The renewed confrontation between Syria’s Kurdish forces and the central government in Damascus is the latest chapter in a long and unresolved historical struggle. Far from being a temporary political dispute, it reflects a century of marginalisation, broken promises and shifting alliances that have defined the Kurdish experience in Syria.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, early international agreements briefly raised hopes for Kurdish self-rule. Those hopes were extinguished in 1923 by the Treaty of Lausanne, which divided Kurdish-inhabited regions among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. In Syria, Kurds became a sizeable minority without constitutional recognition, political autonomy or cultural protection.
After Syria’s independence, Kurdish identity was increasingly suppressed. Under the Ba’ath Party, which came to power in 1963, Arab nationalism dominated state ideology. A controversial census in 1962 stripped more than 100,000 Kurds in Hasakah province of citizenship, leaving generations stateless. Kurdish language education was banned, political activity restricted, and protests forcefully crushed, most notably during the 2004 unrest in Qamishli.
The Syrian uprising in 2011 altered this trajectory. As the state lost control over large parts of the country, Kurdish groups filled the security vacuum in the north-east. By 2012, they had established de facto self-rule, later organised under the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. For the first time, Syrian Kurds administered their own affairs, though Damascus never formally recognised this autonomy.
The rise of the Islamic State group in 2014 thrust the Kurds onto the international stage. Kurdish-led forces, later unified as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), became key partners in the US-led campaign against IS. The defeat of the group’s territorial “caliphate” in 2019 came at a high cost, with more than 11,000 SDF fighters killed. Despite this, Kurdish leaders received no lasting political guarantees.
As international focus shifted, Kurdish autonomy grew increasingly fragile. Regional pressures and reduced Western engagement exposed the limits of wartime alliances. Recent moves by Damascus to reassert control over the north-east have revived deep fears rooted in historical experience.
For Syrian Kurds, the current crisis is not about separation but survival within a state that has long denied their rights. Whether Syria can finally address this century-old question through inclusion and decentralisation remains uncertain.
Source: BBC News
