While the process is still far from finished, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) dominated Syrian government and the Kurdish SDF began talks on Wednesday about integrating the SDF forces into the army.
During the Syrian Civil War, the SDF set up control over substantial territory in the northeast, with the backing of the US. That territory includes a lot of Syria’s oil and gas resources, and the HTS has said it is a priority to establish strong central control over all of Syria and not allow autonomous regions like the Kurds have set up.
The Kurdish authority has agreed with the government in principle on the idea of unification, including the SDF integration, but a lot of the specifics of how that works have yet to be worked out. Last week’s announcement of a very Islamist-centric constitution has raised further concerns about the process across Syria, including among Kurdish groups.
These early talks, which started on Wednesday, seem very preliminary. It focused on a mechanism for joint committees that will be set up in April, and talk about the need for ceasefires in place across all of Syria.
The ceasefire isn’t just about the recent massive surge if violence in the Alawite northwest (and the subsequent massacre of civilians). From the Kurdish perspective, the biggest issue is active aggression by Turkey and their allies in the SNA faction against Kurdish territory. SNA and Turkish pushes against the SDF happen nearly daily, and have been raging for months, killing hundreds.
Integration of the SDF may be an issue with Turkey-Syria relations too. Turkey has been very keen to see that the Kurds have no semblance of autonomy and have to submit to the new HTS government. They’ve taken a wait and see approach to unification, but have warned repeatedly they won’t stand for any deal that doesn’t exclude “terrorists” from the process.
That’s a difficult demand to interpret, since the HTS itself, which Turkey likes, was originally al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). In general though, the comments from Turkish FM Hakan Fidan point to the SDF’s largest component, the YPG, being the real target here. The YPG is ideologically similar to the banned PKK in Turkey, and Turkish officials have long presented the two as effectively the same organization.
Turkey has leaned hard into a narrative where the main terrorists in Syria are ISIS and the PKK, not al-Qaeda affiliates, so they want to see a deal that not just limits Kurdish autonomy, but effectively brings them to heel. It remains to be seen if the HTS can end up with a deal that will satisfy the SDF and not alienate their Turkish allies, who they tapped for substantial help in post-war reconstruction.
