The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham regime, which has friendly relations with Turkey, is unlikely to tolerate Kurdish autonomy

The fall of Bashar al-Assad after the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) takeover in Syria is bad news for the country’s Kurds. It is worth charting how things got here from the start of the war in Syria in 2012. During the conflict, the Democratic Union party (PYD) emerged as the biggest and most influential Kurdish political actor in Syria, taking territorial control in the north and maintaining an autonomous administration, albeit a fragile one.

The PYD’s position is even more precarious after the HTS takeover. Turkey, emerging as the most influential foreign actor in Syria, is laser-focused on limiting any Kurdish push for autonomy domestically and regionally. Another challenge the PYD faces is that the HTS-led regime is very unlikely to tolerate existing Kurdish autonomy in Syria.

Dr Zeynep Kaya is a lecturer in international relations at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism