page_title: Kurds in Syria
section_title: French Mandate
hierarchical_section_title: Kurds in Syria / History / French Mandate
caption_attribution_description: English: Provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres for an independent Kurdistan (in 1920).
context_page_description: The Kurdish population of Syria is that country's largest ethnic minority, estimated at between 5% and 16% of the country's population. In 2019, the New York Times estimated the proportion of Kurds in Syria between 5 and 10%.
  The eastern Kurdish-inhabited region covers the greater part of the Jazira Region. Other regions with significant Kurdish populations are the western Afrin District and the central Euphrates Region. All are on the Syrian-Turkish border.
  Human rights organizations have accused the Syrian government of routinely discriminating and harassing Syrian Kurds. Many Kurds seek political autonomy for what they regard as Western Kurdistan, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, or outright independence as part of Kurdistan. In the context of the Syrian Civil War, Kurds established the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
context_section_description: Following World War I, the victorious Allied powers and the defeated Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August 1920. The treaty stipulated that Ottoman Kurdistan, which included Kurdish inhabited areas in present Syria, was to be given autonomy within the new Turkish Republic, with the choice for full independence within a year. The Kemalist victory in Turkey and subsequent territorial gains during the Turkish War of Independence led to the renegotiated Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923, which made no mention of a future Kurdish state. The majority of Ottoman Kurdish territory was given to Turkey and the rest was divided between the newly established French Mandate of Syria and British Mandate of Iraq.
  Kurdish immigration waves to Syria's Jazira province started in the 1920s, especially following the failure of the Sheikh Said rebellion against the Turkish authorities and in subsequent years. The number of Kurds settled in the Jazira province during the 1920s was estimated at 20,000 people. Sir John Hope Simpson has reported that the Jazira province had 100,000 inhabitants, among which 20,000 were Kurds. 
  Under the French Mandate of Syria, newly-arriving Kurds were granted citizenship by French Mandate authorities and enjoyed considerable rights as the French Mandate authority encouraged minority autonomy as part of a divide and rule strategy and recruited heavily from the Kurds and other minority groups, such as Alawite and Druze, for its local armed forces. Early demands for a Kurdish autonomy came from the Kurdish deputy Nuri Kandy of Kurd Dagh, who asked the authorities of the French mandate to grant an administrative autonomy to all the areas with a Kurdish majority in 1924. Also the Kurdish tribes of the Barazi Confederation demanded autonomy for the Kurdish regions within the French Mandate. But their requests were not fulfilled by the French at the time. Between December 1931 and January 1932, the first elections under the new Syrian constitution were held. Among the deputies there were three members of the Syrian Kurdish nationalist Xoybûn (Khoyboun) party from the three different Kurdish enclaves in Syria: Khalil bey Ibn Ibrahim Pacha (Jazira province), Mustafa bey Ibn Shahin (Jarabulus) and Hassan Aouni (Kurd Dagh).
  In the mid-1930s, there arose a new autonomist movement in the Jazira province among Kurds and Christians. The Kurdish leaders Hajo Agha, Kaddur Bey, and Khalil Bey Ibrahim Pasha. Hajo Agha was the Kurdish chief of the Heverkan tribal confederation and one of the leaders of the Kurdish nationalist party Xoybûn (Khoyboun). He established himself as the representative of the Kurds in Jazira maintaining the coalition with the Christian notables, who were represented by the Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Gabriel I Tappouni and Michel Dôme the Armenian Catholic president of the Qamishli municipality. The Kurdish-Christian Coalition wanted French troops to stay in the province in case of Syrian independence, as they feared the nationalist Damascus government would replace minority officials by Muslim Arabs from the capital. The French authorities, although some in their ranks had earlier encouraged this anti-Damascus movement, refused to consider any new status of autonomy inside Syria and even annexed the Alawite State and the Jabal Druze State to the Syrian Republic.
  In 1936, there French forces Bombarded Amuda. On 13 August 1937, in a revenge attack, Kurdish tribes sided with Damascus and about 500 men from the Dakkuri, Milan, and Kiki tribes led by the Kurdish tribal leader Sa'ed Agha al-Dakkuri attacked the then predominantly Christian Amuda and burned the town.  The town was destroyed and the Christian population, about 300 families, fled to the towns of Qamishli and Hasakah.
caption: Provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres for an independent Kurdistan (in 1920).
exif: {}