11 Facts About Syrian Kurdistan

Syrian Kurdistan is a Kurdish-inhabited area in northern Syria surrounding three noncontiguous enclaves along the Turkish and Iraqi borders: Afrin in the northwest, Kobani in the north, and Jazira in the northeast.

Syrian Kurdistan is often called Western Kurdistan or Rojava, one of the four "Lesser Kurdistans" that comprise "Greater Kurdistan", alongside Iranian Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan, and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kurdish cultural and political power re-emerged over the next three centuries, as Kurds in Syrian Kurdistan lived semi-autonomously within the Islamic caliphates.

Sharafkhan Bidlisi's 1596 epic of Kurdish history from the late 13th century to his own day, the Sharafnama, describes Syrian Kurdistan as extending from the Persian Gulf to the Ottoman vilayets of Malatya and Marash, an wide definition that counts the Lurs as Kurds and which takes an extreme expansionist view of the south.

New Turkish–Syrian Kurdistan border, set largely along the Berlin–Baghdad railway line between Mosul and Aleppo, divided both Arabic and Kurdish communities, leaving Arab enclaves in Turkey and Kurdish enclaves in Syria.

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South of the rail line, Syrian Kurdistan was created as "a waste product of the colonial division of the Middle East", in the words of German cultural anthropologist Thomas Schmidinger.

Just as their districts were fragmented, the Kurdish inhabitants of Syria in the French mandatory period were heterogenous, and refugees arriving from Turkish and Iraqi Syrian Kurdistan helped foster Kurdish political consciousness, engendering a "pan-Kurdism" that complemented pre-existing Kurdish identities.

The academic historian Jordi Tejel has identified "Greater Syrian Kurdistan" as being one of the "Kurdish myths" that the KDPS were involved in promoting to Kurds in Syria.

Idea of a Syrian territory being part of a "Kurdistan" or "Syrian Kurdistan" gained more widespread support among Syrian Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s.

The concept of a Syrian Kurdistan gained even more relevance after the Syrian Civil War's start, as Kurdish-inhabited areas in northern Syria fell under the control of Kurdish-dominated factions.

Syrian Kurdistan is rich in natural resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, potential hydro-electric river power, and minerals including phosphates, lignite, copper, iron, and chrome.