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17 - The Kurdish Question in Syria, 1946–2019

from Part III - Domestic Political Developments and the Kurds in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2021

By
Jordi Tejel
Edited by
Hamit Bozarslan ,
Cengiz Gunes  and
Veli Yadirgi
Hamit Bozarslan
Affiliation:
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Cengiz Gunes
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
Veli Yadirgi
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Summary

Immediately after the partial withdrawal of the Syrian army from several towns in the north and north-east of the country in July 2012, Kurds seemed to emerge ‘out of nowhere’. More significantly, after more than forty years of dictatorship and political marginalization, Syrian Kurds appeared to become masters of their own destiny. For one, both the Democratic Union Party (PYD) - a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has been fighting the Turkish state since the 1980s – and its military force, the People’s Defense Units (YPG), have been exercising state-like power in the Kurdish regions of Syria. However, in parallel, reports from the region have revealed a murkier picture: Syrian Kurdish parties appeared highly divided, and the PYD ascent brought about significant consequences in the Kurdish enclaves among growing Turkish intervention in northern Syria. This chapter argues that both continuities between 1946 and 2019 (e.g. division of the Kurdish political field, its openness to external influences and ambiguities with regard to the Syrian regime) and changes (e.g. Syrian war context, adoption of armed struggle strategies by Kurdish political parties and ideological transformations) may help us to better grasp current dynamics in northern Syria.

Keywords

self-administrationtrans-border relationsnationalismarmed struggleFrench Mandate
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Kurds , pp. 436 - 457
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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