No to war and brutality against Kurdish people in Syria!

Statement by DSIP, Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party in Turkey, a member of IST, International Socialist Tendency, on the recent HTS attacks against Kurdish people in Rojava, Syria 

 

No to war and brutality against Kurdish people in Syria!

 

Tensions in Syria have reached a new and dangerous point with military aggression against Kurdish forces, with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) at the centre of these operations.[i] The abandonment of the March 10 and January 18 deals[ii] in favour of military attacks is alarming for all peoples in the region. Diverse ethnic and religious groups deemed disposable by the al-Sharaa government are facing escalating repression in today's Syria. The hopes raised by the fall of the Assad regime have been dimmed by the authoritarian and exclusionary policies of the new regime, which does not tolerate any ethnic or religious difference in the country.

 

Imperialist powers, including the United States, and regional states that have pursued their own military and political interests in Syria by entrenching armed influence in the country must immediately end their interventions.

 

The right to determine Syria’s future belongs to the people of Syria. They are the only legitimate actors in building a democratic political system. A political basis for the peoples of Syria to exercise self-determination must be secured in opposition to the sectarian and monolithic logic of the al-Sharaa government.

 

Security guarantees issued by the Trump administration carry neither credibility nor reliability, especially in light of recent operations of the United States, including the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the continued deadly violence against civilians carried out by Trump's paramilitary force, ICE, inside the US. Today, the US is prioritizing its own interests as it desperately seeks to restore its diminishing global power, pursuing a “let those at the bottom die” politics.

 

The greatest responsibility for the current developments in Syria falls on Turkey. Turkey’s stance during the ISIS assault on Kobanê in 2014 created an irreparable rupture for Kurdish people, and repeating that stance today carries even greater risks. Turkey must not allow this to happen again. Turkey must stop treating Kurdish organizations as an enemy, or as a force that threatens Turkey’s existence and territorial integrity. Turkey must use its influence to open a path of dialogue with Kurdish people in Syria, and it must refuse to support the Syrian transitional government’s military attacks against Rojava. Turkey must dissociate itself from these brutal operations if there is to be any democratic future for the region. Turkey must defend a democratic coexistence of peoples in Syria on equal terms. The conditions for such a policy shift still exist against all the odds, and they must not be allowed to wither completely. Millions of people living in Turkey ask a crucial question: Why does Turkey reject democratic dialogue with Kurdish people in Syria while maintaining close relations with the al-Sharaa government?

 

Turkey’s position toward Kurdish people in Syria, while it claims commitment to negotiations and peace with Kurdish people in Turkey, severely damages the prospects for a peaceful resolution. Turkey’s role must be to take concrete steps toward a democratic peace process at home while strengthening the basis for equal coexistence among Syria’s peoples.

 

All global and regional powers must withdraw their military forces from Syria. Israel must immediately withdraw from the Syrian territory that it has opportunistically occupied during the regime change.

 

The al-Sharaa government must immediately stop its attacks on Kurdish people and rebuild a process of dialogue and peace building in the region. 

 

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[i] The recent attacks by the Al Sharaa regime against the Kurdish people started on January 8, 2026 in eastern Aleppo. The regime forces besieged three Kurdish majority neighbourhoods in Aleppo and displaced around 150,000 Kurds. By the time the statement was written, the Al-Sharaa regime had seized major sites for energy resources including Omar oil field and Conoco gas field, plus taking Tabqa and key dams and pushed the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) further to the east of the Euphrates, violating repeatedly the terms of negotiation.

[ii] These are two separate Damascus-SDF political deals (Syrian transitional government under President Ahmed al Sharaa, and the Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, led by Mazloum Abdi) that were meant to stop fighting and set terms for integrating Kurdish run institutions and forces into the Syrian state. The latter, January 18 Deal, included 14 points and did not address many crucial demands raised by the Kurdish people, including their integration into the Syrian army as units rather than individuals and decentralization measures that would give Kurdish people a certain degree of political autonomy.