As part of its plan to unify the country following 14 years of brutal civil war, the Syrian government announced it had reached a ceasefire agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Sunday. Under the agreement, the government will take over land held by the Kurdish armed group.
Despite the ceasefire, the Syrian army and the SDF reported gun battles in the country on Monday, in particular around a prison holding ISIL (ISIS) members in the town of al-Shadadi.
What was agreed on Sunday?
President Ahmed al-Sharaa said the army would take control of three eastern and northeastern provinces – Raqqa, Deir Az Zor and Hasakah – from the SDF as part of the deal.
On Monday, a Ministry of Defence official said government-affiliated forces had arrived on the outskirts of the Kurdish-held city of Hasakah in the country’s northeast per this agreement.
The SDF is now to be integrated into Syria’s state institutions as part of a broader 14-point agreement.
Al-Sharaa’s government pledged to reunify Syria following the ousting of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. On Friday, the president issued a decree declaring Kurdish a “national language” and granting the minority group official recognition.
“What [we] are witnessing now in the region is the end of the SDF,” Omar Abu Layla, a Syrian affairs analyst, told Al Jazeera.
The SDF comprising of Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) and Arab tribal groups was formed in 2015 to fight the ISIL (ISIS).
Who are the Kurds?
The Kurds are a 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, which are collectively referred to as Kurdistan.
Kurds are, therefore, spread across several different countries in the Middle East and do not have a state of their own. They also have a large diaspora population, primarily in Germany but also in other European countries, including France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
There are 30 to 40 million Kurdish people around the globe. Kurds are widely understood to be the largest stateless ethnic group in the world, connected by a shared culture and the Kurdish language.
Kurdish, a northwestern Iranian language, has several distinct dialects that vary by region. Most historians agree that Kurds constitute the Iranian branch of the Indo‑European peoples.
While most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, there are also Kurdish communities that follow Shia Islam, Alevism, Yazidism, Christianity and other faiths.
Why are the Kurds stateless?
The Kurds lost their lands in the 1500s when the Ottoman Empire took over most Kurdish-held territory.
After World War I, the Ottoman Empire was dissolved by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.
Under the peace treaty, the Allied powers proposed creating an autonomous Kurdistan. This was seen as a breakthrough for the emerging Kurdish nationalist movement, but the treaty never came into force. Turkiye later renegotiated the post-war settlement with the Allies, and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne dropped the idea of a self-governing Kurdistan altogether.
Since then, Kurds have repeatedly tried to establish their own state, but those efforts have so far failed.
How do Kurdish grievances differ in Syria, Turkiye, Iran and Iraq?
In each of the four countries, Kurds have endured years of tricky relations with respective governments.
Syria
Kurds make up about 10 percent of the population in Syria, according to various sources, as no official census figures are available.
Syria’s Kurds have experienced repression and marginalisation for decades.
In 1962, a special census in Hasakah province stripped about 120,000 Kurds of Syrian citizenship. Their children and grandchildren remained stateless, and later estimates from early 2011 put the number of Kurds without citizenship at about 300,000.
Kurdish land has also been distributed to Arab communities under Arabisation policies.
The Kurds were initially neutral when the uprising against al-Assad began in 2011 and escalated into a civil war. However, in 2012, Syrian government troops pulled out of many Kurdish areas, and Kurdish groups took control.
In 2013, fighters from ISIL (ISIS) began attacking three Kurdish areas in northern Syria that bordered the armed group’s territory. The YPG, the military wing of the Kurdish political party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) – fought them off. The YPG was backed by the Turkiye-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a “terrorist” group by Turkiye, the United States and the European Union.
In 2014, ISIL seized the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane on the Turkish border. After months of heavy fighting, Kurdish forces, led by the YPG and backed by US-led air raids, regained control of the town in early 2015. In October 2015, the YPG and allied Arab and other factions formally established the SDF as a broader coalition to fight ISIL across northern and eastern Syria.
In October 2017, the US-trained SDF captured Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIL in Syria, and then pushed into Deir Az Zor, ISIL’s last big stronghold. By March 2019, the SDF had taken Baghouz, the last piece of ISIL-held territory in Syria.
Al-Assad remained in power until he was ousted in December 2024 by Syrian opposition fighters led by al-Sharaa, who is now the interim president.
As part of his efforts to unite Syria, al-Sharaa on Friday issued a decree formally recognising Kurdish as a “national language” alongside Arabic, allowing it to be taught in schools, and restoring citizenship to all Kurdish Syrians. The decree also abolishes measures dating back to a 1962 census in Hasakah province that actively stripped many Kurds of Syrian nationality.
The decree officially recognises Kurdish identity as part of Syria’s national fabric for the first time and declares Newroz, the Kurdish New Year festival, a national holiday.
It also grants Kurdish Syrians rights, bans ethnic or linguistic discrimination, requires state institutions to adopt inclusive national messaging, and sets out penalties for “incitement to ethnic strife”.
In a statement, the Kurdish administration in Syria’s north and northeast said the decree was “a first step, however, it does not satisfy the aspirations and hopes of the Syrian people”. It called for more action.
“Rights are not protected by temporary decrees, but … through permanent constitutions that express the will of the people and all components of a society,” it said.
Turkiye
Kurds make up 15-19 percent of the population of Turkiye, according to independent figures. Official figures are not available as ethnicity is not included in the Turkish census.
Kurds have experienced marginalisation and cultural erasure for generations.
In the past decades, restrictions on the Kurdish language and media have been relaxed under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but after the 2016 coup attempt, many of the measures were reversed.
The PKK was founded in 1978 by Abdullah Ocalan with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkiye. In 1984, the group launched an armed rebellion against the Turkish state, carrying out attacks on security forces and state institutions.
The ensuing conflict between the PKK and Turkish security forces has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced many more in the country’s southeast.
In the 1990s, the PKK rolled back its demands, instead seeking greater cultural recognition. It continued its armed resistance against the Turkish state, alongside its efforts to build a broader political and social movement through affiliated parties and organisations.
Turkiye claims the US-trained SDF is linked to the Turkish-based PKK. Although the PKK signalled in early 2025 that it would lay down its arms and disband, it is still listed as a “terrorist” group. Sporadic clashes between PKK fighters and Turkish forces have continued.
Despite this, the US backed the SDF for its role in fighting ISIL.
Iran
Kurdish people make up nearly 10 percent of Iran’s population. No official figure is available.
The 1979 Islamic revolution led to the overthrow of Iran’s king, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the establishment of the Islamic republic.
While the Kurds initially supported Iran and briefly controlled parts of it, Iran’s mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish community has often clashed with the Persian-speaking, Shia Muslim-dominated 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 form a majority, and there have been periods of active rebellion against government forces in those areas.
Kurdish uprisings in Iran in the 1980s and 90s were met with heavy repression. Key Kurdish parties were pushed out of their strongholds, and many of their leaders and fighters relocated across the border to bases in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Civilian communities were also forced into Iraq, although large Kurdish communities remained inside Iran.
In 2004, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) was formed as an armed struggle against the Iranian state. Since then, it has carried out attacks and ambushes on Iranian security forces from bases in the mountains along the Iran-Iraq border.
Iraq
Kurdish people make up about 15 percent of the population in Iraq, according to a senior Kurdish minister. While they have historically enjoyed more rights than the Kurds in neighbouring countries, they continue to face discrimination and political marginalisation in Iraq.
Kurdish nationalist leader Mustafa Barzani formed the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to fight for autonomy in Iraq in 1946.
In 1958, a new Iraqi charter recognised Kurdish “national rights”, after which Barzani returned from exile. However, in the next couple of years, ties between the Kurdish groups and the Iraqi government deteriorated over what the Kurdish groups said was a rise in repression.
In 1961, Barzani launched a full armed struggle in what is often referred to as the First Kurdish-Iraqi War or the September Revolution.
The conflict lasted into the 1970s, with on-and-off clashes in the northern provinces of Iraq. In the late 70s, the government began settling Arabs on Kurdish land and displacing Kurds. Some of them – many Yazidis – settled in “mujammaat” or army-controlled towns or settlements in northern Iraq.
Kurdish was recognised as an official language in 1970 by the Iraqi government as part of a peace accord, which granted autonomy to the Kurdistan region. Kurds and Arabs were recognised as different nationalities.
Some 5,000 people died, mostly women and children, in 1988 when Iraqi forces attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq with mustard gas and the deadly nerve agent sarin.
In 1991, the year that Iraq lost the Gulf War, Barzani’s son, Masoud 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 Turkiye to escape a crackdown. Turkiye shut its borders in response. Thousands died along the border, and the United Nations set up a “safe zone” for refugees in northern Iraq in April 1991. Eventually, most people returned to their homes in Iraq after the situation stabilised.
In 1992, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was formed by the Kurdistan National Assembly, the first democratically elected parliament in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region. After the UN guaranteed protection for the Kurds in 1991, Saddam Hussein’s government permitted the KRG to take over administration of what is now the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
While the KDP and the PUK agreed to share power, they experienced rifts and at times engaged in armed fighting with each other between 1994 and 1998.
However, in 2003, the two groups cooperated with the US to unseat Hussein. The KRG, led by Masoud Barzani, ruled three provinces: Duhok, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah. In 2005, Talabani became Iraq’s first Kurdish president.
In 2017, the KRG held an independence referendum in the Kurdish region and in disputed, Kurdish-claimed territories such as Kirkuk, which is south of Erbil in northern Iraq. More than 90 percent of voters backed independence, but Baghdad rejected the poll as illegal.
The Iraqi Supreme Court ruled that the referendum was contrary to the Iraqi constitution, which calls for 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 serious blow to their statehood ambitions.
In the aftermath of that, Masoud resigned as regional president, and the post remained vacant until 2019, when his nephew, Nechirvan Barzani, was elected president of the KRG.