Syrian Kurdistan
It is surrounding three noncontiguous enclaves along the Turkish and Iraqi borders: Afrin in the northwest, Kobani in the north, and Jazira in the northeast.
[4] Kurds, widely considered to be the largest stateless ethnic group, are an Iranic ethnic group inhabiting a mountainous region known as Kurdistan that spans parts of several sovereign states in West Asia, primarily southeastern Turkey, parts of northern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran.
[8] Kurdish cultural and political power re-emerged over the next three centuries, as Kurds in Kurdistan lived semi-autonomously within the Islamic caliphates.
[10] The founder of the Ayyubids, Saladin, famous for unifying Muslims and recapturing Jerusalem from Crusaders in 1187, expanded his empire into Syria and beyond.
[14] Sharafkhan Bidlisi's 1596 epic of Kurdish history from the late 13th century to his own day, the Sharafnama, describes Kurdistan as extending from the Persian Gulf to the Ottoman vilayets of Malatya and Marash (Kahramanmaraş), a wide definition that counts the Lurs as Kurds and which takes an extreme expansionist view of the south.
Published a map showing his intenrary and mentioning five Kurdish tribes (Dukurie, Kikie, Schechchanie, Mullie and Aschetie).
[18] The victorious Allies partitioned the defeated Ottoman Empire, dividing its Kurdish-inhabited areas among new nation-states such as Syria, Turkey, and Iraq.
[23] The treaty, which was never ratified, would have created an independent Kurdistan under French patronage in Turkey without including Kurdish areas in Syria, Iraq, or Iran.
[29] South of the rail line, Syrian Kurdistan was created as "a waste product of the colonial division of the Middle East", in the words of German cultural anthropologist Thomas Schmidinger.
[34] The French mandate was not popular in France, and the local High Commissioner of the Levant sought to increase the profitability of the territory by resettling Kurds fleeing Kemalists in Turkey and other refugees in Jazira, a decision that resulted in the politicization of Kurdish ethnicity in Syria.
)[16] During the 1920s, use of the Latin alphabet to write the Kurdish languages was introduced by Celadet Bedir Khan and his brother Kamuran Alî Bedirxan and became standard in Syrian and Turkish Kurdistan.
[40] France negotiated a Treaty of Independence with the First Syrian Republic in 1936, but the onset of World War II prevented its implementation.
Allied forces retook Syria in 1941 and recognized the Syrian Arab Republic as independent and sovereign within the French mandate.
Despite their production with political aims related to specific claims on the demographic and ethnographic structure of the region, and their questionable methodologies, they have become 'Kurdistan in the minds of Kurds' and the boundaries they indicate have been readily accepted.
[43] The academic historian Jordi Tejel has identified "Greater Kurdistan" as being one of the "Kurdish myths" that the KDPS were involved in promoting to Kurds in Syria.
[48] In 1978, north of the rail line, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was founded by Abdullah Öcalan, seeking to establish an independent Kurdish state in Turkey.
[55] Cooperation between Assad and the PKK ended in the late 1990s when Turkey moved its military to the Syrian border and demanded Öcalan's extradition.
The PYD established an autonomous administration in northern Syria which it eventually began to call "Rojava" or "West Kurdistan".
[63] As the PYD-led administration gained control over increasingly ethnically diverse areas, however, the use of "Rojava" for the merging proto-state was gradually reduced in official contexts.
[69] Syrian Kurdistan comprises three noncontiguous enclaves along the Turkish and Iraqi borders: Afrin in the northwest, Kobani in the north, and Jazira in the northeast.
[70] In the northeast, Jazira (meaning "island", due to its location between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers) includes the cities of Al-Hasakah and Qamishli, the de facto capital of Syrian Kurdistan.
[61] Although the concept of an independent Kurdistan as homeland of the Kurdish people has a long history,[72] the extent of said territory has been disputed over time.
[74] During the Ottoman Empire (1516–1922), large Kurdish-speaking tribal groups both settled in and were deported to areas of northern Syria from Anatolia.
[57] The last years of Ottoman rule witnessed extensive demographic changes in northern Syria as a result of the Assyrian genocide and mass migrations.
[84][better source needed] Starting in 1926, the region saw another immigration of Kurds following the failure of the Sheikh Said rebellion against the Turkish authorities.
[85] Waves of Kurds fled their homes in Turkey and settled in Syrian Al-Jazira Province, where they were granted citizenship by the authorities of the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.
[86] The number of Kurds settled in the Jazira province during the 1920s was estimated at 20,000[87] to 25,000 people,[88] out of 100,000 inhabitants, with the remainder of the population being Christians (Armenian and Assyrian) and Arabs.
One of the most important of these plans was carried out in Upper Jazira in northeastern Syria where the French built new towns and villages (such as Qamishli) with the intention of housing the refugees considered to be "friendly".
This has encouraged the non-Turkish minorities that were under Turkish pressure to leave their ancestral homes and property, they could find refuge and rebuild their lives in relative safety in neighboring Syria.
[101] Lying between Orontes, Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the area contains productive arable farmland,[100] giving the region the appellation of the "granary" of Syria.
