rights, analysts query if the choice to drop the “armed battle” will imperil the battle to safe Kurdish rights and id.
“We would like at the present time to be the start of a real transition from the battlefields to the fields of building, and from the period of weapons to the period of peace,” SDF chief Mazloum Abdi (also referred to as Mazloum Kobani) stated from the presidential palace in Damascus late final month.
Abdi stated an “necessary web page” had been turned in Syria’s historical past.
Whereas some Kurdish politicians hail the mixing as a door for the Kurds to take part in constructing the brand new Syria and to demand their rights by means of the structure, others take into account the step a results of Turkish and US stress.
Turkiye has calculated shut ties with the Syrian authorities, which got here to energy after Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December 2024, and has attacked Kurdish fighters alongside its border with Syria previously. Though the US helped kind the SDF in 2015, it threw its weight behind the al-Sharaa authorities.
The US-backed SDF, which was shaped to struggle the ISIL (ISIS) group, managed Syria’s northeast, residence to a lot of the nation’s Kurdish inhabitants, for greater than a decade. However earlier this 12 months, the federal government forces took over northern Syria in a swift army push. After months of talks, the SDF was disbanded, and the Kurdish-led Autonomous administration was dissolved.
Talal Mohammed, the pinnacle of the Kurdistan Democratic Peace Get together in Syria, believes such developments are a turning level in the middle of the Kurdish problem.
“This represents a possibility for the Kurds to be companions in constructing a democratic Syria,” Muhammad advised Al Jazeera. “We already had a self-administration, a army drive, however we didn’t have any worldwide or regional recognition,” he stated.
“The approaching part requires uniting the Kurdish ranks and dealing to achieve all our rights … within the new structure,” he stated.
However Mohammad warns that Turkiye is pushing to finish the problem of armed Kurdish teams.
Turkiye considers the Kurdistan Employees’ Get together (PKK), which led a decades-long armed rebel, and its associates in Syria, Iraq and Iran as “terrorist” teams. Ankara accuse them of launching assaults to destabilise the area by means of separatist violence.
The PKK determined to dissolve in Could 2025 and finish the armed battle. The transfer got here months after jailed PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan urged the group to put down its arms in a bid to finish the battle, which has killed hundreds. Turkish authorities welcomed the transfer.
Ankara views the Folks’s Safety Items (YPG), which led the SDF, as a “terrorist” group and an arm of the PKK inside Syria.
Mohammad explains that the PKK is crucial Kurdish group in the complete area, and it impacts the file of the Kurds in Syria. “Ending the SDF and the PKK was a Turkish dream and a significant Turkish challenge,” he stated.
No ensures
Different Kurdish politicians counsel that the peace initiative in Turkiye and the SDF’s integration in Syria will empower the Kurds and preserve their rights.
Perwin Yousef, the co-chair of the Democratic Union Get together (PYD), a department of the PKK in Syria, rejects that the mixing is a setback.
“We didn’t really feel any disappointment, and our challenge continues, and we are going to proceed to work to acquire all our rights by means of political understandings and agreements inside the new Syrian structure, and our battle will proceed,” Yousef advised Al Jazeera.
However she additionally acknowledges that there aren’t any ensures to this point for the nationwide, political, and cultural rights of the Kurds. These points, Yousef says, may derail any settlement.
“There aren’t any ensures for the Kurds to this point … we need to assure cultural rights and recognition of the Kurdish language as an official language, along with the political rights of the Kurdish folks, and to be companions in decision-making inside the Syrian state,” she stated.
The Kurds are an ethnic group of individuals Indigenous to the Mesopotamian plains and close by highlands, which in the present day stretch throughout southeastern Turkiye, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and southwestern Armenia. The Kurdish inhabitants is concentrated in these areas, the place the Kurdish teams have aspired to determine an impartial Kurdish state.
“The Kurds have lengthy talked of reuniting their folks in a higher Kurdistan,” Joost Hiltermann, a particular adviser to the Worldwide Disaster Group, wrote in a paper again in 2016.
“These completely different nationwide populations have found over time that what units them aside could also be extra important than what they’ve in frequent: variations in dialect, tribal affiliation, management, ideology, historic expertise,” he wrote.
Kurdish tutorial Sarbast Nabi, a professor of political philosophy at Koya College within the semiautonomous Kurdish area of northern Iraq, believes the newest offers between the PKK and the SDF with Turkish and Syrian governments will hinder Kurdish aspirations.
“The SDF discovered itself compelled to take this choice, which is a call topic to the Turkish will, as a result of Turkiye holds Abdullah Ocalan,” Nebi defined. “Due to this fact, this choice is neither Syrian nor Kurdish, however slightly it’s an expression of a Turkish will,” he stated.
“What occurred in Syria serves Turkish nationwide safety … it labored to marginalise the Kurdish problem, amid perceptions inside the Trump administration of profitable Turkiye to its aspect,” he argues.
”The Kurdish problem turned a sufferer of the stress exerted by the Turkish foyer, whereas the Kurds in Syria turned a software within the arms of the Kurdistan Employees’ Get together … At current, there aren’t any impartial discourses for the Kurds in any a part of Kurdistan,” he stated, referring to the Kurdish area straddling Syria, Iraq, Turkiye and Iran.
A compelled selection?
Many Kurds argue that regional and worldwide powers have their very own nationwide pursuits and schemes, and so they have used the Kurds for their very own agenda and dumped them when their geopolitical utility was over.
Muhammad Amin Penjweny, an professional on the political affairs of the PKK and Turkish politics, argues that Kurdish teams have to be pragmatic after the decline of Western assist, particularly after the autumn of al-Assad’s authorities.
“What the SDF did by means of integration with the Syrian forces just isn’t a failure, however slightly a victory, as a result of it had no different answer after the withdrawal of American and French forces … leaving it alone with out army or political safety within the face of Turkiye and Syria,” he defined.
“It’s true that the SDF was a big army drive towards ISIS, with American help, however after the autumn of al-Assad the equation modified,” he stated, including that the Kurds had ”no different choice” however to combine into the Syrian military.
Regardless of the fanfare and what seems to be a ”success”, distrust and scepticism inside Kurdish circles stay excessive, and the destiny of Ocalan could possibly be a decisive issue.
PKK leaders have warned from their stronghold within the mountainous area of northern Iraq to halt the peace course of with Turkiye until democratic reforms are applied.
“As a gesture of goodwill, the Kurdistan Employees’ Get together burned its weapons, however the social gathering won’t hand over its weapons till after the discharge of Abdullah Ocalan and his comrades held in Turkish prisons,” Penjweny stated.
“The Kurdish dream of building a Kurdish state nonetheless stands. There may be an American, French, and British place that holds that the Treaty of Lausanne, concluded within the final century, didn’t result in stability within the area,” he stated, including that the Kurds have been a sufferer of this treaty over the previous hundred years. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, signed by Turkiye and allied powers, divided the Kurdish areas throughout 4 completely different nations.
Sentiments throughout Kurdish populations in Syria, Iraq and Turkiye differ as a consequence of a number of elements. In Iraq, Kurds get pleasure from probably the most rights within the area, the place their rights are protected by the structure established after the US-led invasion and the toppling of President Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Kurdistan Regional Authorities is the official ruling physique within the semi-autonomous Kurdish area.
”What was achieved by Syrian Kurds is best than what they’d underneath Assad. For Iraq, independence or the creation of a Kurdish state is way fetched as a result of Kurdish semi-autonomous area is authorized and recognised by the structure,” stated Soran Ali, a Kurdish author primarily based in Iraq.
However some Kurds in Turkiye have a really pessimistic outlook about the way forward for the neighborhood.
“The Kurdish dream is gone due to the SDF, PKK, Iraq and Iran,” Ahmed Kani, a nationalist Kurdish researcher in Turkiye, advised Al Jazeera.
”So long as Turkiye is a robust state, the Kurds within the 4 elements of Kurdistan won’t be able to realize their dream of statehood,” he advised Al Jazeera.
