Kurds in Syria
The Kurdish population of Syria is the country's largest ethnic minority, usually estimated at around 10% of the Syrian population and 5% of the Kurdish population.
The majority of Syrian Kurds are originally Turkish Kurds who have crossed the border during different events in the 20th century. There are three major centers for the Kurdish population in Syrian, the northern part of the Jazira, the central Euphrates Region around Kobanî and in the west the area around Afrin. All of these are on the Syria-Turkey border, and there are also substantial Kurdish communities in Aleppo and Damascus further south.
During Ba'athist rule, human rights organizations accused the Syrian government of routinely discriminating and harassing Syrian Kurds. Many Kurds seek political autonomy for what they regard as Western Kurdistan, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, or to be part of an independent state of Kurdistan. In the context of the Syrian Civil War, Kurds established the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
Demographics
Syrian Kurds live mainly in three Kurdish pockets in northern Syria adjacent to Turkey. Many Kurds also live in the large cities and metropolitan areas of the country, for example, in the neighborhood Rukn al-Din in Damascus, which was formerly known as Hayy al Akrad, and the Aleppo neighborhoods of al Ashrafiya and Sheikh Maqsood.Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria, and make up between 5 and 10 percent of the Syrian population. The estimates are diluted due to the effects of the Syrian civil war and the permeability of the Syrian-Turkish border. The Kurdish population in Syria is relatively small in comparison to the Kurdish populations in nearby countries, such as Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. The majority of Syrian Kurds speak Kurmanji, a Kurdish dialect spoken in Turkey and northeastern Iraq and Iran.
It is estimated that at the beginning of the 20th century around 12,000 Kurds lived in Damascus; an unknown number of Kurds lived in the Kurd-Dagh region; 16,000 Kurds lived in the Jarabulus region; and an unknown number lived in the Jazira province, where they were likely the majority. The extension of the railway and road to Nusaybin in 1918 intensified the immigration of Kurds southwards into the Syrian foothills and plains along rivers. In the 1920s after the failed Kurdish rebellions in Kemalist Turkey, there was a large migration of Kurds to Syria's Jazira province. It is estimated that 25,000 Kurds fled at this time to Syria. The French official reports show the existence of 45 Kurdish villages in Jazira prior to 1927. A new wave of refugees arrived in 1929. The French authorities continued to allow Kurdish migration into the Mandate, and by 1939, the villages numbered between 700 and 800. The French geographers Fevret and Gibert estimated that in 1953 out of the total 146,000 inhabitants of Jazira, agriculturalist Kurds made up 60,000, nomad Arabs 50,000, and a quarter of the population were Christians.
Even though some Kurdish communities have a long history in Syria, most Syrian Kurds originate from Turkey and have immigrated during the 20th century to escape the harsh repression of the Kurds in that country. Kurds were later joined in Syria by a new large group that drifted out of Turkey throughout the interwar period during which the Turkish campaign to assimilate its Kurdish population was at it highest. The government has used the fact that some Kurds fled to Syria during the 1920s to claim that Kurds are not indigenous to the country and to justify its discriminatory policies against them.
History
Ayyubid period
In the 12th century, Kurdish and other Muslim regiments accompanied Saladin, who was a Kurd from the city of Tikrit, on his conquest of the Middle East and establishment of the Ayyubid dynasty, which was administered from Damascus. The Kurdish regiments that accompanied Salidin established self-ruled areas in and around Damascus. These settlements evolved into the Kurdish sections of Damascus of Hayy al-Akrad and the Salhiyya districts located in the north-east of Damasacus on Mount Qasioun.Ottoman period
The Kurdish community's role in the military continued under the Ottomans. Kurdish soldiers and policeman from the city were tasked with both maintaining order and protecting the pilgrims’ route toward Mecca. Many Kurds from Syria's rural hinterland joined the local Janissary corps in Damascus. Later, Kurdish migrants from diverse areas, such as Diyarbakir, Mosul and Kirkuk, also joined these military units which caused an expansion of the Kurdish community in the city.The Kurdish dynasty of Janbulads ruled the region of Aleppo as governors for the Ottomans from 1591 to 1607. At the beginning of the 17th century, Kurdish tribes were forcefully settled in the vicinity of Jarabulus and Seruj by the Ottoman sultans. In the mid-18th century, Ottomans recognized Milli tribal leaders as iskan başı or chief of sedentarization in Raqqa area. They were given taxing authority and controlling other tribes in the region. In 1758, Milli chief and iskan başı Mahmud bin Kalash entered Khabur valley, subjugated the local tribes and brought the area under control of Milli confederation and attempted to set up an independent principality. In 1800, the Ottoman government appointed the Milli chief Timur as governor of Raqqa.
The Danish writer Carsten Niebuhr, who traveled to Jazira in 1764, recorded five nomadic Kurdish tribes and six Arab tribes. According to Niebuhr, the Kurdish tribes were settled near Mardin in Turkey, and paid the governor of that city for the right of grazing their herds in the Syrian Jazira. These Kurdish tribes gradually settled in villages and cities and are still present in Jazira.
In the mid 1800s, the Emirate of Bohtan of Bedir Khan Beg span over parts of present day northeastern Syria. The demographics of this area underwent a huge shift in the early part of the 20th century. Ottoman authorities with the cooperation of Kurdish troops persecuted Armenian and Assyrian Christians in Upper Mesopotamia and were granted their victims' land as a reward. Kurds were responsible for most of the atrocities against Assyrians, and Kurdish expansion happened at the expense of Assyrians. Kurdish as well as Circassian and Chechen tribes cooperated with the Ottoman authorities in the massacres of Armenian and Assyrian Christians in Upper Mesopotamia, between 1914 and 1920, with further attacks on unarmed fleeing civilians conducted by local Arab militias.
In other parts of the country during this period, Kurds became local chiefs and tax farmers in Akkar and the Qusayr highlands between Antioch and Latakia in northwestern Syria. The Afrin Plateau northwest of Aleppo, just inside what is today Syria, was officially known as the "Sancak of the Kurds" in Ottoman documents. The Millis revolted against the Ottoman government after the death of their leader Ibrahim Pasa and some of them eventually settled for the most part on the Syrian side of the newly drawn Turkish-Syrian border of 1922.
When Maurice Abadie, a French general, was overseeing the French occupation of Syria, he made some observations on the settlements of Kurds in 1920: