Syrian Kurds under the leadership of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the entity that they created—the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES)—face new realities that have put their experiment in autonomy in serious doubt. Although in March 2025 they signed an agreement with the new Syrian regime that preserves some Kurdish rights, and are in discussions with Turkey to avert a Turkish military incursion, Syrian Kurds are understandably nervous about their future. This is especially because their main protector, the United States, is in the process of withdrawing its troops from their region. Washington is trying to reassure these Kurds, who were its main Syrian ally in the fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS) over the past decade. But it is increasingly evident that Kurdish interests are being overtaken by the larger US goal of fostering ties with Syria’s new regime, likely with the goal of encouraging it to establish relations with Israel.
Apprehension Over the New Syrian Regime and Its Allies
The SDF, like almost everyone else, was taken by surprise by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) and its allies’ rapid takeover of Syria in December 2024. Although the SDF had long opposed the Assad regime, which denied Kurdish rights for many decades, they saw the Islamist HTS and its Turkish benefactors as the more ominous threat. Indeed, Turkey and its allies, particularly the so-called Syrian National Army (made up largely of Syrian mercenaries), engaged in many strikes and battles against SDF positions in northern Syria in the weeks following the HTS takeover. The SDF knew that Turkey and its allies had long opposed the autonomy sought by the Kurds within a federated Syrian state.
The SDF taken by surprise by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s rapid takeover of Syria in December 2024.
The SDF is made up of Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), Arab tribesman who inhabit parts of eastern Syria, and smaller military contingents of local Christian communities. It is led by Mazloum Abdi, a charismatic Kurdish military figure who created a force of 100,000 fighters. The SDF is the protector of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration (formerly known as Rojava, now called DAANES) that has ruled this area for nearly a decade and that helped defeat the IS caliphate with US support. US military commanders praised the fighting prowess and sacrifices of the SDF, which the group says sustained more than 32,000 casualties in the anti-IS campaign.
Turkey, however, views the YPG completely differently—as merely an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that battled the Turkish state for decades, and has labeled the YPG, like the PKK, as a terrorist organization. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long opposed the US alliance with the YPG and has vowed to crush it and DAANES. In President Donald Trump, Erdoğan found a like-minded ally: in October 2019 the Turkish president persuaded him to abruptly withdraw US troops from a corridor in northern Syria near the Turkish border. Turkey then launched a military offensive into Syria that resulted in the deaths of many SDF fighters and the displacement of 100,000 Kurdish civilians. But Erdoğan did not convince Trump to withdraw all 2,000 US forces from northeastern Syria. Ultimately, the US president, facing resistance from the Pentagon, only reduced the American military presence to 900 troops. President Joe Biden, who in his 2020 election campaign criticized Trump’s downsizing, expanded the force back up to 2,000 soldiers.
A Changing Political Landscape
Fast forward to late February 2025, when Erdoğan recalibrated his position on the Kurdish issue. He and his political allies were able to persuade imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to announce that his organization should lay down its arms and dissolve itself. Because of the reported links between the PKK and the YPG, Erdoğan hoped that the latter would follow suit, as it purportedly draws inspiration from Ocalan. The new Syrian regime under interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said that all rebel militia forces would be integrated into a new national army. Following the Ocalan statement, Abdi flew to Damascus to meet with Sharaa, and on March 10, 2025, they signed an agreement to integrate SDF fighters into the national army.
The agreement’s main points are: 1) to incorporate the SDF and its components into the Syrian state; 2) to give the central government authority over airports and oil fields under SDF control; 3) to recognize Kurds as an integral part of Syria and to naturalize those Kurds who were denied citizenship under the Assad regime; 4) to give all Syrians the right to participate in government institutions; 5) to allow Syrian refugees to return to their former homes; 6) to ensure that Syrian Kurds and others will support the Syrian government in fighting remnants of the former regime and all threats to the security and unity of the country; and 7) to allow Kurds to choose their local councils and police forces and to teach their own language.
Why Abdi agreed to this deal, which would end the autonomy of the SDF and DAANES, has been the subject of speculation, especially because he distrusts HTS. One analyst has suggested that Abdi’s motivation may have been to secure Turkish assurances, as demanded by Ocalan, that Turkey cease attacking the Syrian Kurds.
Another possible explanation is that, with Trump back in office, Abdi knew that he could no longer count on the United States to protect his forces, especially because as soon as Trump returned to the White House, he gave orders to the Pentagon to downsize US forces in Syria. And with Russia retreating in Syria to its air and naval bases, Abdi could not rely on Moscow either (occasionally, the Russians tried to play a mediator role between the SDF and Damascus). Another factor is the serious clashes in 2023 between the SDF and some of its Arab components, particularly around the Deir al-Zor region, which may have convinced Abdi that he could not rely on these components. Finally, Abdi may have come to believe that gaining Syrian citizenship for tens of thousands of Kurds who were denied this right in the past, and securing Kurds’ right to choose their local officials and police forces and use their own language, was the best that he could obtain under the circumstances.
Putting political spin on the deal, Abdi stated immediately after signing it, “We consider this agreement a real opportunity to build a new Syria that embraces all its components and ensures good neighborliness.”
At present, the SDF still is operating its own military structure and has not given up its weapons.
Whether the deal will come to fruition is anyone’s guess. At present, the SDF still is operating its own military structure and has not given up its weapons, and the agreement is not expected to come into force until the end of 2025. At a minimum, Abdi and his allies do not want a repeat in their own region of what happened in Syria’s Latakia province in March 2025, when pro-Sharaa militias killed more than 800 people, mostly Alawites. Abdi had previously insisted that SDF fighters be merged into the new Syrian army as units remaining under Kurdish command, but al-Sharaa has opposed that position. Nonetheless, the SDF remains the largest military force in Syria, and if Abdi does not see Kurdish interests taken into account, he may not abide by the terms of the agreement.
Why Erdoğan has largely dropped his bellicose language and policies toward the YPG is also subject to various interpretations. According to one analyst, his primary interest at this stage is
to amend the Turkish constitution to allow himself to run for another presidential term; if the deal with Ocalan sticks and he is released from prison, Erdoğan might attract enough votes from legal Kurdish parties in Turkey to make this amendment happen.
Erdoğan also knows that a full scale invasion of northeastern Syria has political risks. He
keenly wants to be part of the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter deal and is aware that if he invaded northeastern Syria, strong anti-Turkey sentiment in the US Congress would block Turkey’s participation. (The October 2019 Turkish-supported attack in northern Syria against the SDF elicited strong congressional condemnation.) Hence, perhaps in Erdoğan’s thinking, if al-Sharaa’s government can persuade the SDF and DAANES to end their autonomy without a fight, all the better. Erdoğan also probably knows that Trump is much more assertive against the US military establishment than he was in his first term, and will ensure that his 2025 orders to draw down US forces in northeastern Syria are carried out fully, a move that leaves the SDF with few options.
Mixed Messages from the United States
The United States has reportedly played the role of facilitator of SDF relations with Turkey and the new Syrian regime. US officials are said to have encouraged Abdi to come to Damascus to negotiate the March 2025 deal with al-Sharaa, and reportedly even flew him to the Syrian capital aboard a US military aircraft for this purpose. In May, Tom Barrack, a personal friend of Trump’s who has the dual role of ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, tried to reassure Abdi that the United States still considers the SDF an ally in the fight against IS and encouraged him to continue his talks with Ankara under US mediation. Barrack even told Turkish television that US support for the SDF is “a very important factor for our Congress,” adding that “it’s very, very important to direct them toward integration into a new Syrian government. Everyone’s expectations need to be reasonable.”
The United States is moving ahead with plans to dramatically reduce the US military presence in eastern Syria.
At the same time, however, the United States is moving ahead with plans to dramatically reduce (or even end) the US military presence in eastern Syria. Barrack also said the plan is to reduce the number of US bases in Syria from eight to one; as of June 2025, the United States reportedly has already withdrawn from at least four. Abdi obviously was not pleased by this downsizing and warned that it would hinder the anti-IS campaign. Nonetheless, he put his best spin on the situation, stating: “[T]his is the US military’s plan; we’ve known about it for some time…and we’re working” with the US military to maintain pressure on IS.
Uncertain Future and Larger US Goals
Abdi is also undoubtedly aware that Turkey is now touting arrests of IS operatives and has highlighted the creation of a Syrian-Jordanian-Turkish operations center in Damascus to combat IS and lessen Washington’s dependence on the SDF. Ankara wants to show that the SDF is not indispensable to the anti-IS campaign and that its demise would not hurt US interests. In May 2025, Erdoğan told reporters that the “PKK’s disarmament and dissolution process also includes its Syrian branch.” The YPG, he went on to say, “are currently going through a period of transition” and warned that “we are following the issue concerning the YPG very, very closely.” But Abdi has said that the PKK deal with the Turkish government is “not related to us in Syria.”
In addition, after Trump’s May 14 meeting with al-Sharaa in Riyadh, when he announced that the United States would remove sanctions on Damascus, the US government asked the Syrian leader to take control of 9,000 IS prisoners who have been in SDF custody. This role of guardian of the large prison system housing IS fighters and their families had been one of the key duties of the SDF, and exemplified the importance of the US-SDF alliance. That the United States is now pressing al-Sharaa to take over this job signals Washington’s prioritization of relations with the new Syrian regime over the protection of the Syrian Kurds. Indicative of this new policy, Barrack, after raising the US flag over the US Ambassador’s residence in Damascus in late May, said, “What I can assure you is that our current Syria policy will not be close to the Syria policy of the last 100 years, because none of these have worked.” What this statement meant is unclear, but since the US-SDF partnership had been a prominent part of US policy toward Syria over the past decade, Barrack’s comment likely was not reassuring to the Syrian Kurds.
Although fostering good relations with new Syria can be a positive development in its own right, what may be driving Trump’s policy is a desire to get the new Syrian regime to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, in an expansion of the so-called Abraham Accords that Trump initiated in his first term. US support for Israel’s military dominance of the Middle East, especially in light of the Israel-Iran war, may be part of this strategy. Indeed, Israel has been hitting numerous targets in Syria with impunity since al-Sharaa came to power. With the Syrian economy in ruins, Trump and his advisors may believe that he has enough leverage, aided by Israeli strikes, to make Syrian-Israeli normalization happen, all while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempts to keep Syria weak and decentralized. In Washington’s eyes, if the Syrian Kurds are to be sacrificed in this process, so be it. This would not be the first time that US support for the Kurds has yielded to larger US strategic priorities in the Middle East.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: DoD
