Kurdish politics in post-2011 Syria: From fragmentation to hegemony

ABSTRACT

The PYD has emerged as the predominant Kurdish political party in Syria soon after the outbreak of the civil war. Why and how did the PYD, established only in 2003, eclipse other Kurdish groups? This article addresses this historical puzzle and argues that conventional arguments that explain the rise of the PYD primarily as a function of its coercive practices with the complicity of the Assad regime are incomplete. Deriving insights from studies focusing on transnational dynamics of civil wars, this article argues that PYD’s transborder linkages that provided the organization with crucial advantages over its co-ethnic rival organizations were central to its success. The empirical research involves several original empirical data sources including (a) biographical information of more than a thousand Syrians who joined the PKK since the late 1970s, and (b) biographical information of 785 individuals from Turkey who fought with the PYD since 2013.

KEYWORDS:

• Syria
• Kurdish politics
• civil war
• ethnic politics
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The information about the siege of Kobanî comes from an in-depth interview with a Westerner who joined the PKK, received training in its camps, and fought in several battles against the IS in 2014. According to this source, around 1,500 PKK fighters travelled to Kobanî by early November 2015. By the end of the siege in late January, around three-fifths of them were either dead or wounded. This is consistent with numbers given by Kurdish leaders. For instance, see https://rojavareport.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/tev-dem-rep-kobane-has-upset-their-plans.