By: Dr. Adnan Bozan

The Kurdish cause in Syria cannot be understood outside the regional balance of power, nor can it be reduced to a single question such as: Do the Kurds have the right to demand a region or not? Important as this question may be, it reduces a complex historical, political, and constitutional issue to one particular form of governance, whereas the essence of the cause goes much deeper than terminology. The Kurdish people in Syria have the right to obtain their full national, political, cultural, and linguistic rights, and these rights must be explicitly enshrined in the constitution in a manner that prevents any future authority from denying or diminishing them. Yet recognizing a right is one thing, while choosing the political form and timing capable of transforming that right into a stable reality is another. From this perspective, arguing that declaring a Kurdish region in Syria is not necessarily the most appropriate political option at this stage does not mean abandoning the Kurdish cause, accepting diminished rights, or defending the Syrian authorities. Rather, it means distinguishing between the legitimacy of a right, the possibility of realizing it, and the ability to consolidate it under a specific historical circumstance.

Syria today is not a stable and cohesive state emerging from a normal political transition. It is a state coming out of a prolonged war, with institutions still in the process of reconstruction, its balance of power not yet finally settled, and multiple regional and international interests intersecting over its future. Therefore, proposing the establishment of a Kurdish national region at this moment requires careful political analysis—not because there is no right to discuss such a formula, but because immediately turning it into a central confrontation could place the Kurdish cause before a range of forces opposed to it before Syria itself has built a constitutional framework capable of accommodating it. Under such circumstances, fully consolidating Kurdish rights in the constitution and moving toward a decentralized political system that grants Kurdish areas genuine powers in administration, education, culture, the economy, and political representation may be more achievable and sustainable than turning the very designation of a “region” into a precondition for any settlement.

Here, the political truth must be stated clearly: not everything that is a right must necessarily become a political battle at the same moment, and postponing one form of demand does not constitute a concession on the fundamental right itself. Politics is not merely the declaration of objectives; it is also the ability to understand how objectives can be transformed into institutions, laws, and guarantees, and how rights can be secured without allowing the manner in which they are demanded to become a factor that ultimately undermines them. If the substance of a region means genuine democratic self-administration, broad legislative and administrative powers, protection of language and culture, elected local institutions, fair distribution of resources, and constitutional guarantees governing the relationship between the center and the regions, then the political question becomes: Can these substantive objectives be achieved now through an advanced constitutional form of decentralization, while keeping other options—including federalism or a region—within the evolving constitutional and political process? At this point, the substance of power becomes more important than the name given to it.

Yet any analysis of the Syrian Kurdish cause that ignores Turkey will remain incomplete. Turkey is not merely a neighboring state; it is a regional power with a long border with Syria and direct security, political, and military interests. Its position toward Syrian Kurdish forces has played a fundamental role in shaping part of the environment in which the Kurdish cause operates. The Kurds may reject Turkey’s role in Syria, oppose its policies toward the Kurdish cause, and demand the withdrawal of any foreign military presence from Syrian territory. But rejecting Turkish policy does not mean ignoring Turkey’s capacity to influence the Syrian reality. At the same time, acknowledging this influence does not mean granting Ankara a veto over the rights of the Kurdish people. Political realism means understanding the balance of power, not submitting to it. Political intelligence does not lie in provoking a regional power without calculation, nor does it lie in surrendering to it; rather, it lies in constructing a formula that makes Kurdish rights an integral part of the Syrian solution, making it difficult to eliminate them or turn them into a pretext for a new regional conflict.

From this perspective, one dimension of the calculations confronting Damascus can be understood. It would be methodologically unsound to assume that Ahmed al-Sharaa seeks to deprive the Kurds of their rights, just as it would be unsound to assume that he is automatically prepared to grant them all their demands. Political positions should not be measured according to presumed intentions, but according to what is contained in constitutions, agreements, policies, and mechanisms of implementation. Politically, however, it is possible that Damascus has genuine concerns about a Turkish reaction if Kurdish demands at this stage move toward the establishment of a national region, particularly given the fragility of the Syrian state and the sensitivities of the transitional period. This does not absolve Damascus of its responsibility, nor does it provide it with a justification for rejecting Kurdish rights. Rather, it places Damascus before a genuine test: if it wishes to preserve Syria’s unity, it must provide the Kurds with constitutional and institutional guarantees that make unity based on partnership rather than centralization and denial.

At the same time, the Kurdish political movement must ask itself a more difficult question: Is it politically wise for the declaration of a Kurdistan Region in Syria to become the principal battle at this stage, while more than forty million Kurds in Turkey, according to commonly cited estimates, continue to face significant complexities in reaching a comprehensive political solution to their cause, while Kurds in Iran likewise live under complex political and rights-related conditions? Raising this question does not in any way mean that the rights of Syrian Kurds are conditional upon Turkish or Iranian Kurds obtaining their rights first. Rights are, in principle, indivisible, and each part of Kurdistan has its own circumstances. Syrian Kurds cannot be asked to wait until the issues of others are resolved. Yet the Kurdish cause, in its broader depth, is a regional issue, and the balance of power in one part of it directly or indirectly affects the other parts. Therefore, the Syrian Kurdish project should not exist in isolation from the broader Kurdish and regional reality.

What is required, therefore, is not for the Syrian Kurds to say: “We will wait until the Kurds of Turkey and Iran obtain their rights.” Such a position would mean suspending their own cause indefinitely. Rather, they should move in both directions simultaneously: defend their constitutional and political rights now, while working to support the transformation of the Kurdish cause in the region from a security issue into an issue of rights, freedoms, and political recognition, so that the regional environment gradually changes. Every advance in Kurdish rights and freedoms in Turkey and Iran alters part of the environment in which the Syrian Kurdish cause operates. Likewise, the success of the Kurds in Syria in constitutionally consolidating their rights could itself establish an important political precedent, without implying that the experiences of the four parts of Kurdistan can simply be replicated or that they must follow the same path.

For this reason, what is required of the Syrian Kurds at this stage is not to lower the ceiling of their rights, but to reorder their political priorities. The priority should be explicit constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people, guarantees for their national, linguistic, cultural, and political rights, the dismantling of the legacy of policies of denial, Arabization, and demographic change, guarantees of fair political representation, the establishment of democratic local administration with genuine powers, fair distribution of resources, and preventing any future authority from returning to the policies that historically produced the problem. If this can be achieved within a democratic and decentralized Syrian state, then a substantial part of the essence of Kurdish demands will have been transformed from a political slogan into a constitutional right and an established institution.

As for federalism or a region, neither should be excluded from the debate, nor should either be transformed into a closed political doctrine that accepts no alternative formula. Syria may change, the balance of power may change, and the regional environment may change; a particular form of governance may therefore become more feasible at a later stage. Consequently, the more mature political position is not to abandon future options, but rather not to make any single one of them the sole condition for achieving the fundamental rights at the present stage.

Damascus, too, must be clear on this point: it cannot ask the Kurds to abandon the idea of a region or federalism and then offer them, in return, the old centralized state. Syria’s unity cannot be used as a pretext for denying national diversity, just as Kurdish demands for rights cannot be used as a pretext for dismantling the state. The formula Syria needs is a state unified in its sovereignty and borders, pluralistic in its identities, decentralized in its administration, democratic in its institutions, and constitutional in guaranteeing the rights of its peoples and components. Within such a formula, decentralization does not become a threat to the unity of the state; rather, it becomes one of the means of rebuilding that state on the foundations of trust and partnership.

The Kurdish cause does not need a conflict between rights and realism today; it needs realism that protects rights. The mistake does not lie in demanding rights, but in believing that raising the ceiling of demands alone is sufficient to achieve them. The opposite mistake is to believe that the difficulty of the moment means abandoning those rights. Between these two extremes lies politics: knowing what the political movement wants, what can be consolidated, and how to move from demands to negotiation, from negotiation to the constitution, from the constitution to institutions, and from institutions to a political reality that no government can simply alter by changing those in power.

The Kurdish cause in Syria therefore needs a project that goes beyond the question of “a region now” to a deeper question: How can we build a constitutional and political status that makes the rights of the Kurdish people impossible to deny, grants them genuine capacity to administer their own affairs, while preserving the possibility of developing the form of the Syrian state in the future as circumstances change? This is not a retreat from the national project; rather, it is a transition from the level of slogan to the level of the state. Nor is it a defense of Damascus or a surrender to Ankara. It is an attempt to construct a political equation that prevents both sides from turning the Kurds into a bargaining instrument in their conflicts.

Ultimately, the Syrian Kurds should not abandon their right to determine the form of their political future. But they must recognize that rights do not protect themselves, that legitimacy alone does not create power, and that power alone does not create a state. What protects the cause is transforming it into a gradual constitutional, institutional, and regional project—one that understands that Syria is not Turkey, that Turkey is not Iran, that Iraq is not Syria, and that every part of Kurdistan has its own specific conditions, while recognizing at the same time that the destinies of these parts are not entirely separate. From this perspective, the real struggle is not so much over the name of the region as it is over the substance of power; not so much over raising the ceiling of demands as over the capacity to consolidate them; and not between the Kurdish cause and the unity of Syria, but between a model of a state that denies its diversity and a model of a state that recognizes that diversity and builds its unity upon it. Political realism, when placed in the service of rights, is not a retreat from the cause; it may instead be the path most capable of transforming Kurdish rights from a negotiable demand into an enduring constitutional and political reality.

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