Kurds in Syria, who have long been discriminated against under the Assad family, want to preserve the cultural rights they fought for during years of war, which largely depends on Syria's new leaders and the outcome of the ongoing conflict between the Kurds and Turkish-backed rebels.
Soon after the civil war began in 2011, the Kurds filled the vacuum left by the withdrawal of government forces from northeastern Syria. The Kurds now control about 25 percent of Syria.
The autonomous government controls a region that many Kurds call "Rohava Kurdistan" or "Western Kurdistan".
The Kurds do not want full autonomy with their own government and parliament, but only decentralization.
The new authorities, however, are allied with Turkish-backed armed groups that launched an offensive against the Kurds in December after Assad's fall.
Fighting between the Kurds and a coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has so far forced around 100.000 people to flee their homes.
Turkey sees the SDF as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist militant group that Ankara considers a terrorist organization. Turkey has launched four incursions into northern Syria since 2016, seizing vast areas near its borders and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
The conflict has a major impact on Syria's future as its new government, led by the former Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), tries to maintain control after nearly 14 years of civil war.
Both the SDF and the authorities in Damascus are sending positive signals about their talks on the future of northeastern Syria and the Kurds. The authorities have said that the Kurds have been treated unfairly under Assad.
The commander of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, said the country should be secular and decentralized and treat all citizens equally. Western countries have urged Syria's new authorities to respect minorities and women's rights.
Abdi recalled that earlier Syrian identity cards described all its citizens as "Syrian Arabs," including non-Arabs like Kurds. They want that wording to be changed to "citizens of Syria" in the new Syria. "Kurds were persecuted by previous governments," he said. He wants anti-Kurdish laws to be repealed.
Abdi and others point out that the Kurds played an important role in the defeat of the Islamic State (IS).
The Kurdish-led SDF was formed to fight the extremists, and in 2019, SDF fighters captured the last piece of land they held, the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz. The SDF continues to fight against IS cells.
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