By: Dr. Adnan Bozan

It is necessary to clarify some of the terms currently being used in political discourse concerning the Kurds in Syria, because manipulating terminology does not merely alter words; it can alter the meaning of the cause itself. It can transform rights from their political and constitutional substance into limited cultural and linguistic headings, through which an entire people may be treated with contempt when they are asked to see a part of their rights as though it were the whole of their cause.

So, are we speaking of a people or a component? Of a cause or a question? Of political and constitutional rights, or merely cultural and linguistic rights? Is the Kurdish language a national language or an official language? Does recognition of identity necessarily mean recognition of the rights that follow from it? And is it enough for the Kurdish language to enter the school system for it to be said that the Kurdish cause has entered the stage of resolution?

This is not a game of terminology; the word here can draw the boundaries of a right, and it can reduce the cause of an entire people to a school lesson. And here begins the ladder of truth; we climb it step by step, until the masks fall away and things appear by their true names.

The issue is not that the Kurdish language should be taught in schools, nor that the state should recognize the cultural and linguistic existence of the Kurds. Teaching the mother tongue, preserving culture, protecting heritage, and exercising linguistic particularity are not privileges granted by the authorities at their discretion; they are inherent rights that should not be treated as political favors bestowed by any government. The real problem begins when these rights, which constitute only part of a much larger cause, are turned into the final ceiling of political demands, and when the cause of an entire people is reduced to a school textbook, a number of weekly lessons, and a few cultural activities.

This is precisely where the discussion must be reopened from its foundations, not from its margins, because the Kurdish cause is not merely a linguistic cause, nor merely a cultural cause, nor merely a matter of symbolic recognition of identity. It is the cause of a people with a historical presence, a national identity, and political, civil, and constitutional rights. Consequently, treating it merely as a cultural file means, at its core, redefining the cause before resolving it.

This is the distinction that must be clear in political and legal discourse: language is part of identity, but it is not the whole of identity; culture is one component of national existence, but it is not a substitute for political rights; and education in the mother tongue is a fundamental right, but it is not equivalent to full political recognition of a people and its rights.

From this perspective, the real question is not: Have the Kurds obtained the right to teach their language? That is a right that must be established and protected. The question, on the other hand, is whether recognition of the language has become a substitute for political recognition. Is the Kurdish cause being treated as the cause of a people, or is it gradually being reduced to the issue of a cultural and linguistic group within the state?

At its core, this is not a linguistic issue; it is a question concerning the very nature of the state, the boundaries of citizenship, the meaning of equality, the relationship between political unity and national plurality, and the rights that may arise, legally and constitutionally, from the existence of a people with a distinct national identity within a state composed of multiple communities and nationalities.

From this perspective, Decree No. 13 of 2026 represents an important legal development that should neither be denied nor diminished. It explicitly states that Syrian Kurdish citizens are “an essential and authentic part of the Syrian people,” recognizes their cultural and linguistic identity as an inseparable part of Syria’s diverse and unified national identity, obliges the state to protect cultural and linguistic diversity, and recognizes Kurdish as a “national language.” It also annuls the exceptional measures associated with the 1962 census, provides for Syrian citizenship for persons of Kurdish origin covered by its provisions, and declares Nowruz an official holiday.

These are all developments of legal and political significance, and they should not be denied merely because they do not encompass everything that Kurds may regard as their rights. Yet legal recognition of the Kurds as an authentic part of the Syrian people should not become a pretext for closing the discussion about the nature of the rights that follow from that recognition.

The basic legal principle is simple: recognition of a fact or an identity does not necessarily bring to an end the inquiry into its legal consequences. If the state recognizes the Kurds as an essential and authentic part of the Syrian people, then the next question becomes legitimate, indeed necessary: What constitutional, political, and legal consequences should follow from that recognition?

Here the real issue begins.

For the state to say that the Kurds are an authentic part of the Syrian people is one level of recognition; for it to determine, constitutionally and legally, what rights, participation, representation, and institutional guarantees follow from that recognition is another. Between recognition of existence and recognition of rights lies a political and legal space that cannot simply be bypassed.

The same applies to language. The decree describes Kurdish as a “national language” and permits it to be taught in public and private schools in areas where Kurdish citizens constitute a significant proportion of the population, within the framework of the curriculum and education system. The Ministry of Education subsequently adopted provisions for teaching Kurdish during the 2026–2027 academic year, and amended its implementing instructions in August so that Kurdish would be taught as a three-period-per-week subject alongside an activities course.

Here, the need for a precise legal distinction between a national language and an official language becomes apparent. The decree did not grant Kurdish the status of an official language of the state; rather, it designated it a “national language” and recognized the right to teach it within a specified framework. This is not a merely formal distinction. An official language is generally associated with the exercise of state functions through its institutions, administration, judiciary, and legislation, whereas a language may be recognized, protected, and designated as national without enjoying the same legal status throughout state institutions.

Therefore, celebrating the recognition of Kurdish as a national language should not lead to confusion between two distinct levels of recognition: cultural and linguistic recognition on the one hand, and institutional, political, and constitutional recognition on the other.

The Kurdish cause cannot be measured by the number of weekly lessons, regardless of how many they may be; nor by the number of books printed in Kurdish; nor by the number of occasions officially recognized by the state. All of these are important elements, but they belong to the sphere of cultural and linguistic rights, whereas the Kurdish cause raises questions that extend beyond culture to the very structure of the state.

Who participates in decision-making?

How is political representation guaranteed?

What are the limits of centralization?

What form should decentralization take?

How should powers be distributed between the center and the regions?

How are collective rights protected?

How should constitutional guarantees be formulated?

And what is the legal status of the Kurdish language in administration, education, the judiciary, and public life?

These questions cannot be answered by a school lesson, nor can a cultural decree, however important, settle them on its own.

Here we must also distinguish between cultural pluralism and national pluralism. Cultural pluralism refers to the existence of multiple languages, cultures, religions, and traditions within a state, and the state may protect this diversity through cultural, educational, and administrative legislation. National pluralism, however, concerns a deeper question: the existence of national communities possessing a distinct identity, consciousness, and historical and political particularity, and whether such existence entails recognition of collective and political rights alongside individual rights.

Therefore, saying that “Syria is diverse” is not, by itself, sufficient to resolve the Kurdish question. Likewise, saying that “the Kurds are part of the Syrian fabric” should not become a political phrase used to erase Kurdish particularity or dissolve Kurdish rights into a general concept of citizenship.

Equal citizenship does not necessarily mean denying national pluralism, just as recognition of national pluralism does not necessarily mean dismantling or partitioning the state. This is a false dichotomy that must be discarded. A state can remain unified and sovereign while recognizing its national and cultural diversity and establishing constitutional and institutional arrangements that guarantee the participation and rights of its communities.

From this perspective, the greatest mistake is to place national unity in opposition to national rights, as though recognizing Kurdish rights were a threat to Syria’s unity. A unity that requires the denial of the identity of part of its citizens is not a firmly rooted political unity; rather, it is a fragile unity that constantly needs coercive instruments to preserve itself. Unity founded on recognition, equality, and constitutional guarantees, by contrast, has a stronger basis for endurance because it does not require anyone to abandon their identity in order to become a citizen.

But criticism should not be directed at the state alone.

If there is a Kurdish leadership that claims to represent the Kurds and negotiate on their behalf, then the Kurdish people have the right—indeed the duty—to ask it about the substance of what it negotiated and the limits of what it accepted. What was demanded in the name of the Kurds? What was accepted? What was rejected? What was postponed? Were political and constitutional rights, decentralization, representation, and participation in state institutions part of the negotiating agenda? Or did the negotiations ultimately, in one form or another, become confined to language, culture, and education?

These are not questions of accusation or an attempt to bring anyone down. They are the essence of political accountability in any democratic society.

A leadership that asks its people to recognize it as their political representative cannot, at the same time, regard the people as being outside the sphere of knowledge and accountability. Political negotiations must not become a closed space, after which the public is expected to applaud their results without knowing what was on the negotiating table and what was relinquished.

If it is established that the ceiling of negotiations has been lowered from political and constitutional demands to recognition of language, culture, and education, then the problem is no longer related solely to what the state wants, but also to what the leadership negotiating on behalf of the people has accepted.

Here, criticism must be direct: political leadership is not measured only by what it secures in terms of rights, but also by what it gives up, by what it places on the negotiating table in the first place, and by the ceiling beneath which it chooses to negotiate.

If a leadership enters negotiations demanding only cultural rights, it cannot later present the outcome as a solution to the national cause.

And if it enters with broad political demands and emerges with limited cultural gains, the public has the right to ask about the gap between the demands and the results.

This is precisely what makes the issue much broader than a mere disagreement over wording or terminology.

The Kurdish cause is not a “language issue” whose solution lies in teaching the language; nor is it a “cultural issue” whose solution lies in protecting heritage; nor is it merely a “citizenship issue” in the narrow sense of theoretically treating all citizens equally while disregarding the history of discrimination experienced by a particular national community.

It is a complex cause in which identity, language, history, civil, political, and constitutional rights, the nature of the state, and the distribution of power all intersect.

It is a methodological error to place all these elements in one basket and then call them simply “cultural diversity.”

Here the Turkish model becomes relevant to the discussion, not because the Syrian and Turkish experiences are identical, but because both raise a common question about the limits of cultural recognition when it is not accompanied by a transformation in the definition of the state and its relationship to national identity. The problem does not end merely by moving from a stage of prohibiting a language to a stage of permitting it; questions remain concerning citizenship, representation, the distribution of power, constitutional guarantees, and the position of the Kurds within the state.

The transition from prohibition to recognition is a necessary step, but it is not necessarily a transition from denial to resolution.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of some political solutions is that they do not reject the cause directly. Instead, they redefine it in a way that makes it less costly for the state: the political cause becomes cultural, collective rights become individual rights, demands for participation in power become demands for education, and recognition of a people becomes recognition of its heritage.

In this way, the cause is not abolished; rather, it is legally and politically reduced until it becomes manageable without requiring the state to reconsider its political structure.

Here, Kurdish political discourse must become more conscious and more rigorous.

The objective is not to reject the teaching of Kurdish because it is insufficient; rather, it is to reject the idea that it is sufficient.

Nor is the objective to diminish the importance of recognition of identity; rather, it is to reject the use of cultural recognition to close the door to political recognition.

Nor is the objective to deny any legal progress that has been achieved; rather, it is to place every achievement in its proper context and not burden it with more than it can bear.

Recognition of the Kurds as an authentic part of the Syrian people matters.

The annulment of the effects of the 1962 census matters. Addressing citizenship issues matters. Recognizing Kurdish as a national language matters. Teaching it in schools matters. Recognizing Nowruz as an official holiday matters.

But none of these steps, individually or collectively, automatically answers the question of the political and constitutional status of the Kurdish people and their collective rights within the state.

This is precisely where the discussion must move from celebrating an achievement to examining its place within the legal architecture of the state.

Law is not read only through what it grants, but also through what it does not grant.

A constitution is not measured only by what it recognizes, but also by the guarantees it provides for that recognition.

And a right does not become secure merely because it appears in a legal text if there are no institutions and judicial mechanisms capable of protecting it from reversal, reinterpretation, or political change.

From this perspective, the Kurdish question should not be only: What has the state given us?

It should also be: What has become a permanent right that no future government can withdraw?

Nor should the question be only: Can we now teach our children the Kurdish language?

It should also be: What legal and constitutional status does the Kurdish language enjoy within the state, and what are the limits of its use in education, administration, the judiciary, and public life?

And the question should not be only: Has the state recognized our existence?

It should also be: What legal and political consequences follow from that recognition?

This is the shift that Kurdish political discourse needs: moving from the logic of obtaining recognition to the logic of defining the rights that arise from recognition.

Peoples do not preserve their rights merely by obtaining them; they preserve them when those rights are transformed into stable constitutional and institutional rules and into actual practices protected by law.

From here, the Kurdish cause does not need leaders who celebrate every concession made by the state, nor does it need leaders who reject every step that fails to achieve the entire project at once. What it needs is leadership that understands the difference between a partial gain and a final solution, between a cultural right and a political right, and between symbolic recognition and a constitutional guarantee.

The most serious mistake Kurdish elites could make is to allow the cause of an entire people to be redefined according to what the state is able to offer, rather than defining, on the basis of history, law, and politics, the rights that should be subject to negotiation.

If the state’s ceiling is the language, the leadership’s ceiling must not become the language as well.

If the maximum the authorities offer is culture, that offer should not become the definition of the cause.

And if recognition of Kurdish becomes the title of the settlement, then we must ask: Where is the state? Where is the constitution? Where is participation? Where is the distribution of power? Where is decentralization? Where are the guarantees? And what is the political position of the Kurds within the Syrian state?

These are not unnecessary questions. They are the essence of the issue.

Therefore, saying that “the Kurdish cause has been resolved” merely because the Kurdish language has entered the school system would be a political, legal, and methodological error. But saying that everything that has been achieved has no value would be an error of the same kind.

The more serious position is to place every right in its proper place: language is a right, culture is a right, education in the mother tongue is a right, and equal citizenship is a right; but these rights do not eliminate the question of the political and constitutional rights arising from the existence of a Kurdish people within the Syrian state.

Here, the title becomes more than a metaphor.

When the cause of an entire people is reduced to a school lesson, the problem is not the lesson itself, but the demand that an entire people regard that lesson as the end of its cause.

Language does not encompass the whole of a nation; culture does not encompass the whole of politics; a school does not encompass the whole of the state; and recognition of identity does not encompass the whole of rights.

The Kurdish cause is too great to be confined to a school curriculum, too profound to be measured by the number of lessons, and too complex to end at the schoolhouse door.

The question that must remain open, rather than being closed through celebration, is this:

If the state has recognized the Kurds as an essential and authentic part of the Syrian people, what constitutional, political, and legal consequences follow from that recognition?

There begins politics.

There begins law.

And there, above all, the real issue begins.