What is to become of the Kurds, by far Syria’s largest minority, with some two million people?
The Syrian civil war, which started in 2011, brought the Kurds to the forefront of the region’s politics. In the face of the all-conquering military advance of ISIS, Syrian government forces abandoned many Kurdish-occupied areas in the northeast of the country, leaving the Kurds to administer them.
A US-led coalition, bent on defeating ISIS, allied itself with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which proved remarkably successful. It took less than two years to reconquer ISIS-held territory; in the process, the Kurdish-occupied area of northeast Syria, known as Rojava, gained de facto autonomy.
The capture by Kurdish forces of the township of Manbij from ISIS on August 12, 2016, produced a swath of territory largely controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias, along Turkey’s southern border. This area was closely adjacent to Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the Kurdish-populated area granted autonomy in Iraq’s 2005 constitution.
So, much to the distaste of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the possibility of a united autonomous Kurdistan stretching across the northern reaches of Syria and Iraq seemed to be emerging.
Erdogan has consistently viewed the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the dominant force in the SDF, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group widely designated as a terrorist organization.
Then, in 2016, Erdogan instituted Operation Euphrates Shield, capturing an area in north Syria from Jarabulus to al-Bab. He followed this two years later with Operation Olive Branch during which he overran Afrin.
In 2019, after the US announced its withdrawal from parts of northern Syria, he launched Operation Peace Spring, establishing a so-called “safe zone” on the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border. He aimed to use it to resettle Syrian refugees currently in Turkey.
Erdogan has more or less annexed all the areas he has overrun. They are now governed by Turkey-backed local councils, use the Turkish lira as currency, and are heavily influenced by Turkish infrastructure projects, including schools, hospitals, and post offices.
TURKEY, A long-time supporter of the rebel movement that overthrew the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad – the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham – now has strong political influence with its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani. Erdogan no doubt hopes to use it to control his perennial Kurdish problem by continuing to occupy the swaths of Syria that he has overrun. But despite his dominant political position in post-Assad Syria, it is far from certain that he will be able to do so.
Julani’s intentions regarding minorities in general, and the Kurds in particular, are still very unclear. Ever since the fall of the Assad regime Julani has presented a moderate face to the world, consistently declaring that he intends to be as inclusive as possible in establishing Syria’s new governance.
In short, he may not endorse the continued occupation by Turkey of large areas of sovereign Syria. Moreover, he has said several times that Kurds are “part of the Syrian homeland” while assuring the nation that “there will be no injustice.”
If any ethnic group deserves justice, it is the Kurds.
THOUSANDS of years ago, a proud and independent nation lived and thrived in its own land in the heart of the Middle East. Subject to many foreign invasions, this ethnically-distinct people refused to be integrated with their various conquerors and retained their own culture.
At the start of World War I, their country was a small part of the Ottoman Empire. In shaping the future Middle East after the war, the Allied powers, especially Britain, promised to act as guarantors of this people’s freedom. That promise was subsequently broken.
Although this sounds similar to the story of the Jewish people, it is in fact the broad outline of the long, convoluted, and unresolved history of the Kurds.
The nearly 35 million Kurds are the largest stateless nation in the world. Historically, they inhabited a distinct geographical area flanked by mountain ranges, once referred to as Kurdistan. No such location is depicted on current maps, for the old Kurdistan now falls within the sovereign space of four separate states: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
Most Kurds – some 25 million – live within Turkey’s borders. There are 2 million in Syria, while within Iraq the 5 million Kurds have developed a near autonomous state. Nearly 7 million Kurds are trapped inside Iran’s extremist Shi’ite regime.
The Treaty of Sevres, marking the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, stipulated a referendum would decide the issue of the Kurdistan homeland. That referendum never took place, and the Sevres treaty itself was rendered null and void in 1922 by the establishment of the Turkish Republic under Kemal Ataturk.
The Treaty of Lausanne followed, giving control of the then-Kurdistan homeland to the new republic. With a stroke of the colonial pen, over 20 million Kurds were declared Turkish.
Kurdish autonomy achieved its greatest recognition in the 2005 Iraqi constitution, which established the Kurdistan region as a federal entity within Iraq, with its own local government and legal framework.
The Kurds in Syria will be well aware of that. Nor will they forget that something akin to it was actually offered to them by the Assad regime. In March 2015, the then-Syrian information minister announced that the government was considering recognizing Kurdish autonomy “within the law and constitution.”
In September 2017, Syria’s then-foreign minister stated that Damascus would consider granting Kurds greater autonomy once ISIS was defeated. Events overtook these aspirations, and nothing of the sort materialized. But they might provide Julani with a template for a future accommodation with the Kurds within the constitution of a unified and restored Syrian state.
Although Erdogan might deplore the effect on Turkey’s domestic political scene, he may yet see an autonomous Kurdish region recognized within a new Syrian constitution – and even, eventually, some form of alliance between that and the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.