Neville Teller
What is to become of the Kurds, by far Syria’s largest minority at some two million people?
The Syrian civil war, starting in 2011, brought the Kurds to the forefront of the region’s politics. In face of the all-conquering military advance of Islamic State (ISIS), Syrian government forces abandoned many Kurdish occupied areas in the north-east of the country, leaving the Kurds to administer them. A US-led coalition, bent on defeating ISIS, allied itself with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which proved remarkably successful. It look less than two years to reconquer ISIS-held territory, and in the process the Kurdish occupied area of north-east Syria, known as Rojava, gained de facto autonomy.
The capture by Kurdish forces of the township of Manbij from ISIS on 12 August 2016 produced along Turkey’s southern border a swath of territory largely controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias. This area was closely adjacent to Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, the Kurdish populated area granted autonomy in Iraq’s 2005 constitution. So, much to the distaste of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the possibility of a united autonomous Kurdistan stretching across the northern reaches of Syria and Iraq seemed to be emerging.
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