Kurdish families who were displaced from northwest Syria in 2018 are returning to their hometowns. This has been a slow process. In 2018, Turkey launched an offensive along with Syrian rebel groups into the Kurdish areas of Afrin. At the time Ankara claimed the Kurdish region was run by “terrorists.” Ankara had pushed several Syrian rebel groups to create the Syrian National Army, essentially a proxy force of Ankara.
After the invasion, around 150,000 Kurds were forced to flee. The Syrian rebel groups included extremists and they were involved in abuses, including the kidnapping of Kurdish civilians. After the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad fell in 2024, there were attempts to change things in Afrin. With Turkey less concerned about alleged “terrorists” and with a new Ankara-friendly government in Damascus, things began to move in a new direction.
While Damascus did clash with the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, there has now been some accommodation. In March 2024, the SDF leader Mazloum Abdi met with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Shara’a. New clashes in January led to an agreement to integrate the SDF into the new Syrian security forces. Now, with the agreement, more Kurds have been able to return to Afrin. This has been a trickle over the last year.
Several other groups have returned from Kurdish-held areas in recent months
Rudaw, a Kurdish media network, reported that “a convoy carrying 623 displaced families returned from the Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria to Afrin on Tuesday, a local official said.” The report says that “several other groups have returned from Kurdish-held areas in recent months under the auspices of interim authorities in Damascus, but this marks the first group to return home from Kobane. Mohammed Mohammed, administrator of Kobane’s central district, told Rudaw on Tuesday that all Afrin families living in Kobane who had registered their names were scheduled to depart at 10 am.”
This is important for Kurds. Afrin is a beautiful, mountainous area in northwest Syria. Turkey invaded it, in part, because the SDF had taken Manbij, and Ankara believed the Kurds in Syria were seeking to unify their areas in eastern Syria with Afrin. The Kurds in Afrin thus paid a price for geopolitics and other regional power politics. In 2019, it should be recalled, the US had said it would leave Syria and let Ankara invade areas near Sere Kaniyeh. Now things have changed. Turkey is a member of NATO, so it was hard for Washington to ignore Turkey’s pressure. The new government in Damascus is close to Turkey and wants to run Afrin. Therefore, civilians can return now that Syria is no longer divided.
Turkey has held talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and this has reduced Ankara’s concerns about terrorism as well.
Rudaw says that “the families had been displaced multiple times over recent years. Many first fled Afrin in 2018 during a Turkish-backed offensive on the Kurdish city, which is located in northwest Syria. They were displaced again in 2024 following the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and once more in January amid renewed clashes between Syria’s new army and Kurdish forces in northeast Syria (Rojava).” The report notes “Rudaw understands that five previous convoys carrying more than 2,400 families had already returned to Afrin from the cities of Hasaka and Qamishli.”
Ilham Ahmad, co-chair of foreign relations for the Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), was involved in the process. The AANES is the civilian component of the SDF. Rudaw added that “in April, more than 800 Kurdish families returned to Afrin, according to Hawar News Agency (ANHA), which is affiliated with the Rojava authorities. The returns followed earlier convoys of 400 families and 200 families on March 9 and April 4, respectively.”
