A new bitter setback for the Kurds in Syria

Thirty million Kurds, scattered between Türkiye, Iraq, Syria and Iran, have aspired for ages to form a nation, and have fought for it. At the start of 2026, in Syria, it is a stinging setback that History inflicts on this proud people. During the civil war, images of the peshmerga, women and men with guns on their shoulders, revealed their uniqueness in the region. Radical secularists, socialists, they controlled the northeast of the country, administering their autonomous zone, Rojava. Helped by America, they successfully fought against Daesh. As evidenced by the camps where thousands of Islamists are imprisoned.

But the Trump administration abandoned them to support the president and former Islamist Ahmed Al Charaa, whose – legitimate – goal is control of all Syrian territory. Its army rushed like a bulldozer towards the Turkish border, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the Kurds, only had to accept the peace conditions that Damascus proposed: integrating their troops into those of the new Syria, in exchange for certain positions of power and certain rights, such as the recognition of Kurdish as one of the national languages.

The submission of Rojava is a success for the powerful Turkish neighbor, which has always fought against the Kurds, including by bombing villages at home and intervening in Syria and Iraq. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s number one enemy is the Marxist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), advocating armed struggle. Its leader Abdullah Ocalan had to sign a promise in prison to dissolve his armed movement.

In Iraq, the 17% of Kurds, who suffered from forced displacement and chemical weapons under Saddam Hussein, were granted a very fragile autonomous region. Finally, in the northwest of Iran, Kurds have also been fighting for their autonomy for a long time. During the bloody days of January, their cities rose up and paid a heavy price. Such is the Kurdish destiny: indispensable ally one day, adjustment variable the next. History shakes them up, but never completely erases them.