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Iraqi Kurdish demonstrators protesting the deployment of Syrian authorities forces in SDF-controlled areas, on January 22, 2026.(Shwan Mohammed / AFP through Getty Images)
President Trump’s tactic of “flooding of the zone” has targeted a lot of the general public sphere on points and occasions generated by the president’s pursuits and whims, driving the struggling of thousands and thousands of individuals into oblivion. Deserved consideration is paid to Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, his intervention into Venezuela, the imposition of arbitrary and punitive tariffs on European allies, and the assault of ICE on Minneapolis. But the White House distracts and diverts consideration away from the agony of Gaza and Ukraine, Trump’s undermining of the rule of regulation, the corruption and enrichment of his household and buddies, and the disaster over affordability.
Trump’s consolation with strongmen and dictators and his hostility towards democrats, liberals, and socialists have distorted worldwide affairs in basically disruptive methods. A major instance—largely marginalized within the public sphere—is the destiny of an ally of the Americans whom Trump is able to betray as soon as once more: the Kurds of Syria.
As a scholar of nationalism and ethnic battle who has written extensively on the historical past of Turks and Kurds, together with the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians throughout World War I, and as a Kurdish instructor of philosophy deeply troubled by what’s about to befall his individuals throughout the border not removed from his hometown in southeastern Turkey, we’re satisfied that the upcoming tragedy awaiting the Syrian Kurds might be prevented—however provided that the United States acts honorably to guard a individuals who have sacrificed their lives to hold out the US mission to defeat ISIS, the brutal jihadist motion that terrorized Syria, Iraq, and different elements of the Middle East.
The Kurds are a nation and not using a state of their very own. Since World War I, the Kurdish individuals have repeatedly been used as a software by international powers—supported when handy, deserted when now not helpful. Through a century of fragmentation and struggling, tens of thousands and thousands of Kurds, divided throughout a number of states—Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia, every with its personal “Kurdish Question”—have been seen as an issue relatively than a nation entitled to self-determination. Divided by state borders, oppressed by fellow Muslims, and unable even to review in their very own native language in colleges in Turkey and Iran, the Kurds have endured systematic erasure.
For generations, Kurds have tried each path supplied to stay freely on their very own land and with fundamental dignity. They have pursued armed battle, reaching little past additional destruction and loss. They have tried negotiations, peaceable compromise, and authorized and political participation inside methods that decision themselves democratic, however their civil rights and illustration have persistently been blocked. Within the states they stay in, Kurdish politicians have given up their battle for full independence and targeted their efforts on securing autonomy inside Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. But they’ve obtained little in return—no lasting protections, no recognition of their rights, and no vital measure of justice. Kurds have typically been described as “the orphans of the world,” left with out dependable allies in moments of disaster.
In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers Party has given up armed opposition; its founder, Abdullah Öcalan, languishes on a jail island within the Marmara Sea; and people Kurdish political leaders not but imprisoned by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are desperately attempting to work out a program of rights and recognition with the Ankara authorities.
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In Iraq, Kurds—dominated by authoritarian clans—have secured unrecognized and embattled autonomy within the north of that fractured nation, however any makes an attempt at independence have been opposed internationally.
In Syria alone, throughout the 14 years of civil conflict between the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad and Islamist and different insurgents, the Kurds—who make up 10 p.c of Syria’s inhabitants—fashioned an autonomous, comparatively democratic regional authorities: the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, identified in Kurdish as Rojava (Western Kurdistan). Its ideological foundations and efforts at direct democracy arose from commitments to socialism and feminism. Kurdish armed forces, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), commanded by ladies in addition to males, fought alongside Americans towards ISIS starting in 2014, as ISIS seized a lot of northeastern Syria. With the SDF on the bottom, and American air energy, weapons provides, and intelligence, ISIS was successfully defeated as a coherent motion by 2017.
Kurds dominated giant swaths of Syria inhabited primarily by Arabs relatively than Kurds, whereas on the identical time resisting horrendously brutal incursions launched from Turkey by migrant anti-Kurdish Syrians.
The new Syrian authorities of Ahmed al-Sharaa, which got here to energy in late 2024, sought to centralize its authority all through the nation and demanded that the Kurds disband their militias and have their fighters be part of the Syrian nationwide military individually. Kurds feared such a transfer would destroy their capacity to defend their endangered autonomy. After a yr of negotiations, authorities advances drove Kurdish fighters out of Aleppo. The Syrian Kurds agreed to a ceasefire—considered one of many—nevertheless it quickly broke down.
To the cheers of native Arabs, authorities troops took the most important cities held by the SDF: Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, two cities identified to Armenians because the final cease on the pressured migrations from their properties throughout the Ottoman genocide of Armenians in 1915.
Another ceasefire was declared as movies of abstract executions of Kurdish fighters surfaced. So far, Damascus has apparently agreed to acknowledge Kurdish as an official language in Syria and grant native autonomy to the Kurdish-majority metropolis of Kobane, with out extending it to the broader area. Syrian non-Muslim Arabs worry the centralizing, ideologically inflexible rule of the al-Sharaa authorities. Non-Muslims and non-Arabs know too effectively that al-Sharaa started his profession in Al Qaeda and has not renounced his jihadist origins.
In the ethnically and religiously blended Kurdish city of Hasakah, an Armenian lady recalled that Assyrians, Kurds, Yazidis, and Arabs “lived together despite years of war.” “Until now,” she mentioned, “the autonomous administration and the SDF provided protection. What comes next is uncertain—especially after reports of massacres” in different elements of Syria.
The SDF has been guarding hundreds of ISIS prisoners for years. No nation is keen to just accept them, and militants in addition to their wives and kids anticipate choices about their destiny. As the federal government superior, Kurds withdrew from their guard posts. ISIS prisoners escaped and melted into the inhabitants; the US moved some to camps in Iraq. Authorities worry that the viral affect of ISIS—which influenced the killers within the December bloodbath of Jews on Bondi Beach in Australia—may erupt into violence and reemerge not solely in Syria however with out warning wherever on the earth.
The Americans have been caught between the al-Sharaa authorities in Damascus—supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and different Arab states—and their very own loyal Kurdish allies, who can rely solely on the Americans. Trump, whose international insurance policies depend upon his intuition, temper, and whom he final spoke to, was personally drawn to al-Sharaa when he met him within the White House. This was an ominous affective tie for the Kurds, as have been experiences that Trump seen the Kurds as appearing transactionally, simply as he does.
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“I like the Kurds,” Trump mentioned, “but just so you know the Kurds were paid tremendous amounts of money, given oil and other things, so they were doing it for themselves more than they were doing this for us. But we got along with the Kurds and we are trying to protect the Kurds.”
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On Tuesday, January 20, 2026, the Kurds “were dealt a brutal blow…. [T]he US special envoy to Syria, Thomas J. Barrack Jr., announced that the United States had effectively traded the S.D.F. as a counterterrorism partner for Mr. al-Sharaa’s government.” In a submit on X, Barrack wrote, “The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired, as Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security requirements.”
Northeastern Syria is wealthy in oil and fuel. Analogous to the invasion into Venezuela—which Trump justified as being about recovering its oil—the fossil gas assets in Syria have lengthy been cited by Trump as a cause to maintain American troops within the area. Not solely Turkey but additionally the Trump administration is ready to make a cope with Damascus, which may imply abandoning the Kurds and eliminating probably the most democratic, progressive political entity within the nation.
This present betrayal of the Kurds—condemned even by Trump toady Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina—is paying homage to the abandonment of the Kurds throughout Trump’s first administration, when in a cellphone name Trump promised Erdoğan he would withdraw American troops supporting them. Secretary of Defense James Mattis noticed the SDF as “our boots on the ground” who for three-and-a-half years had been “the point of the spear in retaking Raqqa.” He resigned in disgust in December 2018.
It is estimated that over 11,000 Kurds perished in that conflict, together with two Americans assassinated by an ISIS gunman final December. The anti-ISIS marketing campaign was successful for the American manner of conflict: Arm others, allow them to battle and die, and restrict American deaths. The capricious, transactional, and immoral nature of Trump’s therapy of the Kurds is a evident instance that different allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere already acknowledge as the brand new regular of American international coverage.
Allowing Kurdish communities to be destroyed but once more is not going to create stability nor make the Middle East safer. It will solely deepen the area’s wounds and switch an already fragile land right into a cursed panorama of infinite grief, revenge, and displacement. When individuals are denied any peaceable choice—when each authorized highway is blocked, negotiation dismissed, and democratic hope crushed—resistance turns into not a alternative however the final remaining type of survival.
As distant because the stateless Kurds are from our creativeness at this pivotal second, consideration have to be paid.
Azad Akın Arslan
Azad Akın Arslan was born and raised in Bakur (North Kurdistan, Turkey) and is a former instructor who taught philosophy in Kurdish cities. Now a citizen of the United States, he’s fluent in Turkish and Kurdish and carefully follows developments in Kurdistan and the broader Middle East.
Ronald Grigor Suny
Ronald Grigor Suny is a historian of Russia and the previous Soviet Union and an emeritus professor on the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago.
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