An October 2025 deal between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—which are linked to the Kurdish-dominated autonomous administration in the northeast—has opened a viable path to merge the SDF into Syria’s national army. The merger had been agreed to, in principle, in a March 2025 accord between the transitional government led by Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, SDF commander-in-chief, but its implementation had floundered on the details. The new US-brokered deal provides for SDF units to integrate into the Syrian army while retaining their own command structures, rather being as individuals—a model that would have dissolved the SDF’s collective identity by dispersing its fighters across regular army units under the full control of Damascus. While this deal secures the continued existence of the SDF within Syria’s national institutions, the future of political governance in the northeast remains uncertain.
The dominant party in the autonomous administration, the PYD (Democratic Unionist Party), envisions a decentralized Syrian state based on the principle of grassroots autonomy. Damascus, however, and neighboring Turkey strongly oppose this idea. For Damascus, the prospect of decentralization risks opening a Pandora’s box of challenges from local political elites across multiple provinces. For its part, Ankara remains wary of links between the PYD and its own PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which both Turkey and the United States have designated a terrorist organization.
Washington, meanwhile, seeks to balance its desire for a unified Syrian state as a bulwark against further instability in a volatile Levant with the practicalities of its ongoing campaign against the so-called Islamic State (IS), which is experiencing a resurgence in parts of eastern Syria. The SDF has been an effective US proxy against IS and was instrumental in ending the terrorist group’s territorial hold in Syria between 2014 and 2019. The SDF continues to play an important role guarding detention camps at al-Hol and al-Roj where thousands of alleged IS fighters and their families are detained. Wavering US commitments to northeast Syria— reflected in the Trump administration’s contradictory signals about withdrawing US troops from their role supporting the SDF there—means that tensions between the central government and the regional administration remains acute.
Retaining their Autonomy with US Help
Syrian Kurds are not monolithic in their political beliefs, but since the 2011 Syrian uprising the PYD has dominated the northeast. Founded in Syria in 2003 as an off-shoot of Turkey’s left-wing PKK, the PYD established its own military wing, the YPG (People’s Protection Units), early in the civil war. The PYD did not endorse the Bashar al-Assad regime, but nor did they support the Syrian uprising. Syria’s civil, secular opposition was initially at odds with demands for Kurdish autonomy, which they saw as a threat to national unity. As the war progressed, rebel groups with increasingly Islamist orientations saw the PYD’s radical left-wing politics, secularism, and commitment to local autonomy not only as a threat to Syria’s unity but also as a threat to their own Islamist political visions.
In the early days, the PYD had both ideological and organizational links to Turkey’s PKK. Yet the United States evaluated the threat from Islamic State in Syria to be so great that it risked Ankara’s irritation by providing military support to the YPG militia as it liberated the town of Kobane from IS in 2014. The success of this operation convinced Washington that the YPG was the best local force to counter IS. The United States provided the YPG with arms, logistical support, and intelligence against IS, which had by that point taken control over large parts of eastern Syria. To coordinate the struggle across an area inhabited by Kurds, Arab tribes, and Christian communities, the United States sponsored a coalition between the YPG and other militias. In October 2015, this multi-ethnic coalition was formalized as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which the YPG continues to play a dominant role.
The SDF was instrumental in ending the Islamic State’s territorial hold in Syria.
At great sacrifice—including more than 32,000 casualties—the SDF was able to defeat IS, which lost the city of Raqqa in 2017 and most of its other territory in Syria two years later. The PYD, meanwhile, was able to create a quasi-autonomous administration in northeastern Syria, based on an anarchist concept of grassroots self-governance and equal gender rights. From 2016 to 2018, this entity was officially known as “Rojava”—“west” in Kurdish—in reference to its position as the western part of traditional Kurdistan. In 2018, the name was changed to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to make it more inclusive, since the area has a majority Arab population as well as Christian minorities. “Democratic” was added to the name of the governing entity in 2023, thereafter becoming known as DAANES. These name changes indicate the PYD’s wish to emphasize the regional rather than the ethnic basis of their claims to autonomy, although critics note that DAANES’s democratic aspirations have been undermined by its persistent repression of rival Kurdish parties.
Wary of al-Sharaa and His Fighters
When al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the more pragmatic Islamist successor to Jabhat al-Nusra—rapidly took over western Syria in December 2024, the SDF was alarmed by Turkish support for the group as well as its radical history as a former al-Qaeda affiliate. The Turkish military, in alliance with the Syrian National Army (comprised largely of Syrian proxies), engaged in many strikes and battles against SDF positions in northern Syria in the weeks following Sharaa’s takeover, as it has done in many instances since 2019. In December 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated his longstanding demand that the YPG must lay down its arms or be destroyed. Turkey sees the PYD and its YPG fighters as merely an extension of the PKK and has labeled the YPG a terrorist group. For largely domestic political reasons, in early 2025 Erdoğan sought to win over Kurdish voters ahead of upcoming Turkish elections, including by improving relations with Kurdish groups. In response to this détente, in February 2025, imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan called on the group to end its campaign against Turkey, lay down its arms, and disband. Ankara maintains that PKK-linked parties outside Turkey should follow the same path. As Erdoğan’s party spokesman said, “Regardless of whether they are called PKK, YPG or PYD, all extensions of the terrorist organization must dissolve themselves.” Opinions differ in Syria, however. Commander Abdi notably stated that Ocalan’s call did not apply to the SDF.
The March 2025 Agreement
Even though the SDF retains as many as 100,000 fighters, Abdi likely felt pressure to come to an agreement with al-Sharaa in early 2025. The March 2025 agreement between Damascus and the SDF, facilitated by US officials, contained provisions to: 1) incorporate the SDF and its components into the Syrian state; 2) give the central government authority over airports, border crossings, and oil fields under SDF control; 3) recognize Kurds as an integral part of Syria and to naturalize those Kurds who were denied citizenship under the Assad regime; 4) give all Syrians the right to participate in government institutions; 5) allow Syrian refugees to return to their former homes; 6) ensure that Syrian Kurds and others would support the Syrian government in fighting Assad regime remnants and other threats to national unity and security; 7) allow Kurds to choose their own local councils and police forces and to teach their own language; and 8) implement a ceasefire across all of Syria.
The point on incorporating the SDF into the Syrian armed forces, however, was left deliberately vague. Abdi insisted that the SDF should be incorporated into the new Syrian army as separate military units, while al-Sharaa did not want the SDF to retain a distinct identity and maintained its fighters should enlist as individuals. Abdi probably viewed the slow implementation of the March agreement as prudent after Syria experienced major episodes of communal violence, first in the governorate of Latakia, in which hundreds of Alawis and scores of regime security forces were killed, and later in al-Suwayda, where tribes, motivated by reports of mistreatment of local women, streamed into the Druze-majority region, sparking large-scale killings.
Changing US Positions
The US position on Syria has evolved under President Donald Trump. Early in his second term, Trump stated, “Syria is its own mess. They got enough messes over there. They don’t need us involved in every one.” Media reports indicated that the Trump administration was preparing to withdraw US forces from Syria (which had reached 2,000 troops under President Joe Biden), alarming the SDF, which responded by warning of the persistent threat from IS cells. Moreover, US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria Thomas Barrack said that the administration was opposed to federalism for Syria. Hence, Barrack and other US officials likely pressed Abdi to reach the March 2025 agreement with al-Sharaa. In May 2025, Trump met with al-Sharaa in Riyadh at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and said that the new Syrian leader had “a real shot at pulling [Syria] together.” Trump also agreed to remove most US sanctions against Syria.
The US will likely continue to partner with the SDF for at least the near term.
The US will likely continue to partner with the SDF for at least the near term, given that IS staged 117 attacks in northeastern Syria from January to August 2025, up from 73 attacks in all of 2024, according to SDF-supplied figures. Many of these attacks are hit-and-run strikes on SDF forces, while others are assaults on checkpoints or attacks on shop owners who have failed to pay protection money to IS. At least 2,500 IS militants are still believed to be active in Syria. Their strategy may be to spring IS militants out of the camps, as they tried to do during a 2021 prison break in Hasaka. The SDF plays an important role of guarding the prison camps housing tens of thousands of IS fighters and family members.
US views on autonomy within Syria also appear to have shifted. Despite his earlier comments opposing federalism, in October 2025 Barrack said, “Does [Syria] end up being decentralized? Probably…but we’re not dictating any of that.” Barrack may have been speaking off-the-cuff and giving his personal assessment rather than representing the position of the Trump administration, but these comments likely reassured Abdi and the SDF.
SDF to Retain Military Units Within New Syrian Army
In October 2025, after a ceasefire ended clashes between Syrian army units and SDF forces protecting Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo, Abdi visited Damascus with Barrack and US CENTCOM commander Navy Admiral Brad Cooper. In discussions with Syrian government officials, Abdi insisted that the SDF would join the new Syrian army “as large military formations,” not as individual members. SDF sources explained that integration would take place “through the formation of several new military units and institutions” and identified some 70 commanders from three SDF military divisions that would merge into national structures. The integration of SDF female fighters may also concern the Islamist leadership in Damascus, which explains why these divisions might remain in northeastern Syria and retain their distinct identities. But carrying out all of these steps will not be easy, as Islamist elements in the new Syrian army may clash with the secular, leftist fighters of the YPG. Nonetheless, Abdi obtained favorable terms on military integration, and praised the efforts of Barrack and Cooper.
But No Agreement on Autonomy
Obtaining long-term autonomy for DAANES is another matter. Abdi has insisted on autonomy in a decentralized Syrian state, but Damascus and Ankara are still strongly opposed to devolution or federalism. Al-Sharaa has stated that the imposition of partition in the guise of federalism without national consensus poses a threat to Syria’s unity. Knowing that the SDF is a formidable military force—and likely will remain so even within the new Syrian army—al-Sharaa may well be counting on Turkish military power to prevent autonomy in the northeast. On October 1, 2025, Erdoğan said, “We have engaged all channels of diplomacy both to preserve Syria’s territorial integrity and prevent a terrorist structure from forming across our borders…If diplomatic initiatives are left unanswered, Turkey’s policy and position are clear.”
To be sure, al-Sharaa does not want to accommodate Kurdish demands for decentralization out of fear that other regional groups may follow suit, thereby jeopardizing the unity of the Syrian state. But the SDF’s entrenched position in northeastern Syria and the military support it has from the United States make it difficult for the PYD to give up its hard-won political gains. Unfortunately, this standoff portends conflict for Syria further down the road, as both the central government and the PYD faction of the Syrian Kurds are strongly wedded to their respective positions.
Gregory Aftandilian is a Non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC
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: X/SDF
