EditBetrayed allies: how the West abandoned the Kurds to secure a unitary Syria
From blocking arms to Turkey over Kurdish rights to endorsing Damascus's demands - Germany and its partners now back integration that echoes past failures in Aleppo
Germany now aligns with Turkey and expects the Kurds to trust the government in Damascus and place their fate in its hands, as if there had not been massacres of Syrian Alawites and Druze by Arab tribes and Syrian troops only a few weeks ago
Günter Seufert is the former Founding Director of the Centre for Applied Turkish Studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. He wrote this op-ed in personal capacity.
For decades, the Kurdish question and the associated serious human rights violations have strained relations between Turkey and Germany. At times officially and at times silently, first Bonn and later Berlin repeatedly blocked arms deliveries to Turkey. When Turkish troops occupied the Kurdish-populated Afrin region in north-western Syria in January 2018, the German government even sought to impose restrictions on arms exports to Turkey at the EU level.
By 2025, this is no longer an issue.
On Tuesday, 27 January, the Federal Foreign Office published a joint statement by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany on the situation in Northern Syria. The text welcomes the ceasefire between the Arab-Islamist forces of the new Syrian ruler, Ahmet al-Scharaa, and the Kurdish forces, which have been pushed back by Damascus’s troops in three regions.
The statement endorses Turkey’s position, which demands that the Kurdish militias in Syria fully integrate individually into the new Syrian army. Like Ankara, it calls for a unitary Syrian state without significant regional self-government. The statement therefore expects the Kurds to trust the government in Damascus and place their fate in its hands, as if there had not been massacres of Syrian Alawites and Druze by Arab tribes and Syrian troops only a few weeks ago, and as if Ahmet al-Scharaa had not previously been the commander of Islamist militias that, with Turkey’s support, attacked the Kurdish self-government.
Probably in order to further contain Shiite Iran, the United States under Donald Trump is backing a unitary Syrian-Arab state with a clearly Sunni Islamic identity. In this equation, the secular Kurdish formations that fought against the so‑called Islamic State (IS) for years with Washington’s support no longer play any role and are now being abandoned. The Arab tribes that had formed alliances with the Kurds in recent years have read the writing on the wall and switched sides.
For Turkey, Kurdish self-government in Syria since its inception has been a thorn in its side. Ankara consistently supported extremely conservative groups during the Syrian civil war. At the very start of the current fighting, the pro-government Turkish press reported that Ankara had been involved in every phase of the attack on Kurdish neighbourhoods in Aleppo and that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had personally overseen the planning. In today’s siege of Kobani, again the militias formed and equipped by Turkey are at the forefront of Damascus’s troops: the Hamza Division, the Sultan Süleyman Shah Division, and the Sultan Murat Division.
The situation in Kobani is particularly critical. There has been no electricity for days. The water supply has collapsed. There is a shortage of bread and baby formula. The influx of refugees has swelled the population of what was once a small town to 400,000 inhabitants. The town is encircled. Damascus’s troops are stationed to the west and south. To the east, the Turkish military, which took control of the region in 2019, remains in place. To the north, Turkey has sealed the border completely. Demands by the legal Kurdish party in Turkey to allow aid deliveries from Turkish territory have gone unanswered.
In recent days, fighting has repeatedly flared up despite the official ceasefire. Mazlum Abdi, the commander-in-chief of the Kurdish forces, has declared that they will not allow Damascus’s troops to occupy Kurdish-inhabited areas. An entry of the Arab troops would result in a mass exodus of Kurds to the Kurdish regions of Turkey or northern Iraq, because the inhabitants fear becoming victims of massacres.
This week, Mazlum Abdi and Ahmet al‑Scharaa seem to have agreed on a transitional solution in Damascus. According to reports, al‑Scharaa’s forces will, at least for the time being, refrain from occupying the Kurdish cities and will confine themselves to taking control of the border crossings to Turkey and of the oil industry facilities. Together with Damascus, a Kurdish police force is to be established and a Kurdish governor appointed.
At first glance, this appears to be a reasonable compromise. However, the arrangement fatally recalls what was agreed for the Kurdish districts of Aleppo. After their violent capture by the Syrian military, they are now under the administration of Damascus and large numbers of their former Kurdish inhabitants have fled.
Caption: Pro-Kurdish protesters hold a Kurdistan flag as they attempt to walk to the Kurdish-managed northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli during a demonstration in support of Syrian Kurds, in Nusaybin disrict of Mardin, Turkey, 20 January 2026. Syrian government forces pushed more into northeast Syria’s Kurdish-held areas on 20 January after taking swathes of territory long held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). EPA/METIN YOKSU
Updated: January 30, 2026 - 07:46
