New Syria and the Kurds: A National Solution or a Repeat of Iraq and Turkey’s Experiences?

The statement issued by the Syrian presidency in response to the outcomes of the ‘Kurdish Unity Conference’ held in the city of Qamishlo on 26 April 2025, contained many fallacies that were, as usual, wrapped in nationalistic and unity slogans. This was done to market the statement to Syrians and public opinion as a defender of the “state” against ‘groups’ that seek division and separation. The statement also did not forget to convey messages of threat and the use of force against the second largest ethnic component of the Syrian people.

In the preamble, the Syrian presidency directly accuses the SDF of ‘reneging’ on the agreement that (transitional) President Ahmad al-Shara’a made with the SDF leadership (SDF commander Mazloum Abdi) on 10 March 2025. It attributes this accusation to what it describes as ‘the recent moves and statements issued by the SDF leadership, which call for federalism and establish a separate reality on the ground. These are explicitly contrary to the content of the agreement and threaten the unity and territorial integrity of the country.’ The Syrian presidency’s statement did not specify the nature of these ‘moves’ and ‘statements’, how and when they occurred, nor did it refer to the SDF’s statements about ‘calling for federalism’. It relied solely on vague and unsubstantiated claims, which seem intended only to influence the recipient and instill the idea that the state had taken a positive step towards de-escalation and openness to a national solution, but that the SDF leadership had thwarted these steps by insisting on ‘moves’ and “statements” about federalism that perpetuate ‘the reality of separation and fragmentation’.

Here, the statement portrays the ‘unitary state that desires calm and openness in pursuit of a national solution’ as being in opposition to the SDF. The SDF, according to the statement, has turned against the agreement and seeks, despite the state’s willingness and patience, to ‘establish a separate reality on the ground that threatens the unity and integrity of the country.’ Thus, the state (represented, of course, by the unelected Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and its equally unelected leader al-Sharaa) must, in continuation, fulfill its duty to protect the “land” and ‘sovereignty’ here.

The statement then escalates and raises the tone of rejection, reminding the recipient that it not only rejects federalism, which it claims the SDF leadership has called for, thereby breaking its agreement with al-Sharaa/the Presidency/the State, but it even rejects the self-management formula. This formula is also categorized under ‘attempts to impose a partition reality and separate entities.’ The Syrian presidency’s statement considers the absolute rejection of the self-administration formula as its means of preserving the unity of Syria’s territory and people. This unity is considered a red line by the statement, and any transgression of that unity (all manifestations of self-administration, of course) is again deemed ‘a departure from the national ranks and an infringement upon Syria’s collective identity.’

Following the aforementioned preamble, which aimed to prepare the recipient’s mindset and inject it with accusations against the SDF, pigeonholing them as evasive and retreating, and proponents of ‘separate entities,’ the Presidency began to lay the groundwork for its own reneging on the March 10 agreement. This was done by introducing new, fabricated issues that were not included in the previous agreement and had not been previously discussed. These issues were presented as “practices” allegedly carried out by the SDF, specifically “demographic change” in some areas, which “threatens the Syrian social fabric and weakens the chances of a comprehensive national solution.” The Presidency continues to deviate from the agreement by warning the SDF against “disrupting the work of Syrian state institutions in the areas it controls, restricting citizens’ access to their services, monopolizing national resources and utilizing them outside the state framework, which contributes to deepening the division and threatening national sovereignty.” This false and malicious accusation is made despite the achievement of many steps within the aforementioned agreement, including settlements and understandings in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods in Aleppo, the cessation of hostilities at Tishreen Dam, the prior agreement on the flow of oil from northern and eastern Syria to the Syrian interior, as well as a meeting between SDF commander Mazloum Abdi on April 12, 2025, and Hasan al-Salama, head of the Syrian government committee tasked with completing the agreement, which was also attended by committee member Mohammad Qantari in Hasakah city.

The meeting identified the names of the members of the committee that will represent northeast Syria in following up the agreement with the central government in Damascus: Fawza Yusuf, Abdul Hamid al-Mahbash, Ahmad Yusuf, Sanherib Barsoum, and Suzdar Haji, in addition to appointing two spokespersons for the committee, namely Mariam Ibrahim and Yasser Suleiman. All these measures likely indicate the SDF’s adherence to the agreement with Damascus and its endeavor to implement all provisions through cooperation between the two committees overseeing the agreement’s follow-up and accompanying all steps of normalization and resolution, which occurred in Ashrafieh, Sheikh Maqsoud, and the vicinity of Tishreen Dam. These endeavors, as well as the identity and orientation of the members of the committee representing northern and eastern Syria, refute the content of the Syrian presidential statement, which continued to accuse the SDF of “monopolizing decision-making in the region of northeastern Syria, where authentic components such as Arabs, Kurds, Christians, and others coexist. Confiscating the decision of any component and monopolizing its representation is unacceptable, as there can be no stability or future without real partnership and fair representation of all parties.”

In fact, it is the authority in Damascus (currently: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) that wants to confiscate the decision of the components, and it is the one that covers itself with the cloak of ‘patriotism’ and ‘Syrian identity’ in order to monopolize the decision and lead the country with the mentality of a faction that wants to swallow the state in the name of centralization without ‘real partnership and fair representation of all parties,’ as stated in the same statement! The statement of the Syrian presidency invents a new matter/description when it describes the Kurds, who are part of the Syrian people, as ‘Kurdish brothers,’ considering the authority at the center as ‘us/the citizen’ and the “Kurds” here as ‘them/the brothers,’ in a strange dichotomy that could only be created by an authority with distorted thinking and confused orientation, floundering between several agendas, some of which are deep and hidden and some of which are clear and declared.

The agreement that took place in Qamishli on April 26 was an agreement between two political blocs representing the Syrian Kurdish component exclusively. The agreement that occurred between al-Sharaa and Abdi a month and a half earlier was an agreement between the SDF and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria on the one hand, and the authority in Damascus on the other. It is a ‘geographical’ agreement between the center of the state and one of its parts. It is an agreement between a military force that represents an administrative reality of a part of Syria and the central authority in the capital. It is a military, geographical, and administrative agreement in which Arabs, Kurds (Muslims and Yazidis), Syriacs, Assyrians, and Armenians are represented with the central government. As for the ‘Kurdish Unity’ conference, it carried an ethnic label and exclusively represented the Kurdish component of Syria, a large part of which lives outside the Self-Administration areas in northern and eastern Syria, in Afrin, Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, Idlib, Latakia, Homs, and even Daraa and Quneitra, as well as the areas occupied by the Turkish state, especially Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. In all likelihood, the authority’s confusion between the two matters is intentional, especially since the SDF commander noted in his opening speech that the Kurdish conference does not contradict the unity of Syria’s land and people, but on the contrary, strengthens this unity.

There are signs of a change in the authority in Damascus. A reneging on the agreement it made with the SDF. The authority wants to escape from internal problems, from the state of tension and loss of control over the armed groups that continue their violations in the coast and the interior against civilian life and against Syrian citizens from the Alawite, Christian, Druze, Ismaili, and Murshidi communities, by creating a kind of ‘threat,’ now a Kurdish one, and exaggerating this threat to stop the fragmentation on the internal front and to create a kind of sectarian/national cohesion against ‘Kurdish separatists’ who ‘see a need for foreign intervention and foreign tutelage,’ as stated in the statement. It is clear that the authority wants to create and fabricate a threat to gather all Syrians behind it to confront it, thereby escaping the consequences of the massacres and violations committed against the Syrian Alawite component in the Sahel, and what is now happening in Damascus, Homs, and Idlib in terms of incitement, provocation, and agitation against the Syrian Druze component. This is in addition to portraying itself as the protector of the country’s unity and rejecting foreign intervention and foreign tutelage, despite the fact that it is the one who brought in foreign, non-Syrian fighters and leaders, naturalized them, and gave them positions and responsibilities. It is also the one who legitimized the Turkish intervention, which exists in the form of occupations and military bases, and it is the one who continues to pant after foreign tutelage by talking about accepting all Western conditions, thereby ensuring political/diplomatic recognition and receiving billions of dollars for construction and reconstruction projects.

It is important for the authority in Damascus to understand the reality of the Kurdish issue in the Middle East, and for its supporters and entourage of media professionals and journalists to understand who the Kurdish people are and what their historical homeland, Kurdistan, is. The authority must fully grasp this and learn from the experiences of Syria’s neighboring countries with the Kurds, and the enormous disasters that resulted from the regimes of these countries fighting the Kurdish people and relying on weapons and oppression to deal with the national/identity demands of the Kurds. What happened in Iraq can be understood by following the events since Iraqi Vice President Saddam Hussein ceded the Shatt al-Arab to the Shah of Iran in the 1975 Algiers Agreement in exchange for Iran stopping its support for the Kurdish revolution. He then reneged on this agreement and entered into a devastating war with the government of the Islamic Revolution in Iran that lasted eight years, from which his regime emerged bankrupt and indebted. He then escaped from his crisis again by occupying Kuwait, leading the world to mobilize an army that expelled him from Kuwait after he had destroyed Iraq and decimated its military forces. Saddam’s adventurism, stemming from his insistence on suppressing Kurdish national demands with iron and fire, plunged Iraq into wars that cost the Iraqi people millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars of their wealth. The same is true in Turkey, which has spent around two trillion dollars in the war against the PKK since 1984, according to Numan Kurtulmuş, Speaker of the Turkish Parliament and a leader in the Justice and Development Party. These astronomical sums would have been enough to turn both Iraq and Turkey into developed and prosperous countries comparable to Western countries (or Singapore, so as not to deviate from the framework of the East and our Islamic culture and identity!) had the regimes in Baghdad and Ankara dealt with the demands of the Kurdish people in both countries with an open and democratic mindset, instead of disastrously betting on war plans and military decisiveness policies.

Syria, emerging from a devastating civil war in which the former Syrian regime corrupted everything that had not yet been corrupted, cannot be managed with a factional mentality or a centralized, totalitarian, authoritarian mindset. What happened with the National Dialogue Conference, the constitutional declaration, and the transitional government cannot be called democratic development and progress with the participation of all components. What occurred was a false quota process involving the appointment of individuals who do not represent their components/constituencies or any political forces. It was a process of clear and blatant symbolic manipulation and forgery. Syria must be administered in a decentralized manner through geographical administrations in which all components participate. Any forced association and attempts to break the will here and there by force, resorting to general mobilization and clan appeals, will mean division, fragmentation, entrenchment, and a return to the civil war square. The authority/faction, supported by its foreign cadres and relying on its allies abroad, will be solely responsible for this.