“Kurdish Question” not over: how US policy helped create new Middle East problem

The PKK insurgency should not be confused with resolution of the “Kurdish Question” itself; the latter remains intertwined with the competing security strategies of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq and the United States.

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

Israel struck a Syrian military base over a potential Turkish military presence there - while Turkey and the Jewish state are now openly confronting one another over the future of Syria. This latest episode comes as the “Kurdish Question”remains substantially unresolved across the Middle East, despite recent peace initiatives and partial integration agreements.

Turkey has recently advanced a landmark peace process agreement with the PKK/Kurdish movement, including steps for disarmament, pardon, and reintegration - however, despite some optimistic reporting in the press, the broader Kurdish issue remains dangerously unresolved.

Disputes over political representation, autonomy, cultural rights, military integration and security guarantees in fact persist in Syria and Turkey, while Kurdish armed groups and opposition movements continue to generate cross-border tensions spanning Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

The war in Iran further showed how easily Kurdish actors can become entangled in wider regional conflicts. As a matter of fact, the apparent Turkish-Kurdish breakthrough does not eliminate the matter so much as relocate and transform it. Turkey’s new legislation addresses PKK disarmament and reintegration, but leaves the broader political question open.

The point is that the end of the PKK insurgency should not be confused with resolution of the “Kurdish Question” itself; the latter remains intertwined with the competing security strategies of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq and the United States.

It is worth recalling that, in 2023-2024, Turkish demands over Sweden’s NATO bid were in reality also a message to Washington about Kurdish rebels (as I wrote at the time), while US-backed Kurdish groups were already spilling over across the region. Sweden did join NATO in 2024 (when Turkey finally okayed it), yet the underlying contradiction remains.

In Syria, the January deal between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was supposed to integrate Kurdish forces into state institutions. Progress on security has been real enough: four SDF brigades have entered the national army, senior commanders have received posts, and some fighters now draw salaries through central structures. Yet political and cultural questions still lag far behind: Kurdish leaders complain of political exclusion, limited language rights, and elite deals that sideline local communities. The settlement weakens the SDF, rolls back its wartime gains, and stems largely from a US shift toward the new Syrian government. It displaces conflict into state institutions rather than resolving underlying causes.

Washington has renewed pressure on its Kurdish allies to accelerate integration as the Iran war winds down. Sources report that the US now views the “Kurdish mission” as largely accomplished and expects the SDF to submit to Damascus - but, as mentioned, things are not so simple.

Meanwhile the Iran-Iraq border shows how these tensions can flare up again: Iranian forces and pro-Iran militias continued drone and missile strikes on Iranian Kurdish groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan even after the US-Iran ceasefire. Kurdish rebel groups reportedly remain cautious of Tehran’s next moves, according to expert Wladimir van Wilgenburg, while the US-Iran memorandum appears not to cover these attacks, as Chatham House fellow Winthrop Rodgers points out .

Moreover, there are reports of ongoing arrests, executions and border killings inside Iranian Kurdistan, plus pressure on parties operating from Iraq.

US policy has been a major contributor to the contemporary internationalization of the Kurdish Question. By empowering Kurdish armed and political actors, particularly in Syria, Washington helped create a strategic contradiction with Turkey, its NATO ally. To be clear, the US did not “create” the Kurdish Question - but American policy helped turn an old unresolved national question into one of the Middle East's contemporary geopolitical fault lines, adding fuel to the fire of complex ethnopolitics at play.

From an American perspective, the contradiction lies in the fact that the United States simultaneously wanted a) Turkey as a crucial NATO ally and b) Kurdish forces as a military partner against ISIS, while Turkey in turn regarded important elements of that Kurdish movement as an existential security threat.

Thus far this contradiction has never been resolved. The Iranian war demonstrated that Kurdish organizations remain embedded in the region’s security architecture: Iranian Kurdish groups became targets of Tehran, while Ankara feared Kurdish mobilization across its borders.

The matter continues to complicate dynamics from Syria to Iran. The recent US pivot toward Turkey in turn risks deepening NATO divisions amid Israeli alarm.

In any case, Washington increasingly faces a choice between three partially incompatible objectives: 1) maintain its partnership with the Syrian Kurds and the SDF and protect the alleged political and security gains it helped create; 2) accommodate Turkey, a NATO ally whose cooperation is important to US strategy in Syria, Iraq and the wider region; or 3) avoid turning Kurdish forces into instruments of another regional war, particularly against Iran, unless it is prepared to provide credible long-term guarantees, which would be quite a challenge, to say the least.

The more successful Turkey’s current peace process becomes, the harder it may become for Washington to justify maintaining a separate Kurdish military structure in Syria that Ankara regards as linked to the very organization with which it is now making peace.

Thereby the United States may ultimately be forced to “choose” between Kurdish autonomy and security guarantees on one side - and a deeper strategic accommodation with Turkey on the other. So much for the idea that this intricate ethnic conflict could be managed indefinitely through tactical partnerships and armchair strategy. Once again, hard realities are colliding with long-standing American policy.