As part of a plan to unite the country after 14 years of brutal civil war, the Syrian government announced Armistice Agreement Secular-led, Kurdish co Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on sunday According to the agreement, the government will take over land held by the Kurdish armed group.
Despite this, both the Syrian Army and the SDF reported Ongoing gun battles Monday in the country, especially around the prison that houses ISIL (ISIS) members in the city of Al-Shadadi.
What was agreed on on Sunday?
President Ahmed al-Shara said the Syrian Army would take over three eastern and northeastern provinces – Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Hasakah – from the SDF as part of the deal.
On Monday, a Syrian defense ministry official said government-aligned forces had entered the outskirts of the Kurdish-led city of Hasakah in the country’s northeast under the deal.
The SDF is now to be integrated into Syria’s defense and interior ministries as part of a broader 14-point agreement.
Al-Shara’s government pledged to reunify Syria after ousting former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. On Friday, Al-Shara issued an order Declaring Kurdish the “national language” and giving official recognition to the minority group.
Syrian affairs analyst Omar Abu Laila told Al Jazeera, “(What we’re) seeing now in the region is the end of the SDF.
The SDF in Syria represents the struggle of the Kurdish people, an ethnic group in the Middle East.
Who are the Kurds?
The Kurds are a group of people indigenous to the plains of Mesopotamia and the nearby highlands that today span southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and southwestern Armenia. The Kurdish population is concentrated in these areas, collectively referred to as Kurdistan.
Therefore, the Kurds are spread across various countries in the Middle East and do not have their own state. They also have a large diaspora population, mainly in Germany but also in other European countries including France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
There are 30 to 40 million Kurdish people worldwide. The Kurds are the world’s largest stateless ethnic group, widely perceived as linked by a shared culture and Kurdish language.
Kurdish, a northwestern Iranian language, has several distinct dialects that vary by region. Most historians agree that the Kurds are the Iranian branch of the Indo-European people.
While most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, there are also Kurdish communities that practice Shia Islam, Alevism, Yazidi, Christianity, and other religions.
Why are the Kurds stateless?
The Kurds lost their lands in the 1500s when the Ottoman Empire took over most of the Kurdish-controlled territory.
The Ottoman Empire was dissolved by the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, a post-World War I peace treaty.
Under this, the Allies proposed the creation of an autonomous Kurdistan. It was seen as a major breakthrough for the emerging Kurdish nationalist movement, but the agreement was never implemented. Turkey later renegotiated the post-war settlement with the Allies, and the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 completely scrapped the idea of an autonomous Kurdistan.
Since then, the Kurds have repeatedly tried to establish their own state, but those efforts have so far failed.
How do Kurdish grievances differ in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq?
In each of the four nations, the Kurds have endured years of difficult relations with the respective governments.
Syria
According to the CIA World Factbook, Kurds make up about 10 percent of Syria’s population.
Kurds in Syria have experienced oppression and unfair treatment.
In 1962, a special census in al-Hasaka province stripped some 120,000 Kurds of their Syrian citizenship. Their children and grandchildren remained stateless, and early 2011 estimates put the number of stateless Kurds at around 300,000.
Kurdish land has also been distributed to Arab communities under Arabization policies.
The Kurds were initially neutral when an uprising against al-Assad began in 2011 and escalated into a civil war. However, in 2012, Syrian government forces drove out many Kurdish areas and Kurdish groups took control.
In 2013, ISIL (ISIS) fighters began attacking three Kurdish areas in northern Syria that bordered the armed group. The People’s Protection Units (YPG) – a Syrian Kurdish armed group that is the military wing of the Syrian Kurdish political party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) – fought them. The YPG was supported by the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In 2014, ISIL captured the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane on the Turkish border. After months of heavy fighting, Kurdish forces led by the YPG and backed by airstrikes led by the United States regained control of the city in early 2015. Then, in October 2015, the YPG and allied Arab and other groups formally formed the SDF as a broader coalition to fight ISIL and ISIL across northern Syria.
In October 2017, the SDF captured Raqka, ISIL’s de facto capital in Syria, and then pushed into Deir Az Zor, ISIL’s last major stronghold. As of March 2019, the SDF had captured Baghouz, the last piece of ISIL-controlled territory in Syria.
Al-Assad remained in power until he was ousted in December 2024 by Syrian opposition fighters led by al-Shara, who is now interim president.
As part of his efforts to unify Syria, al-Shara on Friday a Formal recognition of the decree With Kurdish as the “national language” alongside Arabic, it allows teaching in schools and restores citizenship to all Kurdish Syrians. The decree also repealed measures leading up to the 1962 census in Hasakah province that actively stripped many Kurds of Syrian nationality.
The decree officially recognizes Kurdish identity as part of Syria’s national fabric for the first time and declares Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year festival, a paid national holiday.
It also grants Kurdish Syrian rights, bans ethnic or linguistic discrimination, requires state institutions to adopt an inclusive national message, and prescribes penalties for “inciting ethnic strife”.
In a statement, the Kurdish administration in Syria’s north and northeast called the decree “a first step, however, it does not fulfill the aspirations and hopes of the Syrian people”. It demanded further action.
“Rights are not protected by temporary decrees, but by … permanent constitutions expressing the will of the people and all elements of society,” it said.
Turkey
Kurds make up 19 percent of Turkey’s population but, over the generations, Kurds have been displaced and their names and dress banned.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was founded in 1978 by Abdullah Öcalan, with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. In 1984, the group launched an armed rebellion against the Turkish state, carrying out guerrilla attacks on security forces and state institutions.
The ensuing clashes between the PKK and Turkish security forces have killed thousands and displaced many in Kurdish-majority areas.
In the 1990s, the PKK withdrew its demands, instead seeking more cultural recognition. Armed resistance against the Turkish state continued, with efforts to build a broad political and social movement through affiliated parties and organizations.
The secular Kurdish leadership of the SDF is linked to the Turkey-based PKK. Although the PKK signaled as early as 2025 that it would lay down its arms and disband, it is still listed as a “terrorist” group by Turkey, the European Union and the US. Sporadic clashes between PKK fighters and the Turkish army continue.
Despite this, the US supported the SDF as it was an effective partner in the fight against ISIL, which the SDF and the US-led coalition defeated in northeastern Syria in 2019.
Iran
Kurds make up about 10 percent of Iran’s population.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 overthrew the Shah and established the Islamic Republic of Iran.
While the Kurds initially supported the Islamic Republic and briefly controlled parts of Iran, Iran’s majority Sunni Muslim Kurdish community has often clashed with the Persian-speaking, Shiite Muslim government in Tehran over Kurdish demands for political autonomy and cultural and linguistic rights.
Several Kurdish groups have long opposed the government in western Iran, where they are the majority, and have waged an active insurgency against government forces in those areas.
Kurdish uprisings in Iran faced heavy repression in the 1980s and 1990s. Major Kurdish parties were pushed out of their strongholds and many of their leaders and fighters moved across the border to bases in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Civilian communities were also forced into Iraq, although large Kurdish communities remained in Iran.
In 2004, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) was formed as an armed struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since then, there have been guerrilla attacks and attacks on Iranian security forces from mountain bases along the Iran-Iraq border.
Iraq
Kurds make up 15 to 20 percent of Iraq’s population. Although they have historically enjoyed more rights than Kurds in neighboring countries, they have faced oppression in Iraq.
Kurdish nationalist leader Mustafa Barzani founded the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1946 to fight for autonomy in Iraq. In 1961, they launched an all-out armed conflict known as the First Kurdish-Iraqi War or the September Revolution.
The conflict lasted into the 1970s, and continued clashes in Iraq’s northern provinces. Then, in the late 1970s, the government began to settle Arabs on Kurdish lands and displace Kurds. Some of them – many Yazidis – settled in “mujammat” or military-controlled towns or settlements in northern Iraq.
In 1991, the year Iraq lost the Gulf War, Barzani’s son, Massoud Barzani of the KDP, and Jalal Talabani of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led a Kurdish uprising in Iraq. It was violently crushed by the administration of then President Saddam Hussein. More than 1.5 million Iraqi Kurds fled to Turkey to escape the crackdown by Hussein’s regime. Turkey closed its borders in response. Thousands died along the border, and the United Nations established a “safe zone” for refugees in northern Iraq in April 1991. Eventually, most people returned to their homes in Iraq after the situation stabilized.
In 1992, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was established by the Kurdistan National Assembly, the first democratically elected parliament in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. After the UN guaranteed protection to the Kurds in 1991, Saddam Hussein’s government allowed the KRG to take over the administration of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
While the KDP and the PUK agreed to share power, they fought armed battles with each other between 1994 and 1998 and experienced disagreements at times.
However, in 2003, both groups cooperated with the US to depose Hussein. The KRG, led by Masoud Barzani, ruled three provinces: Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah. In 2005, Talabani became the first Kurdish president of Iraq.
In 2017, the KRG held independence referendums in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and disputed, Kurdish-claimed territories south of Erbil in northern Iraq, such as Kirkuk. more than 90 percent Voters supported independence, but Baghdad rejected the vote Illegal
The Iraqi Supreme Court ruled that the referendum was against the Iraqi constitution, which requires the preservation of Iraq’s unity and territorial integrity.
Iraqi forces then moved in and retook Kirkuk and other disputed, fragmented areas, depriving the Kurds of key oil revenues and dealing a blow to their statehood ambitions.
Subsequently, Massoud resigned as regional president and the post remained vacant until 2019, when his nephew, Nechirwan Barzani, was elected president of the KRG.