A flashpoint in northern Syria was defused in late January when President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s transitional government in Damascus signed a ceasefire agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) after several weeks of military confrontation. Crisis was seemingly averted, but the agreement has brought a swift end to Kurdish self-rule in Syria, embodied for a decade in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES). This political project, which Kurds call Rojava, touted itself as a model of ‘radical democracy’ that provided a safe haven for the region’s Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians and Yazidis.

As had happened a year earlier when the Assad regime collapsed, events in the northeast unfurled at breakneck pace. Tensions had arisen between Damascus and Kurdish officials following the breakdown of talks on integrating the SDF into the Syrian army. In early January, with both sides accusing the other of human rights abuses, government forces moved, first expelling the SDF from Kurdish-majority neighbourhoods in Aleppo, then taking the Arab-majority cities of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor and territory east of the Euphrates that had been under Kurdish control.

Despite the plaudits the SDF won for its role in defeating ISIS, the Kurdish position was undermined by the international embrace of Al-Sharaa’s government and widespread squeamishness at the possibility of an existing Middle Eastern state fragmenting. In these circumstances, Al-Sharaa had approval from the US, previously a strong backer of the SDF, and was able to proceed towards his desire to extend Damascus’ control across all of Syria.

A centralised state being able to assert authority is widely assumed to be desirable. Yet, in a country as ethnically and religiously diverse as Syria, power concentrated in the hands of a single group, namely Sunni Arabs, may be a mixed blessing. Even as Al-Sharaa’s administration was winning international legitimacy as a purportedly stabilising force after years of conflict in Syria, minorities were subjected to harassment and violence. Within months of the overthrow of the Assad regime, sectarian tensions boiled over as Alawites were targeted in coastal regions, as was the Druze community in Suweyda. In both instances, forces aligned with the government were accused of involvement in the violence, leaving it open to charges that centralisation was less about the consolidation of Syria’s diverse ethnic populations into a unified political community than about the assertion of Sunni-Arab dominance.

This perception has been reinforced by recent images following the government takeover of Raqqa. A Syrian soldier gleefully displayed a braid detached from a female SDF member, whose whereabouts remain unclear, while mockingly calling her ‘heval’ (a term for ‘comrade’ used amongst Kurds). There was some resentment among Arab communities living under SDF control, widely viewed as ‘Kurdish rule’, in northeastern Syria. For minorities, however, such images spark security concerns and raise the spectre of the re-emergence of the jihadist groups that fought during the civil war, some of which have been integrated into Syria’s new army.

It is unlikely that anyone in Ankara will have shed tears at the sight of a severed Kurdish braid. Turkey had previously watched with trepidation as Kurds navigated a way through the tumult of the Syrian Civil War to consolidate their political position. With international support as the primary force fighting ISIS, the SDF steadily expanded its territorial control in Rojava. Turkish concerns centre on the influence among Syrian Kurds of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which embarked on an insurgent campaign to establish a Kurdish homeland in Turkey in the 1980s. The PKK has since abandoned its secessionist goals, but the fact that it has strong connections with the political organisation behind DAANES and the SDF means that Ankara has viewed the Rojava project as a security threat. Indeed, Turkey has insisted on referring to the SDF as ‘terrorists’, failing to recognise that Kurds, or indeed other minorities, might require their own security apparatus in an environment as violent as Syria’s has been recently, a point no less salient given recent attacks on the Druze and Alawites.

Associations with the PKK aside, Turkey has repeatedly stated its support for the maintenance of a unified Syria. Ankara has little desire to see a successful federal model emerging on its southern border, particularly a semi-autonomous, Kurdish-run entity that might serve as inspiration for its own restive Kurdish community. Turkish officials have long accused Syrian Kurds of harbouring separatist intent, from Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who decried Kurdish plans to hold elections in 2024 in northeast Syria as a precursor to secession and threatened to invade and eliminate ‘terrorist nests’ should elections take place. That the DAANES then cancelled elections was used by its detractors to accuse it of failing to live up to its democratic aspirations.

In light of such statements emanating from Ankara, it is not a leap to imagine a Turkish hand behind the advance of Al-Sharaa’s forces into the northeast. Prior to the ouster of Bashar Al-Assad, Turkish forces repeatedly crossed the border to strike what Ankara deemed to be terrorist targets, by which it meant the personnel and infrastructure of the SDF. Turkey now enjoys close relations with Al-Sharaa’s government and maintains a high degree of military cooperation with the Syrian military, with questions arising as to the extent of Ankara’s influence in Damascus. Whatever the case, it is clear that since Assad’s departure, Turkey has superseded Russia and Iran as the most important external actor in Syria.

Deeper Turkish involvement in Syria’s military and political architecture is unlikely to console Kurds, either in Syria or Turkey. Ankara continues to view the so-called Kurdish Question primarily through a security prism (read: terrorism), yet it fails to acknowledge the political aspirations or security concerns of Kurds that gave rise to the question in the first place. Since last year, Turkey has been pursuing a path towards peace with the PKK, hoping to end an insurgency that has gone through cycles of violence since the early 1980s. During Erdoǧan’s time at the helm of Turkish politics, there have been several such initiatives. This one appears to have some momentum, particularly given that the PKK agreed to lay down its arms and withdraw its militants from Turkish territory. Erdoǧan and other ministers hailed these developments as steps towards a ‘terror-free Türkiye’, and Turkey has long regarded the neutering of the SDF as an essential part of the ‘peace process.’ Yet scant regard has been paid to what Kurds expect from this process or to the need to recognise Kurdish grievances if the question is to be resolved once and for all.

Kurdish public opinion could turn very quickly, given that there is already considerable scepticism about the peace process. Kurds across the Middle East took great pride in the apparent success of Rojava as a political model, thus its demise has prompted widespread despair and an outpouring of support among Kurds and others. As a people divided by borders, Kurds have long rallied when their ethnic kin, wherever they may reside, are threatened or targeted. This does not bode well for the peace process in Turkey, particularly if Kurds are alert to Ankara’s support for Syrian forces that are entering Kurdish-majority cities and waving severed Kurdish braids around. As a response, Kurdish women have begun braiding their hair in solidarity. Even this act of peaceful protest has been deemed inflammatory by some in Turkey.

In the meantime, Damascus has recognised Newroz, the Kurdish new year, as a national holiday, while also granting citizenship to all Kurds, something that was denied to many in the 1960s. And in a move that has yet to occur in Turkey, where Kurds are a much larger proportion of the population, Al-Sharaa granted Kurdish the status of a national language. If Ankara were to do the same, it may be recognised as a gesture of goodwill by Kurds and might add impetus to the peace process. But for now, for Kurds on both sides of the Turkish-Syrian border, issues of identity and representation remain fraught, and the ripple effects have unsettling repercussions on politics and daily life in both states.