As SDF disband in Syria, Kurds ponder how to secure their rights

After the SDF and PKK in Turkiye dissolved, Kurdish experts express concern if their rights will be won through democratic means.

A Syrian Kurdish woman holds a Kurdish flag during celebrations for the spring festival of Newroz, in Afrin, Syria on March 21, 2026 [Orhan Qereman/Reuters]

Erbil, Iraq – The merger of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the government forces last month has sparked a debate among many Kurds in Syria as well as in neighbouring Iraq and Turkiye about the future of their rights.

Though Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has promised constitutional protection for Kurdish language and political rights, analysts question if the decision to drop the “armed struggle” will imperil the struggle to secure Kurdish rights and identity.

“We want this day to be the beginning of a true transition from the battlefields to the fields of construction, and from the era of weapons to the era of peace,” SDF leader Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani) said from the presidential palace in Damascus late last month.

Abdi said an “important page” had been turned in Syria’s history.

While some Kurdish politicians hail the integration as a door for the Kurds to participate in building the new Syria and to demand their rights through the constitution, others consider the step a result of Turkish and US pressure.

Turkiye has calculated close ties with the Syrian government, which came to power after Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December 2024, and has attacked Kurdish fighters along its border with Syria in the past. Although the US helped form the SDF in 2015, it threw its weight behind the al-Sharaa government.

The US-backed SDF, which was formed to fight the ISIL (ISIS) group, controlled Syria’s northeast, home to most of the country’s Kurdish population, for more than a decade. But earlier this year, the government forces took over northern Syria in a swift military push. After months of talks, the SDF was disbanded, and the Kurdish-led Autonomous administration was dissolved.

Talal Mohammed, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Peace Party in Syria, believes such developments are a turning point in the course of the Kurdish issue.

“This represents an opportunity for the Kurds to be partners in building a democratic Syria,” Muhammad told Al Jazeera. “We already had a self-administration, a military force, but we did not have any international or regional recognition,” he said.

“The coming phase requires uniting the Kurdish ranks and working to attain all our rights … in the new constitution,” he said.

A man holds a flag with an image of jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan as people gather to celebrate spring festival of Newroz in the southeastern town of Kiziltepe in Mardin province, Turkiye, March 18, 2025 [Umit Bektas/Reuters]

But Mohammad warns that Turkiye is pushing to end the issue of armed Kurdish groups.

Turkiye considers the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which led a decades-long armed rebellion, and its affiliates in Syria, Iraq and Iran as “terrorist” groups. Ankara accuse them of launching attacks to destabilise the region through separatist violence.

The PKK decided to dissolve in May 2025 and end the armed conflict. The move came months after jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan urged the group to lay down its arms in a bid to end the conflict, which has killed thousands. Turkish government welcomed the move.

Ankara views the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which led the SDF, as a “terrorist” group and an arm of the PKK inside Syria.

Mohammad explains that the PKK is the most important Kurdish group in the entire region, and it affects the file of the Kurds in Syria. “Ending the SDF and the PKK was a Turkish dream and a major Turkish project,” he said.

Other Kurdish politicians suggest that the peace initiative in Turkiye and the SDF’s integration in Syria will empower the Kurds and maintain their rights.

Perwin Yousef, the co-chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a branch of the PKK in Syria, rejects that the integration is a setback.

“We did not feel any disappointment, and our project continues, and we will continue to work to obtain all our rights through political understandings and agreements within the new Syrian constitution, and our struggle will continue,” Yousef told Al Jazeera.

But she also acknowledges that there are no guarantees so far for the national, political, and cultural rights of the Kurds. These issues, Yousef says, could derail any agreement.

“There are no guarantees for the Kurds so far … we want to guarantee cultural rights and recognition of the Kurdish language as an official language, in addition to the political rights of the Kurdish people, and to be partners in decision-making within the Syrian state,” she said.

Iraqi Kurdish people holding Kurdish flags celebrate Newroz Day, a festival marking the first day of spring and the new year in the town of Akra near Duhok, in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq [File: Ari Jalal/Reuters]

The Kurds are an ethnic group of people Indigenous to the Mesopotamian plains and nearby highlands, which today stretch across southeastern Turkiye, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and southwestern Armenia. The Kurdish population is concentrated in these areas, where the Kurdish groups have aspired to establish an independent Kurdish state.

“The Kurds have long talked of reuniting their people in a greater Kurdistan,” Joost Hiltermann, a special adviser to the International Crisis Group, wrote in a paper back in 2016.

“These different national populations have discovered over time that what sets them apart may be more significant than what they have in common: differences in dialect, tribal affiliation, leadership, ideology, historical experience,” he wrote.

Kurdish academic Sarbast Nabi, a professor of political philosophy at Koya University in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, believes the latest deals between the PKK and the SDF with Turkish and Syrian governments will hinder Kurdish aspirations.

“The SDF found itself compelled to take this decision, which is a decision subject to the Turkish will, because Turkiye holds Abdullah Ocalan,” Nebi explained. “Therefore, this decision is neither Syrian nor Kurdish, but rather it is an expression of a Turkish will,” he said.

“What happened in Syria serves Turkish national security … it worked to marginalise the Kurdish issue, amid perceptions within the Trump administration of winning Turkiye to its side,” he argues.

”The Kurdish issue became a victim of the pressure exerted by the Turkish lobby, while the Kurds in Syria became a tool in the hands of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party … At present, there are no independent discourses for the Kurds in any part of Kurdistan,” he said, referring to the Kurdish region straddling Syria, Iraq, Turkiye and Iran.

Many Kurds argue that regional and international powers have their own national interests and schemes, and they have used the Kurds for their own agenda and dumped them when their geopolitical utility was over.

Muhammad Amin Penjweny, an expert on the political affairs of the PKK and Turkish politics, argues that Kurdish groups need to be pragmatic after the decline of Western support, especially after the fall of al-Assad’s government.

“What the SDF did through integration with the Syrian forces is not a failure, but rather a victory, because it had no other solution after the withdrawal of American and French forces … leaving it alone without military or political protection in the face of Turkiye and Syria,” he explained.

A person wrapped in a Kurdish flag takes part in a demonstration of Syrian Kurds, to demand their rights in the Syrian constitution and in support of Kurdish unity, in Qamishli, Syria on February 1, 2026 [Orhan Qereman/Reuters]

“It is true that the SDF was a large military force against ISIS, with American assistance, but after the fall of al-Assad the equation changed,” he said, adding that the Kurds had ”no other option” but to integrate into the Syrian army.

Despite the fanfare and what appears to be a ”success”, mistrust and scepticism within Kurdish circles remain high, and the fate of Ocalan could be a decisive factor.

PKK leaders have warned from their stronghold in the mountainous region of northern Iraq to halt the peace process with Turkiye unless democratic reforms are implemented.

“As a gesture of goodwill, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party burned its weapons, but the party will not hand over its weapons until after the release of Abdullah Ocalan and his comrades held in Turkish prisons,” Penjweny said.

“The Kurdish dream of establishing a Kurdish state still stands. There is an American, French, and British position that holds that the Treaty of Lausanne, concluded in the last century, did not lead to stability in the region,” he said, adding that the Kurds were a victim of this treaty over the past hundred years. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, signed by Turkiye and allied powers, divided the Kurdish areas across four different countries.

Sentiments across Kurdish populations in Syria, Iraq and Turkiye differ due to multiple factors. In Iraq, Kurds enjoy the most rights in the region, where their rights are protected by the constitution established after the US-led invasion and the toppling of President Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Kurdistan Regional Government is the official ruling body in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

”What was achieved by Syrian Kurds is better than what they had under Assad. For Iraq, independence or the creation of a Kurdish state is far fetched because Kurdish semi-autonomous region is legal and recognised by the constitution,” said Soran Ali, a Kurdish writer based in Iraq.

But some Kurds in Turkiye have a very pessimistic outlook about the future of the community.

“The Kurdish dream is gone because of the SDF, PKK, Iraq and Iran,” Ahmed Kani, a nationalist Kurdish researcher in Turkiye, told Al Jazeera.

”As long as Turkiye is a strong state, the Kurds in the four parts of Kurdistan will not be able to achieve their dream of statehood,” he told Al Jazeera.

Iraqi Kurdish people holding a Kurdish flag celebrate Newroz Day, a festival marking the first day of spring and the new year, in the town of Akra in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Duhok, Iraq [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]

土耳其的叙利亚民主力量和库尔德工人党解散后，库尔德专家表示担忧，他们的权利是否能够通过民主手段赢得。

2026年3月21日，在叙利亚阿夫林，一名叙利亚库尔德妇女在庆祝春季节日诺鲁孜节时挥舞着库尔德旗帜。[Orhan Qereman/路透社]

伊拉克埃尔比勒——上个月叙利亚民主力量（SDF）并入政府军，引发了叙利亚以及邻国伊拉克和土耳其的许多库尔德人对其权利未来的辩论。

尽管叙利亚总统艾哈迈德·沙拉承诺给予库尔德语和政治权利宪法保护，但分析人士质疑放弃“武装斗争”的决定是否会危及争取库尔德人权利和身份的斗争。

“我们希望这一天成为从战场到建设领域，从武器时代到和平时代的真正过渡的开始，”叙利亚民主力量领导人马兹卢姆·阿卜迪（又名马兹卢姆·科巴尼）上个月底在大马士革总统府表示。

阿卜迪表示，叙利亚历史上“重要的一页”已经翻开。

虽然一些库尔德政治家称赞此次融合是库尔德人参与建设新叙利亚并通过宪法要求自身权利的途径，但其他人则认为这一举措是土耳其和美国施压的结果。

土耳其与叙利亚政府关系密切，该政府在2024年12月巴沙尔·阿萨德政权被推翻后上台。土耳其过去曾沿其与叙利亚的边境袭击库尔德武装。尽管美国在2015年帮助组建了叙利亚民主力量（SDF），但它最终还是支持了沙拉政府。

美国支持的叙利亚民主力量（SDF）为打击“伊斯兰国”（ISIS）而成立，曾控制叙利亚东北部，那里居住着该国大部分库尔德人，长达十余年。但今年早些时候，政府军迅速发动军事攻势，夺取了叙利亚北部的控制权。经过数月的谈判，叙利亚民主力量被解散，库尔德人领导的自治政府也被解散。

叙利亚库尔德斯坦民主和平党主席塔拉勒·穆罕默德认为，这些事态发展是库尔德问题进程中的一个转折点。

穆罕默德告诉半岛电视台：“这对库尔德人来说是一个机会，让他们能够参与建设一个民主的叙利亚。” 他说：“我们已经有了自治政府和军队，但我们没有得到任何国际或地区承认。”

他说：“接下来的阶段需要团结库尔德各派，努力在新宪法中争取我们所有的权利。”

2025年3月18日，在土耳其东南部马尔丁省克孜勒特佩镇，一名男子手持印有被监禁的库尔德领导人阿卜杜拉·奥贾兰头像的旗帜，人们聚集在一起庆祝春季节日诺鲁孜节。[Umit Bektas/路透社]

但穆罕默德警告说，土耳其正努力结束库尔德武装团体的问题。

土耳其将领导了长达数十年武装叛乱的库尔德工人党（PKK）及其在叙利亚、伊拉克和伊朗的附属组织视为“恐怖组织”。安卡拉指责他们发动袭击，企图通过分裂主义暴力破坏地区稳定。

库尔德工人党（PKK）决定于2025年5月解散，结束武装冲突。此前数月，被监禁的库尔德工人党领导人阿卜杜拉·奥贾兰敦促该组织放下武器，以期结束这场已造成数千人死亡的冲突。土耳其政府对这一决定表示欢迎。

安卡拉将领导叙利亚民主力量的人民保护部队（YPG）视为“恐怖组织”和库尔德工人党在叙利亚境内的一个分支。

穆罕默德解释说，库尔德工人党是整个地区最重要的库尔德组织，它对叙利亚库尔德人的命运有着重大影响。“消灭叙利亚民主力量和库尔德工人党是土耳其的梦想，也是土耳其的一项重大计划，”他说。

其他库尔德政治家认为，土耳其的和平倡议和叙利亚民主力量融入叙利亚将增强库尔德人的力量并维护他们的权利。

叙利亚库尔德工人党（PKK）下属的民主联盟党（PYD）联合主席佩尔温·优素福否认一体化是一种挫折。

优素福告诉半岛电视台：“我们没有感到任何失望，我们的项目仍在继续，我们将继续努力，通过叙利亚新宪法内的政治谅解和协议来争取我们的一切权利，我们的斗争也将继续下去。”

但她也承认，库尔德人的民族权利、政治权利和文化权利目前仍未得到任何保障。优素福表示，这些问题可能会破坏任何协议。

“到目前为止，库尔德人没有任何保障……我们希望保障库尔德人的文化权利，承认库尔德语为官方语言，以及保障库尔德人民的政治权利，并成为叙利亚国家决策的伙伴，”她说。

在伊拉克北部库尔德地区杜胡克附近的阿克拉镇，伊拉克库尔德人挥舞着库尔德旗帜庆祝诺鲁孜节，这是标志着春天和新年到来的节日。[图片：阿里·贾拉勒/路透社]

库尔德人是美索不达米亚平原及其附近高原地区的原住民，如今他们的居住地横跨土耳其东南部、叙利亚东北部、伊拉克北部、伊朗西北部和亚美尼亚西南部。库尔德人口主要集中在这些地区，库尔德各族群一直渴望建立一个独立的库尔德国家。

“库尔德人长期以来一直谈论着要将他们的人民重新团结在一个更大的库尔德斯坦，”国际危机组织特别顾问约斯特·希尔特曼在2016年的一篇论文中写道。

他写道：“随着时间的推移，这些不同的民族群体发现，使他们彼此不同的因素可能比他们的共同点更重要：方言、部落归属、领导层、意识形态、历史经验等方面的差异。”

库尔德学者萨尔巴斯特·纳比是伊拉克北部半自治库尔德地区科亚大学的政治哲学教授，他认为库尔德工人党和叙利亚民主力量与土耳其和叙利亚政府达成的最新协议将阻碍库尔德人的愿望。

内比解释说：“叙利亚民主力量被迫做出这一决定，而这一决定实际上是受制于土耳其的意志，因为阿卜杜拉·奥贾兰被土耳其扣押。” 他说：“因此，这一决定既非叙利亚的，也非库尔德的，而是土耳其意志的体现。”

他认为，“叙利亚发生的事情有利于土耳其的国家安全……这有助于边缘化库尔德问题，因为特朗普政府认为土耳其已经站在了自己一边。”

“库尔德问题沦为土耳其游说集团施压的牺牲品，而叙利亚的库尔德人则沦为库尔德工人党的工具……目前，库尔德斯坦的任何地方都没有独立的库尔德话语权，”他说道，这里指的是横跨叙利亚、伊拉克、土耳其和伊朗的库尔德地区。

许多库尔德人认为，地区和国际强权都有自己的国家利益和计划，他们利用库尔德人来实现自己的目标，并在库尔德人的地缘政治利用价值消失后抛弃了他们。

库尔德工人党和土耳其政治问题专家穆罕默德·阿明·彭杰韦尼认为，随着西方支持的减少，尤其是在阿萨德政府垮台之后，库尔德团体需要采取务实的态度。

他解释说：“叙利亚民主力量通过与叙利亚军队的融合所取得的成就不是失败，而是胜利，因为在美法军队撤离后，它别无选择……美法军队撤离后，叙利亚民主力量在土耳其和叙利亚面前失去了军事和政治保护。”

2026年2月1日，在叙利亚卡米什利，一名身披库尔德旗帜的人参加了叙利亚库尔德人的示威活动，要求在叙利亚宪法中赋予他们权利，并支持库尔德人的团结。[Orhan Qereman/路透社]

“叙利亚民主力量确实曾是美国打击伊斯兰国的一支庞大军事力量，并得到了美国的援助，但阿萨德政权倒台后，形势发生了变化，”他说道，并补充说，库尔德人“别无选择”，只能融入叙利亚军队。

尽管声势浩大，看似取得了“成功”，但库尔德人内部的不信任和怀疑情绪依然很高，奥贾兰的命运可能是一个决定性因素。

库尔德工人党领导人从其位于伊拉克北部山区的大本营发出警告，除非土耳其实施民主改革，否则将停止与土耳其的和平进程。

彭杰维尼说：“作为善意的姿态，库尔德工人党烧毁了武器，但该党只有在阿卜杜拉·奥贾兰及其被关押在土耳其监狱的同志获释后才会交出武器。”

“库尔德人建立库尔德国家的梦想依然存在。美国、法国和英国的立场是，上世纪签订的《洛桑条约》并未给该地区带来稳定，”他说道，并补充说，过去一百年来，库尔德人一直是该条约的受害者。1923年由土耳其及其盟国签署的《洛桑条约》将库尔德地区瓜分给了四个不同的国家。

由于多种因素的影响，叙利亚、伊拉克和土耳其的库尔德人群体内部存在着不同的情感倾向。在伊拉克，库尔德人享有该地区最多的权利，他们的权利受到2003年美国领导的入侵推翻萨达姆·侯赛因总统后制定的宪法的保护。库尔德斯坦地区政府是这个半自治库尔德地区的官方执政机构。

“叙利亚库尔德人取得的成就比他们在阿萨德统治下所取得的成就要好得多。对伊拉克而言，独立或建立库尔德国家是遥不可及的，因为库尔德半自治地区是合法的，并受到宪法的承认，”居住在伊拉克的库尔德作家索兰·阿里说道。

但土耳其的一些库尔德人对该族群的未来持非常悲观的看法。

“由于叙利亚民主力量、库尔德工人党、伊拉克和伊朗的存在，库尔德人的梦想破灭了，”土耳其库尔德民族主义研究员艾哈迈德·卡尼告诉半岛电视台。

“只要土耳其是一个强大的国家，库尔德斯坦四个地区的库尔德人就无法实现他们的建国梦想，”他告诉半岛电视台。

在伊拉克北部库尔德地区阿克拉镇，伊拉克库尔德人挥舞着库尔德旗帜庆祝诺鲁孜节，这是一个标志着春天和新年到来的节日。（图片：伊拉克杜胡克省）[Alaa Al-Marjani/路透社]