Since signing a U.S.-brokered deal with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in January 2026, the Syrian regime made inroads into asserting control over the Kurdish question in the country.
Beyond the fact that the agreement favors the Syrian government, Damascus has leveraged its position to reshape the narrative surrounding longstanding Kurdish grievances. The apparent objective is to erode the popular legitimacy of Kurdish political actors, particularly as Kurdish military forces lose autonomy and are absorbed into the structure of the Syrian Arab army.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa appears to have borrowed a page from the playbook of his fellow Islamist, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Ankara appears to shape al-Sharaa’s approach to the Kurdish question in Syria and sets parameters for how al-Sharaa manages it.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa appears to have borrowed a page from the playbook of his fellow Islamist, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Erdoğan is both the best and worst thing to happen to the Kurds in Turkey. It was during his reign that Turkey eased longstanding restrictions on Kurdish language and culture, which even included the launch of a state-run Kurdish-language television channel. However, Erdoğan quickly reversed any tentative tolerance toward Kurds. After the collapse of peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), state-led military operations devastated Kurdish towns and cities. Erdoğan’s government removed democratically-elected Kurdish mayors from dozens of municipalities across the country’s Kurdish southeast, and imprisoned thousands of Kurdish politicians, journalists, and artists.
The same paradox applies to al-Sharaa’s regime. On the one hand, it has taken unprecedented steps regarding the Kurds, such as designating Newroz as a national holiday, recognizing Kurdish as a national language, and giving lip service to other cultural rights. Yet it has shown little hesitation in using force, including the killing of hundreds of Kurds for opposing Damascus’s authority.
This shift in policy, both in Syria and Turkey—from outright denial of Kurdish existence to a limited recognition—is not driven by democratic impulses. Rather, it reflects the reality that the Kurdish question in both countries, and across the Middle East, is no longer obscure or possible to ignore.
To undermine the regional and global prominence of the Kurds, particularly in the West, al-Sharaa has sought to assert greater control over their political representation. This has become evident in his approach to Kurdish political movement. In April 2025, Kurdish parties in Syria from across the political spectrum convened at a unity conference, where they agreed to form a delegation to represent Kurdish interests in negotiations with Damascus. Since then, the Syrian interim government has made it a priority to undermine that fragile Kurdish unity, at times engaging selectively with certain parties while sidelining others, and sometimes bypassing them altogether in favor of courting token individuals. The latter reflects a longstanding tactic employed by successive regimes in Damascus.
The new Syrian regime now seeks to ... hollow out the Kurdish question as an intact nationalist project and reduce it to a mere administrative or socioeconomic issue.
The Islamist authorities also seek to divide the Kurds physically. In Syria, Kurdish populations are concentrated in Hasaka Province, Kobani and Afrin—three regions that have been separated by predominantly Arab-populated areas due to deliberate demographic engineering over the decades. During the civil war, Kurdish forces were able to consolidate three regions, along with other areas, under a Kurdish-led autonomous administration. Successive Turkish invasions of the Kurdish-led areas have reshaped that reality, and the new Syrian regime now seeks to deal with each of these three regions separately in order to hollow out the Kurdish question as an intact nationalist project and reduce it to a mere administrative or socioeconomic issue.
During the government-led onslaught against Kurdish forces and civilians in January 2026, a wave of Kurdish solidarity emerged across the Middle East and the diaspora in support of Syrian Kurds. That support strengthened their political standing despite major setbacks, a development that Damascus noticed. Al-Sharaa’s regime quickly realized that military gains against the Syrian Democratic Forces were not sufficient to keep Kurdish aspirations for autonomy in check.
Damascus’s evolving approach to the Kurdish question reflects a strategy of limited accommodation paired with coercive control. While symbolic concessions may ease international pressure and project an image of inclusivity, they fall short of addressing core Kurdish demands for meaningful political representation and autonomy. As regional dynamics shift and Kurdish networks remain resilient, the Syrian government’s efforts to fragment the Kurdish community may yield some short-term gains but are unlikely to produce lasting stability.
