The Kurdish minority in Syria comprises nearly 3 million people, about 12% of the population, the largest ethnic minority in the fragmented country. Yet, much of the literature relating to the Kurds in Syria refers to them as the “silent minority,” “the newly-discovered minority,” “the forgotten people,” terms which somehow tend to downgrade their significance in the political history of the country, as well its future in it.
It never was right to belittle the role of the Kurds, much less so now. The Syrian Kurds are divided into two distinctly different groups. One comprises Kurds long settled in some of Syria’s urban centers, such as Aleppo, Damascus and Hama. Throughout the years they became an inseparable part of the Arab-Sunni majority in these places.
However, the bulk of the Kurdish community lives in north-east Syria, the Jazeera region, with Deir-al-Zor, Qamishli and Hasache as its main towns which had never been connected to the traditional centers of Syrian life. These areas were annexed to Syria as a result of imperial agreements after World War I, with their inhabitants being artificially cut off from their ethnic and tribal brethren in Iraq and Turkey.
Kurds and the Syrian state
The Kurds have always been a thorn in the side of the Syrian state, living in an area always deemed of vital strategic importance by the governments in Damascus. None more so than by the Ba’ath regime in power since 1963, which decided to resolve the Kurdish problem by a policy of forced Arabization of the Jazeera. The prominent Kurdish historian, Ismet Cheriff Vanly, called this “the final solution” of the Syrian Kurds.
The policy failed to change the demographic balance in north-east Syria, so the Ba’athists deprived many Kurds of their Syrian citizenship. The systematic policy of neglect and oppression caused a sharp deterioration in the economic conditions in the Jazeera. And even though, as of the 1980s, the region was an exporter of oil, revenues of derived therefrom were channeled to Damascus, rather than being invested locally.
Another result was the radicalization of the Kurdish population, which in the mid-1980s and in 2004 rose up violently against the regime, only to be put down by the use of brute force. It is significant to note that the Kurdish resisters did not get any help from other opposition groups in Syria, and were left to their own fate.
For decades, the Kurds of north-east Syria were also in the center of a geopolitical imbroglio created by artificial borders. Turkey with its huge Kurdish population, as well as Iraq with its own Kurdish population were always suspicious about the handling of the Kurdish problem in Syria. The Syrian Ba’ath regime in particular, while oppressing any sign of Kurdish nationalism on its own territory, was willing, when it suited its interests, to use “its” Kurds against rival neighbors. For many years, the Ba’ath regime encouraged subversive anti-Turkish activities by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) operating from bases in Syria. This, however, came to an abrupt end in October 1998, when then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad capitulated to a Turkish ultimatum and removed the PKK from Syria, including their leader Abdullah Ocalan, who surprisingly enough found himself in a Turkish jail some time late. The same Syrian tactics were used also as part of the rivalry between the two Ba’ath regimes of Hafez al-Assad and the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Syrian Kurds, living in Lebanon and opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, hold up Kurdish and Syrian revolution flags in Beirut, March 21, 2012 (AP photo).
Kurds, the current uprising and the future
For the Jazeera Kurds, the Syrian uprising starting in March 2011 offered possible advantages as well as obvious risks. Altogether, their attitude towards the uprising is one of opposition to and disdain for the Assad regime. But there is also their long historic baggage of being a persecuted minority in a state, which they never independently wanted to be a part of, and whose immediate neighbors are potential enemies, more than likely allies.
The Kurds were slow to react to the uprising, remembering the passivity of other Syrians to their oppression, particularly in 1986 and 2004. But after some months they made a decision through their political parties (at least 12) that the current regime of President Bashar al-Assad was likely to collapse. Resulting demonstrations which erupted in Deir-al-Zor and Qamishli were met with a violent crackdown. The murder of prominent Kurdish leader Mashaal Tammo by a Syrian intelligence unit further fueled already high flames in the Jazeera.
The two main problems that have been confronting Syrian Kurds from March 2011 on are what political role would be assigned to them by the Syrian opposition in any post-Assad era, and how they would reconcile their ethnic interests with the interests of their immediate neighbors, Turkey and Iraq, and in the case of the latter, Iraqi Kurdistan.
While the Antalya conference of the Syrian opposition, convened in late May 2011, recognized the existence of many ethnic and religious communities in Syria, in a clear departure from Ba’athi dogma, it left in place an ambiguity about the status of the Kurds in a future, democratic Syria.
The most recent position of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), is against the creation of a federal Arab-Kurdish state, and that may reflect a change in the policy as stated in Antalya and some time afterwards.
Clearly, Turkey, a significant supporter of the SNC, resents granting so much to the Kurds, and, according to press reports, also Iraqi Kurds, who achieved their own virtual self-rule are not going out of their way to support their Syrian brothers. Tribal legacies of the past may be at play here, but also the fear of the Iraqi Kurdish leadership that a complete chaos in Syria, leading to an attempted separation of the Syrian Kurds from Damascus may lead to a chaos also in Iraq itself, and to a challenge to their own status there.
Be as it may, the Kurdish leadership in Syria is confronted with a dilemma, not uncommon in the long, troubled history of the Kurdish people: How to navigate in a way that will not leave them in the traditional role of Kurds in Middle East politics – that of the inevitable victims of geopolitical circumstances beyond their control.
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Josef Olmert
Josef Olmert is a Middle East scholar, former peace negotiator and published author. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics in Middle East history and is currently an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina.