Members of Syria’s Kurdish community have been forced to register their ethnicity as ‘Syrian Arab’ at nationality application centers in al-Hasakah this past week, according to a number of Kurdish activists and the non-profit Network of Statelessness Victims in al-Hasakah (NSVH), raising fears that Damascus is not serious about honoring Kurds as an integral part of the Syrian identity.
NSVH recorded the incidents in Qamishli, al-Hasakah, al-Malikiyah, al-Darbasiyah, and al-Jawadiya.
Following outrage over the incident, the Syrian-Kurdish newspaper Hawar News Agency reported on Thursday that Damascus would now allow Kurds to register their citizenship only under “Syrian” without further mentioning their ethnic identity.
Under Article 1 of Decree No. 13 of 2026, Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa promised “Syrian Kurdish citizens are considered an essential and authentic part of the Syrian people, and their cultural and linguistic identity is an inseparable part of Syria’s unified and diverse national identity” and Article 2 promises that authorities will “guarantee Kurdish citizens the right to preserve their heritage, arts, and to develop their mother tongue within the framework of national sovereignty.”
The legislation was introduced following an agreement by Syria and the formerly US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces after serious clashes. The Syrian Arab Army was accused of butchering civilians and causing a humanitarian crisis in Rojova in Damascus’s campaign to centralize power.
NSVH reported that the failure to provide an option to register as Kurdish, which was flagged during field monitoring, has raised serious concerns about Damascus’s compliance with the legislation.
A direct infringement on individuals’ right to freely self-identify
“The inclusion of inaccurate or imposed ethnic classifications contradicts the very purpose of the decree and undermines its central objective – namely, to remedy past injustices rather than reproduce them through new administrative practices. It also constitutes a direct infringement on individuals’ right to freely self-identify with dignity,” the NGO stressed.
“The Network considers that these practices may amount to indirect administrative discrimination, whereby ostensibly neutral procedures result in the effective marginalization of Kurdish identity in Syria. This is inconsistent with the principle of non-discrimination under International Human Rights Law (IHRL). The granting of nationality, as a fundamental legal right, must be carried out within a fully neutral framework, free from any imposed or inferred ethnic or cultural reclassification.”
Hasakah Governor Nour al-Din Ahmad met with Syrian Civil Affairs Director-General Abdullah Abdullah on Sunday to discuss the process of granting citizenship to Kurds, according to Syrian state media site SANA.
Elyana Elyan, a political researcher, adviser to the Kurdish Jewish community, and activist based in Israel, told The Jerusalem Post that by forcing Kurds to identify as Arabs, Damascus could claim that provinces with a high number of Kurds had an Arab majority.
“If Kurds are required to register as Arabs to obtain citizenship in Syria, this is not a restoration of rights. It is a continuation of Ba’athist policy, including the 1962 al-Hasakah census, which rendered Kurds stateless in their own homeland,” Elyan explained. “This is arabization, it is identity denial, forced assimilation, and coerced ‘integration.’”
Elyan claimed that by recording Kurds as Arabs, Syrian authorities were trying to enforce “demographic change without physical displacement” to create a sense of “political legitimacy” in Kurdish-majority areas that have been allowed to self-rule for years.
“Post-war processes rely on census data, registries, and ethnic breakdowns. If Kurds are erased in those records, their political weight is reduced before negotiations begin. Cultural rights then become contestable, including language, education, and administration,” she continued.
The precedent exists. Under Saddam Hussein, Arabization in Kirkuk combined demographic engineering with forced identity change. Kurds were pressured to register as Arabs or face expulsion and loss of rights.”
Elyan warned that the impact of administrative erasure was still felt in Kirkuk, where the contested census data property claims are still unresolved. “Once demographics are altered, even on paper, the effects compound over time and are extremely difficult to reverse,” she concluded.
US-based Kurdish analyst and journalist Mutlu Civiroglu connected the issue to the wider efforts to enforce Syria as an Arab state, notably that the country is named the Syrian Arab Republic and the military is the Syrian Arab Armed Forces. Such labels, he said, make clear that Damascus “classifies all citizens as Arab.”
“Kurdish representatives continue to call for formal recognition of Kurdish identity as the country’s second national identity, alongside the designation of Kurdish as an official state language. Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in Syria, have long lived on their ancestral lands with a distinct language, culture, and historical identity,” he added.
“Recognizing Kurdish identity in the constitution, and acknowledging it as a second national identity rather than defining the state as exclusively Arab, would mark a meaningful step forward. It would also help redress decades of policies that denied or marginalized Kurdish identity.”