Syria in 2025 under HTS rule: Violence, attacks and massacres against women increased

Since HTS came to power in Syria on December 8, 2024, 650 women, including 29 children; lost their lives for different reasons such as remnants of war, armed attacks, sectarian attacks, domestic and social violence.

ANF
NEWS CENTER
Thursday, January 1, 2026

After the collapse of the Baath regime, with the support of global powers, a jihadist and misogynistic mentality came to power in Syria this time. This development, which took place in the last month of 2024, once again showed that it is only the names that have changed for women who have been oppressed, persecuted and massacred in Syria for many years.

Women have made very important gains during the revolution in North and East Syria. Despite the heavy wreckage of the Baath regime, women in this region rose from the ashes and took their place at the very center of the revolution.

As we entered 2025, women in Syria aimed to spread the struggle throughout the country as usual, to increase women's gains and to place women at the center of life.

However, this jihadist structure brought to power in Syria has stood as one of the most serious obstacles to these goals. HTS, which has left behind a year in power, has never mentioned women's rights; did not include women in the interim administration. Instead of reducing the massacres of women in Syria, it continued to encourage violence against women. The revelation that Shadi al-Veysi, who was appointed to the Ministry of Justice in the interim administration, was a murderer of women aggravated this picture.

The Turkish state, which is trying to turn the security vacuum caused by the change of power in Syria into an opportunity, increased its attacks on Syria, especially North and East Syria, at the beginning of 2025. Women were the first to be targeted in these attacks.

JANUARY

The first two months of 2025 were marked by the resistance of the Tishreen Dam and the Qereqozaq Bridge. Women led the resistance watches at the Tishrin Dam. The Turkish state carried out attacks targeting the convoy that went to the vigil in order to break the resistance.

On January 8, Kerem Ehmed Shehabî El Hemed, one of the leaders of the Zenubiya Women's Community, was killed in the bombardment of the convoy going to the Tishrin Dam.

On January 11, in an attack on the Koçerat region of Dêrik, Şehnaz Omer, one of the executives of Kongra Star, was murdered.

On January 19, the PYD General Assembly announced that Menice Haco Heyder, a member of the party's General Assembly and Co-Head of the Qamishlo Office, was martyred in the attack carried out by the occupying Turkish state at the Tishrin Dam.

On January 22, the Assembly of Martyrs' Families of North and East Syria announced the martyrdom of Ronîz Mihemed Elî, a young woman who was seriously injured in the attack of the occupying Turkish state on the people at the Tishrin Dam on January 15.

On January 24, the YPJ General Command announced that Commander Arjîn Kobanê was martyred during the resistance against the occupation attack on the Tişrîn Dam.

Women reacted harshly to the participation of the gang leader named 'Abu Hatim Shakra', the murderer of Martyr Hevrîn Xelef, Secretary of the Future of Syria Party, at the ceremony where Jolani declared himself the President of Syria.

FEBRUARY

On February 6, the second day of the Rojava People's Tribunal, where the crimes of the Turkish state were tried, continued with the presentation of evidence on the crimes of torture, massacre and rape against women.

On February 12, thousands of women marched in Qamishlo with the slogan "Jin Jiyan Azadi Philosophy Wins Against Conspiracies" to condemn the international conspiracy and demand the freedom of Leader Apo.

MARCH

As of March, March 8 International Working Women's Day activities have intensified. Women's movements in North and East Syria have started their first preparations for 2025 by setting the program for March 8 Women's Day. In this context, the Joint Action Platform of Women's Organizations and Movements in North and East Syria announced its action program with the slogan "We are Building a Democratic Syria with the Philosophy of Jin, Jiyan, Azadi".

On March 8, final rallies were held in the cantons of Cizîr, Fırat, Reqa, Tebqa and Dêrazor on March 8.

1. The Kurdish Women's Conference ended on March 23 with a final declaration consisting of 12 articles. The declaration called for "the urgent realization of the Kurdistan National Congress, which is the hope and desire of the whole society and Kurdish women."

Women also left their mark on the March 21 Newroz celebrations. The intense participation of women in Newroz celebrations held in many centers drew attention. In the first Newroz held after Leader Apo's February 27 call, women showed that they embraced the process and would fight for it to be successful.

On March 24, the Platform for Joint Action of Women's Movements and Organizations announced the launch of a campaign to support women in the coastal areas of Syria with the slogan "Supporting Syrian women is the basis for stopping the massacres of women in coastal areas".

APRIL

April 4, the birthday of Leader Apo and the anniversary of the founding of the YPJ, was celebrated with enthusiasm under the leadership of women in North and East Syria.

On April 14, representatives of 24 women's organizations and political parties in Kurdistan came together to form the Kurdish Women's Union Platform.

MAY

Thousands of women who came together in Hesekê under the leadership of Kongra Star on May 3 demanded freedom for Leader Apo and gave the message "Freedom and stability cannot be achieved without Leader Apo being free."

On May 8, the appointment of Hatim Abu Shaqra, known as the murderer of Hevrîn Xelef, to a military post by the Damascus regime was protested with simultaneous statements held in many cities of North and East Syria.

JULY

Crimes against women were committed in the attacks launched by the Syrian Transitional Government forces on Suwayda on July 13. On July 30, the Joint Action Platform of Women's Organizations and Movements in North and East Syria organized a campaign in support of women in Suwayda with the slogan "Together to protect women in Suwayda from genocide".

The anniversary of the July 19 Rojava-Women's Revolution was celebrated by many circles, especially women's organizations.

Sara Organization for Combating Violence Against Women launched the "Sexual Abuse is a Crime, No to Cover-Up" campaign at the end of July. The campaign continued until the beginning of October.

AUGUST

On August 3, on the 11th anniversary of the Sinjar Genocide, women's organizations in North and East Syria called on the international community to intervene urgently, drawing attention to the increasing attacks on women in Suwayda.

SEPTEMBER

On September 18, the Women's Delegation for North and East Syria met with the Speaker of the French Parliament, Yaël Braun-Pivet, deputies from the left bloc and representatives of the Green Party.

On September 20, the conference titled "Women's Unity is the Foundation of the Establishment of a Decentralized and United Syria" organized by Kongra Star and Zenûbiya Women's Community in Hesekê ended. Approximately 700 women, including politicians, lawyers, intellectuals and activists from different cities of Syria, attended the conference.

On September 22, the Women's Delegation for North and East Syria met with representatives of Women For Women International in Berlin, the capital of Germany.

Continuing its contacts in Europe, the North and East Syria women's delegation met with many German, Iranian and Kurdish academics and women's rights organizations in Germany.

After completing their meetings in Germany, the Rojava Women's Delegation met with parliamentarians, non-governmental organizations and the public in Switzerland.

The Rojava women's delegation, which went to Switzerland after Germany, met with Assyrian women. The Rojava women's delegation, which met with women's organizations in Zürich, called for international solidarity for a democratic solution in Syria. The women's delegation discussed the developments in Rojava and Syria and the situation of women at the panel held in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The delegation's diplomatic activities ended with a meeting event held in Aarou, Switzerland.

OCTOBER

On October 2, Heyva Sor a Kurd, in cooperation with the Cizre Canton Health Committee and the Syrian Free Women's Foundation, launched a campaign with the slogan "Early Diagnosis, New Life".

On October 8, the PYD Women's Assembly launched a campaign to fight against violence against women.

Thousands of women from Cizîrê Canton organized a march in the city of Tirbespiyê with the slogan "Leader Apo's physical freedom is the key to solution and peace". The march was held to condemn the October 9 International Conspiracy against Leader Apo.

On October 12, Kongra Star and the Zenubiya Women's Community launched a campaign demanding the establishment of a free and democratic Syria with the slogan "We will build a free, democratic, decentralized Syria with the solidarity of women." The campaign ended on November 12.

On October 25, the Women's Assembly of Martyrs' Families held its 3rd conference with the slogan "Let's make democracy and peace permanent and ensure the physical freedom of Leader Apo with the spirit of the martyrs of freedom".

Hêvî Silêman, a member of Kongra Star Afrîn-Shehba Coordination, who served for the Kurdish people and women for many years and played a role in the resistance, died on October 28 due to an illness.

NOVEMBER

On November 5, the YPJ and PYD Women's Assembly held a joint workshop titled "Syrian women's unity for freedom, justice and equality under the umbrella of Women's Protection Units" in Kobane.

On November 8, the 4th Annual General Assembly of the Women Journalists Union (YRJ) was held in Qamishlo. Conference was held.

On November 15, the Joint Action Platform of Women's Organizations and Movements in North and East Syria organized an event with the slogan "Together we build a democratic and social society to end violence".

On November 16, the Cizre Canton Women's Committee launched a campaign to support children on the occasion of World Children's Day (November 20).

The Joint Event Platform of Women's Movements and Organizations in North and East Syria started the November 25 events. The platform announced that this year's events will be held with the slogan 'Let's End Violence by Building a Democratic and Communal Life Together'.

In the final rallies held in four centers of North and East Syria and in the city of Aleppo on November 25, the messages "Let's increase the struggle against the dominant mentality and ensure equality" were given.

HUNDREDS OF WOMEN WERE MURDERED UNDER HTS RULE

Since HTS led by Jolani came to power in Syria on December 8, 2024, 650 women, including 29 children; lost their lives for different reasons such as remnants of war, armed attacks, sectarian attacks, domestic and social violence. It was reported that the highest number of cases were recorded in Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Hama, Damascus countryside, Daraa, Tartus, Quneitra, Latakia, Suwayda and Damascus-controlled Deirazor.

Aleppo: 31 women, including 2 children

Damascus: 14 women, including 1 child

Homs: 34 women, including 8 children

Hama: 36 women, including 3 children

Daraa: 23 women, including 5 children

Latakia: 16 women

Derazor: 28 women, including 2 children

Suwayda: 34 women, including 2 children

Damascus countryside: 29 women, including 1 child

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) documented the murder of 127 women by armed groups affiliated with the Syrian Transitional Government. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reported that more than 100 women were killed in coastal massacres alone, while 130 women were killed in Suwayda.

SYRIA

Post-Modern Colonialism: The Scandalous Barter of the SDF and Hamas

By Mahir Engizek

December 22, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image courtesy of MAHİR ENGİZEK

On the blood-soaked map of the Middle East today, behind visible diplomatic crises and high-pitched rhetorical wars, one of the most pragmatic and shocking negotiations in history is being conducted. This bargain is a clandestine bridge built between the founding reflex of the Republic of Turkey, characterized by anti-Kurdish animosity, and the existential security doctrine of the Israeli state, centered on the liquidation of Hamas. 

The concept of “necropolitics” formulated by Achille Mbembe, defined as the authority to dictate who may live and who must die, constitutes the common ground between these two states. The modern state no longer defines its sovereignty merely through borders, but through the absolute transition of power over the biological and political existence of societies. 

For Turkey, Northern Syria and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Rojava represent the laboratories where this sovereignty is tested through systemic violence; for Israel, the same applies to Gaza and Hamas. However, the outputs of these laboratories are being bartered today at a secret table. This involves the constriction of Hamas’s maneuvering space in exchange for opening the fate of a people in Rojava to occupation. 

To comprehend this process, one must transcend the shallow interest calculations of classical realist theories and examine the biopolitical continuity within the depths of the state mind. While Turkey and Israel have historically sought to design the region through strategies like the “Containment Doctrine,” they have coded the rise of non state actors, particularly dynamics like the Kurdish Freedom Movement that produce 

systemic alternatives, as an “ontological threat” to their own nation-state paradigms. 

For Ankara, the Kurdish question is no longer a matter of border security but a fear of awakening from a century-old unitary state fantasy. The deliberate destruction of the 2013-2015 resolution process and the subsequent development of the concept of total war have reduced Ankara’s entire foreign policy to a single knot: breaking the international legitimacy of the SDF. 

On the other hand, in the post-October 7 period, Israel has defined Hamas not just as a military rival, but as the spearhead of Iran’s regional hegemony search and a structure that undermines its own social security. At this point, the paths of the two states intersect in seeing each other’s enemies as “bargaining chips.” The logic operating here is the reflection of the state’s disciplinary power, as defined by Michel Foucault, onto the international plane. Turkey intends to use Israel’s immense influence over the United States security bureaucracy as a lever to terminate Washington’s strategic partnership with the SDF. 

In return, Israel demands that Turkey limit its indirect influence, financial flows, and political representation capacity regarding Hamas. This is a “threat exchange” rarely seen in the history of international relations. Two states place two resistance centers 

from different geographies on the scales of a balance; they offset the dose of severity in one with a promise of flexibility in the other.

This is an attempt to turn the freedom demands of peoples into intelligence files to be shelved in colonial metropolises. Especially considering the Mossad-CIA cooperation behind the international conspiracy of February 15 against the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan, it is clear that the current negotiations are a rehearsal for a new wave of conspiracy. This historical continuity between security bureaucracies operates independently of the ideological rhetoric of political powers and keeps that cold monster known as the “reason of state” perpetually alive. 

This new phase of colonial necro-power is a totalitarian reasoning based on depopulating geographies, expropriating identities, and criminalizing resistance. Every drone operation by Turkey against Rojava feeds from the same theoretical root as Israel’s blockage strategy in Gaza: the exceptionalization of life. 

Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “homo sacer” manifests today in the flesh both in the villages of Rojava and among the ruins of Gaza. The state deems all forms of violence permissible in these areas it has declared outside the law and derives legitimacy by making this violence a subject of negotiation with another colonial power. 

Ankara’s rhetoric criticizing Israel’s genocidal attacks in Gaza while approaching back-door diplomacy with the proposal “remove the protective shield over the SDF in exchange for Hamas” is the very picture of the moral bankruptcy of modern politics. This bankruptcy is the shared sin of not only these İwo states but all regional guardians of capitalist modernity. 

The “Democratic Confederalism” model offered by the Kurdish Freedom Movement rises precisely against this necropolitical bargain as the “defense of life.” Against the alliance of death established by states, the life alliance formed by peoples around democratic modernity is the true antidote to these secret tables. 

The security apparatuses of Turkey and Israel act like two master players in a chess game, inciting the ancient peoples of the Middle East against one another. In this game, it is not pawns but the very existence of peoples that is sacrificed. Israel opening space for Turkey’s neo-Ottoman expansionism to break Iranian influence in the Syrian theater, in return for Turkey serving Israel’s regional recognition and security concerns by marginalizing Hamas, is a project to transform the region into a heap of “secured ghettos.” 

This project carries a character that destroys social ecology, targets the women’s liberationist paradigm, and institutionalizes fascism. What the Turkish state sanctifies as a “Survival Issue” is actually the possibility of the Kurdish people’s free will breaking colonial chains. For Israel, “Survival” means the total paralysis of the Palestinian people’s resistance capacity and the suppression of the awakening in the Arab street. Therefore, this hidden frequency between Ankara and Tel Aviv stands as a “strategic barricade” against the revolutionary potential of the peoples. 

The mortar of this barricade is mixed in interrogation chambers, isolation systems in prisons, and concrete walls on border lines. Both states provide diplomatic protection for each other’s extrajudicial executions by placing their own “internal enemies,” who are actually peoples seeking freedom, into the universal parenthesis of terrorism. 

The philosophical background of this dark synthesis is the “positivist-nationalist” mind inherited from the Enlightenment and applied in its crudest form in the Middle East. This mind views differences as “malfunctions” to be destroyed. The multi-identity, secular, and egalitarian order established by Kurds in Rojava is the greatest nightmare of this mind. The apartheid regime of Israel and the monist-assimilationist regime of Turkey feed on each other’s dirty methods to end this nightmare. 

When the technological surveillance systems of one combine with the demographic change and ethnic cleansing practices of the other, what we face is the “absolute control society.” This control is not only military but also ideological. The religious referenced resistance of Hamas and the paradigm-oriented freedom struggle of the SDF are being attempted to be melted in the same pot by the states. Yet, while one is a tool for gaining power within the system, the other is a revolution that radically rejects the system. Even though Turkey knows this subtle difference, its attempt to put both in the same terror bag is an effort to increase the bargaining power of the exchange offered to Israel. This is being staged in the most vulgar, most professional, and most shocking form of the state mind. 

THE INTELLIGENCE NEXUS, PROXY WARS, AND THE THEATER OF SECURITY 

The anatomy of this secret bargain is not just a diplomatic exchange but also a contemporary reincarnation of the historical accumulation of Middle Eastern deep state apparatuses centered on MIT and MOSSAD. The international conspiracy carried out against Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan at the end of the 1990s is the most concrete and bloody proof of how cooperation between these two services can transform into a “strategic destruction apparatus” against the free will of peoples. 

The current “Hamas-SDF exchange” negotiations are a digitized and multi-layered continuation of that day’s conspiracy. When Ankara sits at the same table with Israel, to which it appears ideologically diametrically opposed, it actually meets on a colonial common ground: the sacrifice of all social values for the survival of the state. 

At this point, Turkey’s discursive protection of Hamas is actually a “geopolitical credit” it has accumulated to strengthen its hand at the bargaining table with Israel. This credit is designed as capital to be spent on liquidating the revolutionary gains in Rojava. 

Israel’s security doctrine is based on creating subservient or at least manageable areas of instability while weakening the surrounding Arab states. However, the “Democratic Nation” paradigm built by the Kurdish Freedom Movement in Rojava is a radical alternative that does not fit Israel’s strategy of inciting micro-nationalisms but instead takes the brotherhood of peoples as its basis. 

For this reason, for Israel, the SDF has only been able to receive occasional tactical support on a rhetorical basis and has never reached the status of a strategic ally. Ankara reads this reality very well and sends the following message to Israel: “The real danger for you is a democratic awakening you cannot control; come, let us soothe your security concerns regarding Hamas with my Islamist card, and you help me end my Kurdish nightmare.” 

This is a complete “fascist synchronization.” The reflection of this synchronization on the ground is the silence of Israel while the occupying Turkish army bombs the civilian infrastructure of Rojava, and the deep harmony between Turkey not withdrawing trade ships from ports while Israel levels Gaza. 

The definition of “sovereignty” discussed by Carl Schmitt within the framework of “Political Theology” finds life today in the “spaces of exception” these two states offer each other. Turkey has created a “gray zone” in Northern Syria completely outside of international law. The war crimes, demographic engineering, and occupation practices committed in this region use the exact same methods as Israel’s settler colonialism in the West Bank and Gaza. Both states legitimize their own lawlessness in the mirror of the other. 

Ankara creates a “norm of complicity” by saying to Israel, “Just as you declare Hamas a terrorist organization and besiege Gaza, I melt the PKK/YPJ in the same pot and besiege Rojava.” When this norm is combined with the silence of global powers like the EU and Russia, a distribution table similar to a new “Yalta Conference” emerges in the Middle East, ignoring the will of the peoples. 

At this table, Turkey’s promise to relax support for Hamas is also a confession of how easily Islamist ideology can be instrumentalized for state interests. While the representatives of Political Islam in Ankara perform Palestinian literature in the squares, they share coordinates in the kitchen with Israel on how to destroy the gains of the Kurds. This situation is not just hypocrisy but the necropolitical character of the state mind that is “above ideologies.” 

The Kurdish Freedom Movement defines this process as the “crisis of the regional agents of Capitalist Modernity.” Indeed, both states attempt to overcome their internal crises, such as economic collapse and regime blockage in Turkey, and political-social division and security vulnerabilities in Israel, only through these bloody exchanges against structures they have coded as external enemies. 

This nexus at the intelligence level is not limited to operational information sharing; it is also a “transfer of method.” Israel’s assassination technologies and targeted killing strategy are the fundamental philosophy used today by Turkish drones when targeting vanguard cadres and civilian leaders in Rojava. Both states carry out a “technological fascism” aimed at surrendering the body of society by targeting the brain of resistance centers. 

This technological superiority creates a “security theater” on the ground; in this theater, civilian deaths are coded as collateral damage while the freedom demands of peoples are imprisoned in the parenthesis of terrorism. However, the curtain of this theater is torn every time by the self-defense resistance of the YPG, YPJ, and SDF in Rojava and the unyielding stance of the Palestinian people. Because Ankara and Tel Aviv see this truth, they radicalize the bargain further, promising each other absolute destruction. 

The presence of Iran, which is in search of regional hegemony, is another common source of motivation for these two states. While Turkey is disturbed by Iran’s expansionism in Syria in the past and now in Iraq and other countries, Israel sees this as a direct existential threat. However, because the Kurdish struggle for freedom offers a third way that serves neither Turkey’s expansionism nor Iran’s sectarian hegemony, it is the primary target for liquidation for both colonial powers. 

The “Hamas for SDF” exchange is actually an attempt by all status quo powers in the region to push everything that is popular and democratic out of the system. At this point, going beyond professional analysis, it must be said: this bargain is the last great alliance of the colonial monsters of modernity. The ecological, women’s liberationist, and democratic system established by the Kurds in Rojava stretches both the mental and structural boundaries of these colonial monsters. 

Ankara is actually seeking a kind of absolution with this exchange offered to Israel and

searching for a return ticket to the Western system in the region. The promise to restrict the financing and logistics of Hamas’s military and political wings is a lever used to break the perception of Turkey as an unreliable ally in the Western world. 

At the other end of this lever stands the removal of the SDF from American protection and a green light for Turkey’s new wave of occupation under the name of fighting terrorism. This is the most shocking, most naked, and most immoral geopolitical gamble carried out over the blood of peoples. What states call “national interest” at this table is leaving one people, the Kurds, without status, and leaving the other people, the Palestinians, without resistance by imprisoning them in a ghetto. 

THE LIQUIDATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE RADICAL RESPONSE OF DEMOCRATIC MODERNITY 

This secret negotiation traffic between Turkey and Israel is not just a search for a regional alliance, but also the final liquidation of that fictional structure called “International Law” on a global scale. Hegel’s arrogant definition of the state as “the march of God on earth” has transformed today into a “death machine” in the personae of these two states. 

Ankara and Tel Aviv, while trading in each other’s files regarding the SDF and Hamas, are actually constructing a new rule of the global system: “The sovereign defines the enemy and legitimizes all forms of violence by pushing them outside the law.” This is now a post-modern stage of colonialism where the Geneva Conventions or United Nations norms have become mere ornaments, and the “law of the jungle” is blended with digital and military technology. 

The place where this universe is most nakedly visible is the attempt to destroy the living spaces established by the SDF in Rojava and the resistance lines in Gaza by placing them in the parenthesis of terror. Turkey’s equation of “Kurds in exchange for Hamas” is actually a “survival package” offered to each other by the two outposts of Western imperialism in the region. The Kurdish Freedom Movement defines this process as the “Third World War of Capitalist Modernity.” 

In this war, the fronts are no longer just between armies; they are between the status quo of states and the search for democratic confederalism by peoples. Turkey’s actions last year in cutting off water in Rojava, bombing schools and hospitals, and targeting civilians and civilian settlements with drones were produced in the same theoretical laboratory as Israel’s policy of total siege and starvation in Gaza. The name of this laboratory is “Necro-Politics.” The state must create disposable lives to sustain its own existence. Kurds and Palestinians are being pushed into the category of disposable lives at this bargaining table. 

However, at this point, the “Third Way” strategy of the Kurdish Freedom Movement is the greatest obstacle to this bloody exchange. This strategy, which relies on neither Turkey’s neo-Ottoman expansionism nor Israel’s regional entrenchment, is a system built by the self-power of peoples. 

Turkey’s expectation from Israel to “mobilize anti-SDF lobbies over Washington” is an effort to stifle the ideological victory won by the Kurds through diplomatic means. Israel, in return for Turkey deporting Hamas leadership or cutting off financial resources, promises that it can convince neo-conservative wings within the US to give a “green light” to Turkey’s occupation of Rojava. This is the buying and selling of the freedom demands of peoples like trade commodities in colonial capitals.

From a philosophical perspective, this secret synchronization between Turkey and Israel is the end of the “universal human rights” fairy tale of the Enlightenment in the dusty deserts of the Middle East. As Walter Benjamin said, “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.” 

The demographic change and the attempt to erase Kurdish identity from the earth implemented by Turkey in Afrin and Serekaniye is a carbon copy of Israel’s settler colonialism practices in Palestinian lands. Both states derive legitimacy for their own crimes by covering the crimes of the other. Ankara’s heroic speeches saying “Israel is a murderer” are merely an “illusion curtain” used to make the domestic and Islamist public forget the genocidal policy it carries out against the Kurds. Behind this curtain, a professional exchange process is being conducted where the heads of MOSSAD and MIT share coordinates and bank account numbers over the SDF and Hamas files. 

At this point, it is necessary to clarify the stance of the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the SDF against this shocking exchange in professional terms: this movement is not just a military structure but a historical subject aiming for the democratization of the Middle East. Every decision coming from the secret table of Turkey and Israel is actually a blow to the democratic future of the Middle East. 

The liquidation of the SDF means the revival of barbaric structures like ISIS and the region being thrown into dark tunnels once again. The bargain conducted over Hamas is an attempt by state security bureaucracies to domesticate the Palestinian people’s legitimate right to resistance. These two colonial powers are so afraid of the united struggle of peoples that even in the deepest moments of crisis, they do not hesitate to extend a “saving hand” to one another. 

In conclusion, this hidden bridge established between Turkey and Israel is the expression of the modern state mind in its most pathetic form. The peoples of the region, including Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and Assyrians, are the only power that can prevent the states from sitting at this bloody bargaining table. The “Democratic Modernity” paradigm is the radical defense of life, ecology, and women’s freedom against this “death bargain” of the states. 

Ankara’s demand for Rojava in exchange for Hamas is the last gasp of a system destined for the dustbin of history. From the perspective of the Kurdish Freedom Movement, as this shocking bargain is deciphered, the lies marketed by states under the name of “security” will collapse and the common will of peoples to live together will prevail.

The Hope of the Future is Still in Rojava

By Rahila Gupta

December 11, 2025

Source: Tribune

The People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) are predominantly-Kurdish armed militias which have played a key role in fighting Islamic State in the Syrian civil war. KURDISHSTRUGGLE/FLICKR/CREATIVE COMMONS

Forged during the Syrian war, Rojava’s experiment in radical self-government offers a lens for examining how the left sustains hope under siege.

How should the progressive left respond to the experiment of Kurdish-led revolutionary Rojava in north-east Syria with its commitment to direct democracy, ecological sustainability, women’s rights and multi-ethnic inclusivity? It is a question that is bound to have plagued anyone who has visited Rojava, for whatever length of time, and come away humbled and impressed by a people swimming against the neoliberal current that has the world in its grips.

I too have grappled with this question. While no simple blueprint can reproduce the revolution elsewhere, I have toyed with more literal possibilities, taking a leaf out of the Kurdish diaspora’s playbook — setting up citizens’ assemblies along the lines of democratic confederalism to deal with local issues, build democratic muscle, and bring about change. Perhaps it could become as effective as the local experiment in Porto Alegre in Brazil once was. Set up in 1989, it received millions in participatory budgeting and redirected services to the most marginalised communities. That seems to be the limit of what can be achieved under neoliberal states; beyond that, political imagination falters, resorting to the idea of preparedness — like the Kurds quietly setting up citizens’ councils under the radar of Assad’s Syria until the Arab Spring in 2011 created a vacuum in the north and east and allowed them to achieve an almost bloodless revolution. Assad was too busy crushing the uprising down south.

Matt Broomfield, who spent three years in Rojava, approaches the question in his own, unique and thoughtful way. He embarks on a deep philosophical and practical engagement with the idea and reality of Rojava to tackle the defeatism of the left following the failure of the workers’ revolution in the twentieth century. He wants to engender that preparedness in what he sees as a disorganised Western anarchist movement weighed down by ‘left melancholy’. He runs through the post-Marxist philosophers who failed to identify a class of people who could be tasked with the job of transforming society, dismissing David Graeber’s ‘99 percent’, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s ‘multitude’, and John Holloway’s ‘rabble’, as too diffuse. He speculates whether this century’s political subject will be the climate migrant. However, it is Öcalan’s identification of women as the vanguard of change — a revolutionary force theorised as the first group of people to be enslaved — that drives the Rojava revolution and has set feminist imagination on fire everywhere.

At the organisational level, Broomfield considers whether the pragmatism of the Kurdish freedom struggle has any lessons to offer the Western Left, particularly the anarchist strand with its purist commitment to horizontalism. In Rojava, they have achieved a ‘novel synthesis: a militant, vertical organisation [which] empowers a communal, horizontal politics.’ The verticalist organisation is a leftover from the Kurdish movement’s Marxist-Leninist roots, which encourages discipline, even hierarchy, while paradoxically facilitating a decentralised challenge to that hierarchy. It is effective in a way that anarchists are not, leaving them open to subversion and co-optation, chaos and malaise.

When the existential battle for the city of Kobane, aggressively besieged by ISIS in 2014, looked in danger of being lost, the Kurds accepted the US coalition’s offer of air-cover, fully aware of the transactional nature of that relationship. This proved to be a decisive turning point in their fortunes. The willingness to sup with the imperialist devil in a desperate bid for survival discredited Rojava among some sections of the left. Similarly, they have engaged with Russia and played off several regional powers against each other, including conservative religious forces in the erstwhile ISIS caliphate. Broomfield commends this ‘respectful, open approach to the very culture it aims to revolutionise’ as a strategy that should be deployed in our own contexts.

Political philosophy is marshalled to buoy up the spirit of activists to stay with the grind of political work through a paean to hope, enriched and informed paradoxically by the very hopelessness of the struggle. Broomfield’s early Christian upbringing made him receptive to the dictum, ‘I believe because it is impossible’. He started the project to see if hope remained possible in the twenty-first century, after the Holocaust, the pandemic, the era of left defeat and in the middle of a climate catastrophe. With the help of mainly Western philosophical, literary and theological commentaries, Broomfield looks for hope that has been wrung out of despair — the only kind that can lend a spine to resistance, where even suicide could be interpreted as an act of hope for a better world. This is not the empty hope of neoliberal ideology, ‘an equal opportunity resource’, where each of us could have a better life if only we set our minds to it. Without wanting to diminish it, the book could even be described as a self-help manual for the aspiring revolutionary.

In an interesting neologism borrowed from the internet, he enumerates the ‘copium’ (a merger of coping and opium) strategies that activists can use to prevent burnout and fatalism and manage doubts and insecurities: a quasi-religious commitment to a revolutionary future; a secular leap of faith towards a socialist utopia; a healthy dose of self-delusion; and a transition from individual self-care to the collective self-care of the Kurdish movement, which discourages individualism.

Broomfield asks: if we can and do deceive ourselves in the service of capitalist hegemony, why not in the service of revolution? It is a striking question. Both require sacrifice and deprivation, and only one offers the prospect of radical change and a possibly glorious future, but the wiles and stratagems of capitalism can lure the best of us into the path of least resistance. Individualism, turbocharged by our neoliberal times, undermines the collective struggle that revolutionary change necessarily entails.

While Broomfield is refreshingly honest about the shortcomings of the Rojava revolution, his view that the compromises that it has had to make in the Arab-majority areas generated ‘the movement’s most revolutionary moments’ is unduly optimistic for a book about hope without hope. Many of the compromises entailed concessions on feminist commitments, including the reversal of a ban on polygamy — a chilling example of democracy trumping women’s rights.

Matt Broomfield’s Hope Without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment is published by AK Press.

IMPERIALIST TURKIYE OUT OF SYRIA!

Syrian Kurdish YPG should stop delaying Syria integration, Turkey says

"The YPG/SDF must stop its policy of playing for time," Fidan told a joint press conference with his Syrian counterpart Asaad al-Shibani in Ankara.

KURDS, DRUZE, ALAWITES & CHRISTIANS WANT A PLURALIST DECENTRALIZED STATE

Members of Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) stand guard as Women’s Protection Unit (YPJ) and Kurdish internal security forces conduct a security operation in al-Roj camp, Syria, April 6, 2025

.(photo credit: REUTERS/Orhan Qereman)ByREUTERSAUGUST 13, 2025 16:18

The Kurdish YPG militia, which spearheads the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), should stop "playing for time" and abide by its integration agreement with the Syrian government, Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Wednesday.

NATO-member Turkey has been one of Syria's main foreign allies after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad last year, while it considers both the SDF and YPG as terrorist organizations.

The SDF, which controls much of northeast Syria, signed an agreement with Damascus in March to integrate into the Syrian state apparatus.

"The YPG/SDF must stop its policy of playing for time," Fidan told a joint press conference with his Syrian counterpart Asaad al-Shibani in Ankara.

"Just because we approach (the process) with good intentions does not mean we don't see your little ruses," Fidan said.

KURDISH FIGHTERS from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) run across a street in Raqqa, Syria in July. (credit: GORAN TOMASEVIC/REUTERS)Fidan visited Damascus last week, following clashes between the SDF and Syrian government forces in Manbij and Aleppo, and after weeks of tensions between Israel and Syria over fighting between Druze and Bedouin forces around Sweida last month.

Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the PKK"A new era has begun in the region and there's a new process in Turkey. They should benefit from those positive developments," Fidan said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group's decision to disarm and disband.

Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the PKK but the YPG has said the disarmament call of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan did not apply to it, contradicting Ankara's view.

"We witness some developments in Syria that we find hard to tolerate," Fidan said. "We see that members (of the YPG) who came from Turkey, Iraq and Iran have not left Syria."

Shibani criticized the SDF for holding a conference which called for a review of the constitutional declaration issued earlier this year by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and said it sought to exploit the events in Sweida. He also called the conference a violation of the agreement to integrate the SDF into state institutions.

The SDF has been in conflict with Turkey-backed Syrian armed groups in northern Syria for years. Ankara has carried out several incursions against the YPG in the past and controls swathes of territory in northern Syria.

Syria Announces Another Ceasefire in Suwayda, Says Troops Are Withdrawing

Local Druze leader disavows new agreement

by Jason Ditz | Jul 16, 2025    ANTIWAR.COM

Tuesday’s ceasefire announcement in the southern Syria Suwayda Governorate went pretty poorly. There was fighting before and after, and it fell apart more or less immediately. Wednesday, they’re trying again, announcing a new ceasefire.

Tuesday’s ceasefire came from Defense Ministry officials, while Wednesday’s was announced by the Interior Ministry. Both came with an endorsement from some Druze officials, though once again Wednesday’s agreement has already been disavowed by one prominent local Druze figure, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri.

Adding to the hopes though, Syria has begun to withdraw troops from the Suwayda area. This reportedly came after the US asked them to do so, with an eye toward pushing the Druze to voluntarily integrate into the Islamist-dominated central government.

Israeli Druze cross the border to check on their family members in Syria, amid the ongoing conflict in the Druze areas in Syria, in Majdal Shams, near the ceasefire line between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, July 16, 2025. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The fighting in Suwayda first erupted Sunday in the Bedouin neighborhood of Maqus, in the city’s east. Fighting escalated, Druze came in from the surrounding areas, and the local Bedouins called tribal allies from nearby as well. When the Syrian military arrived they reportedly took the Bedouins’ side, killing a number of Druze civilians on top of what was already going on.

At this point in excess of 300 people have been killed in Suwayda and the surrounding area. A large number of Israeli Druze crossed into Syria, apparently with designs on participating in the fight. Members of the Israeli Knesset also entered Syria, claiming they were trying to convince the Israeli Druze to return home. The MKs only got as far as the village of Hader, far from the fighting, and it’s not clear if the other Druze that crossed the border went any farther than that.

Israel has forbidden the Syrian military from having any assets south of Damascus, which includes the entire Suwayda Governorate. As a result Israel has attacked Syrian military forces in Suwayda since Monday, and on Wednesday they escalated matters by attacking the Syrian Defense Ministry building in Damascus itself.

Though Israeli officials only sometimes present this as having anything specifically to do with the Druze, at times they present the military operations as being done to protect the Druze from the Islamist government. In practice, Israel invaded Syria in December, more or less immediately after the regime change, and these attacks are in some ways just a continuation of that.

Syrian Government Forces Kill Civilians in Suwayda and Declare Ceasefire

Israel attacked Syrian troops as they approached the city

by Jason Ditz | Jul 15, 2025   ANTIWAR.COM

The Syrian Defense Ministry has announced a ceasefire between Druze forces and Bedouin tribes in and around the city of Suwayda, following Syrian security forces entering the city aiming to bring an end to multiple days of fighting.

Today’s reports suggest around 200 people were killed overall in the fighting, which began Sunday with both sides clashing in the neighborhood of Maqus. Both sides were accusing the other of engaging in kidnappings, and eventually the fighting escalated to the city as well as the surrounding area.

Though the ceasefire was declared, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that clashes have continued, and says that as many as 93 Defense Ministry forces are among the dead now.

Aftermath of Suwayda fighting | Image from SOHR

Suwayda is a Druze-majority city, while Maqus is a Bedouin-heavy neighborhood. The two sides have long lived side by side, though it has sometimes been tense. Syrian security forces were first sent to the area Sunday when the fighting started, and have been accused participating in fighting against the Druze and even carrying out summary executions of civilians.

Locals said troops entered the city originally nominally to restore order, but were rampaging through neighborhoods before long, looting and burning buildings and killing civilians themselves.

Officials haven’t addressed these allegations, but it’s largely the same as what happened in the northwest earlier in the year, when fighting involving the Alawites turned into massacres, with government-aligned forces participating in executions there as well. Since the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) government is styling itself as open to religious minorities, their involvement in killing those minorities is potentially quite embarrassing, even if the government has so far made empty promises of investigations and the matter has largely been dropped internationally.

Further adding to the challenge of this tension in Suwayda is that Israel forbade Syria from having security forces there, and actively carried out strikes against security forces as they approached Suwayda.

This has been an ongoing problem, Israel has declared the whole south of Syria a no-go for Syria’s military and attacks them when they violate that demand. Though the HTS has largely not reacted beyond some international complaints, the Foreign Ministry has asserted the “right to defend ourselves” from Israeli aggression. This could potentially complicate Israel-Syria normalization talks, which were already rather complicated given the ongoing Israeli invasion in the southwest.

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.

Here's what triggered the latest deadly violence in Syria, and why it matters

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria is deeply divided as it tries to emerge from decades of dictatorship and nearly 14 years of civil war

.


The Associated Press
July 16, 2025

BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes between government forces and members of a minority sect in Syria have drawn intervention by Israel and once again raised fears of a breakdown in the country’s fragile postwar order.

Syria is deeply divided as it tries to emerge from decades of dictatorship and nearly 14 years of civil war.

Clashes have on several occasions broken out between forces loyal to the government and Druze fighters since the fall of President Bashar Assad in early December in a lightning rebel offensive led by Sunni Islamist insurgent groups, but this week’s fighting has escalated to new levels of violence.

Here are the main reasons the clashes expanded in recent days and background on the two sides:

The Druze and Syria’s new government

The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. In Syria, they largely live in southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus, mainly in Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya to the south.

The transitional government has promised to include minorities, including the Druze, but the new 23-member government in Syria announced in late March only has one Druze member, Minister of Agriculture Amjad Badr.

Under the Assad family’s tight rule, religious freedom was guaranteed as Syria then boasted about its secular and Arab nationalist system.

The Druze had been divided over how to deal with their issues with the new status quo in Syria. Many Druze supported a dialogue with the government while others wanted a more confrontational approach. Reports of attacks on Druze civilians by government-affiliated forces since the latest round of fighting broke out have further alienated many Druze from the new authorities.

Syria’s minorities worry about their rights

Syria’s religious and ethnic communities are worried about their place in Syria’s new system that is mostly run by Islamists, including some who have links to extremist groups.

The country’s new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, himself is a former militant who once was a member of al-Qaida. Although al-Sharaa had said that the right of ethnic and religious minorities will be protected, there have been several rounds of sectarian killings since Assad’s fall.

The Assad family rule that was dominated by members of the Alawite sect had oppressed much of the country’s Sunni majority while giving minorities some powers.

During Syria’s 14-year conflict, the Druze had their own militias, in part to defend against Muslim militants who consider them heretics. Members of the Islamic State group in 2018 attacked the Druze in Sweida province, killing more than 200 people and taking more than two dozen hostage.

Clashes began after checkpoint robbery

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said the clashes started after members of a Bedouin tribe in Sweida province set up a checkpoint where they attacked and robbed a Druze man, leading to tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings between the tribes and Druze armed groups.

Government security forces deployed to restore order, but were seen as taking the side of the Bedouin tribes against Druze factions. By Wednesday, the Syrian observatory reported that some 300 people had been killed, including 27 who were “summarily executed.”

Videos and reports surfaced of government-affiliated forces burning and looting civilian houses and humiliating Druze men by forcibly shaving their mustaches.

Israel, which has periodically intervened or threatened to intervene in support of the Druze in Syria, launched dozens of strikes on convoys of government forces in southern Syria and on government facilities in Damascus. It has threatened further escalation. In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the military.

Israel does not want Islamic militants near the country’s northern border. Since Assad’s fall, Israeli forces have seized control of a U.N.patrolled buffer zone in Syria near the border with the Israel-annexed Golan and have carried out hundreds of airstrikes on military sites.

Concerns that sectarian violence could rise

The clashes raise fears of a worsening spiral of sectarian violence. In March, an ambush on government security forces by fighters loyal to Assad triggered days of sectarian and revenge attacks. Hundreds of civilians were killed, most of them members of the minority Alawite sect that Assad belongs to. A commission was formed to investigate the attacks but has not made its findings public.

There have also been rising tensions between authorities in Damascus and Kurdish-led authorities controlling the country’s northeast. Despite having reached an agreement in March to merge their forces, the two sides have since come to an impasse and the deal has not been implemented.

The ongoing instability threatens to derail Syria’s fragile recovery after more than a decade of war that devastated its infrastructure and displaced half the prewar population of 23 million. In 2017, the United Nations estimated that rebuilding Syria would cost about $250 billion. Since Assad was overthrown, some experts say that number could be as high as $400 billion.

Syria and the dangers of playing with fire

By Gilbert Achcar

Published 16 July, 2025

First published in Arabic at Al-Quds al-Arabi. Translation from Gilbert Achcar's blog.

Whatever is the origin of the recent bloody clashes in the Suwayda Governorate — whether they were merely the result of the chaos prevailing in post-Assad Syria, or a manoeuvre by Israel in order to escalate its hypocritical intervention in the region, or a manoeuvre by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to extend its control over southern Syria — what is unmistakable is that the first factor, the prevailing chaos, provided the conditions for the explosion. The Bedouins who ignited the fuse by attacking a resident of the province were encouraged by the attitude of the new regime in Damascus, which is pressuring all minorities to surrender their weapons while exerting no pressure on various Sunni Arab groups. Instead, it is facilitating the arming of the latter, using them similarly to the former regime’s use of the so-called “Shabiha” (with the difference in sectarian affiliation, of course).

It is striking and extremely dangerous that the new Damascus government has not responded to repeated calls to maintain security on the road between Damascus and Suwayda. This unruliness of the situation, or rather the lack of intervention in controlling it, has paved the way for the current explosion. It could have been prevented had the government shown the same enthusiasm in controlling the Bedouin groups allied with it as it has now shown in seizing the opportunity of the clashes to enter Suwayda, offering a spectacle that looks more like an occupation than like a liberation of the local population. As Al-Quds Al-Arabi’s correspondent in Damascus wrote last Sunday:

At the end of last April, the Suwayda Governorate had witnessed an agreement between the Syrian government and the sheikhs of Suwayda stipulating the activation of police within the governorate, with the Syrian government assuming responsibility for protecting the Damascus-Suwayda road, a vital artery for hundreds of thousands of residents within the governorate. However, the continued attacks on this road and the failure to secure it for civilian traffic have exacerbated societal tensions within the Suwayda Governorate... (Heba Mohammed, “Syrian Suwayda: Deaths in Clashes Between Druze and Bedouins, and Kidnappings”, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 13 July 2025).

Last Friday, before the outbreak of clashes in Suwayda, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) warned about the chaotic situation:

Human losses continue to occur daily across Syria under various circumstances as a result of the ongoing escalating violence, military operations, targeted killings, assassinations, unexploded ordnance, and many other causes that claim the lives of many, civilians primarily and personnel from all the military forces controlling the Syrian territory. (SOHR, “Escalation of Violence in Various Syrian Regions Leaves 35 Dead in 72 Hours”, 11 July 2025, in Arabic).

The same pattern threatens to recur in other areas escaping the control of the new Damascus government, especially those with a Kurdish majority. It is well known that the Kurdish armed forces are much stronger than those in the Druze regions, and even stronger than those of HTS in its new “official” iteration. On Monday, the SOHR published a report on its website describing the Syrian government’s continued blocking of petroleum products to the predominantly Kurdish neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafieh in Aleppo for more than 15 days. The report added that residents of the area indicated that 

the authorities are using a method similar to that previously used by the Assad regime, through economic and service pressure by withholding fuel, electricity, and basic resources, in an attempt to extort political or financial concessions from the Autonomous Administration [of North and East Syria] ... (SOHR, “The Former Regime’s Method...”, 14 July 2025, in Arabic).

Given this chaotic situation, it is no surprise that Israel continues to fish in troubled waters, claiming to champion the Druze community. That is the same Israel that annexed the occupied Golan Heights in 1981, despite the opposition of the local Druze population, who overwhelmingly rejected the annexation and, along with it, the Israeli citizenship that was offered to them. The Golan Druze population even carried out a five-month general strike in 1982, which the Zionist state quelled by imposing a siege on them. Israel seized the opportunity of the new clashes in Suwayda to destroy more equipment inherited by the HTS forces from the previous Syrian regime. It certainly hopes for an escalation of violence in order to take advantage of it to strengthen the influence of the minority among the Syrian Druze that aspires to establish a Druze emirate under Israeli protection.

In the face of what is happening, allow me to recall what I wrote more than two months ago: 

The blame lies primarily with those who attributed the collapse of the Assad regime exclusively to themselves … HTS should have modestly acknowledged the limitations of its own forces, which are quite weaker than those of the Kurdish forces in the northeast, and far too weak to allow it to extend its control over all the Arab regions that were controlled by the ousted regime with the assistance of Russia and Iran. Instead, Ahmad al-Sharaa got euphoric about replacing Bashar al-Assad in his presidential palace (he even began to increasingly look like a bearded version of the deposed president). He acted as if he could dominate all of Syria…

After describing the inclusive democratic process that HTS’s rule should have launched, as most of the former opposition to the Assad regime had demanded, I concluded: 

These are the only conditions that can cleanse Syria’s waters and reassure the various components of its population. What the HTS regime has done so far, however, is dangerously muddying the waters, opening the way for various regional adepts of fishing in troubled waters, foremost among them the Zionist state. (“Syria: Fishing in Troubled Waters”, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 6 May 2025).

[Updated] ‘A serious threat to civil peace and national unity’: Statements from Rojava on sectarian violence in As-Suwayda

By Syrian Democratic Council

Published 16 July, 2025

MastodonFacebookTwitterEmail

[Editor’s note: Nilüfer Koç, spokesperson for the Commission on Foreign Relations of the Kurdistan National Congress, will be speaking at Ecosocialism 2025, September 5-7, Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. For more information on the conference visit ecosocialism.org.au.]

Below LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal is republishing statements by the Syrian Democratic Council, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) on the escalating sectarian violence in As-Suwayda, in southern Syria.

---

Syrian Democratic Council (SDC): On the situation in As-Suwayda 

The Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) is following, with deep concern, the rapidly unfolding events in Suwayda Governorate. These developments pose a serious threat to civil peace and the fabric of national unity. These events could cause even more suffering and instability in Syria, a country that is already deeply weakened and damaged by years of war and internal strife.

Regardless of causes or motivations of the events, the recent escalation cannot be separated from the broader course of the Syrian crisis. It is also closely tied to the ongoing absence of a just and comprehensive political solution. Such a solution is urgently needed to end the suffering and create a real and meaningful opportunity for positive transformations or reforms.

At the SDC, we believe that turning to armed confrontation, and the increasing normalization of violence, do not serve the people’s interests. Nor do they advance the cause of justice. Instead, they deepen existing divisions and escalate instability — at a time when Syria urgently needs stability and reconciliation, not further harm.

In this context, we strongly condemn the involvement of elements from the Syrian regime’s security apparatus in fueling the internal conflict. We consider this behavior deeply irresponsible. It contradicts the fundamental role of any government that claims to serve its people. A government’s responsibility is to protect its citizens and ensure their safety. It must not use its security institutions to inflame divisions or deepen fragmentation. Any form of government involvement that promotes violence or disrupts social cohesion is a serious violation of its obligation. It puts the country at further risk of chaos and collapse.

We also warn of the serious dangers posed by sectarian rhetoric and hate speech that have accompanied these developments. This kind of language has long fueled conflict in Syria. It must be firmly rejected. The unity of the Syrian people cannot be built on sectarian incitement. It must be based on the principles of citizenship, equality, and mutual respect.

We call on all parties in Suwayda — and throughout Syria — to act with restraint. Immediate de-escalation is essential. We urge all sides to prioritize constructive dialogue over the use of force. We also stress the urgent need to launch responsible, inclusive initiatives to defuse tensions. These efforts must address the root causes of the crisis through political and peaceful means. Above all, they must uphold the dignity and needs of the Syrian people.

Syria stands today at a historic crossroads. There is a real opportunity to emerge from this prolonged national crisis. But this opportunity requires a high level of national responsibility. We must all commit to placing the interests of the Syrian people above sectarian or political divisions. A new Syria cannot be built through internal warfare. It can only emerge through unity, rooted in pluralism, justice, and democracy.

The SDC reaffirms its firm commitment to an inclusive intra-Syrian dialogue. We reject all forms of violence and emphasize the importance of respecting the will of all peoples and communities within Syria. Any internal conflict — no matter where it takes place — weakens the prospects of a political solution. It benefits those who want to keep the country weak, divided, and in crisis.

We greatly appreciate the sensible and wise opinions expressed by people in Suwayda, who urge everyone to remain peaceful and act responsibly. We stand in solidarity with the people of the region in their legitimate aspirations for dignity, rights, and justice — free from coercion and oppression. We call upon all national actors and allies to work together toward a new phase in Syria’s future. One built on reconciliation and transformation — not on conflict and destruction.

July 14, 2025

---

Democratic Union Party (PYD): Regarding the tragic events in As-Suwayda

In light of the dangerous escalation in Suwayda province and the accompanying bloody events that threaten civil peace and the unity of the Syrian people, our party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is issuing a statement to the public, calling for averting strife and protecting the Syrian national fabric:

We, in the Democratic Union Party (PYD), are following with deep concern and regret the recent painful developments in the south of our Syrian homeland, especially in As-Suwayda Governorate, where the recent clashes have led to the deaths of dozens of civilians and young men who took up arms to defend their families against outlawed factions working to spread chaos and terror among the people of the region.

What is happening in Suwayda can only be considered signs of a dangerous internal strife that threatens the Syrian fabric and opens the door to a civil war between the people of one nation.

This strife is being fueled by suspicious parties of warlords and foreign powers, while the price is being paid by our people, who have always struggled for a free and dignified life under a just, democratic state.

We, in the Democratic Union Party (PYD), demand that the transitional government in Damascus shoulder its national responsibilities in protecting all Syrians without discrimination and stand firmly against all those who attack the dignity and property of citizens, regardless of their affiliations or backgrounds.

We also call on them to reconsider their legal and political status, and to immediately move away from the discourse of the majority and minorities, and the language of incitement and hatred broadcast through the official media or through platforms affiliated with or affiliated with them, as this has a profound impact in fueling crises and sowing division among the people of one nation.

We appeal to all Syrian national and democratic forces, who believe in the unity and diversity of Syria, to intervene immediately and wisely to stop the bloodshed in Syria, and to prevent the spread of this strife to other regions of the country.

For our part, we affirm that the solution lies in moving towards a democratic, pluralistic, decentralized Syria that guarantees rights and freedoms, and closes the doors to internal conflicts that are exploited by the enemies of the Syrian people and their schemes.

July 14, 2025

---

Women’s Protection Units (YPJ): ‘Martyrs like Mother Fouziya light our path’

We have been closely monitoring the recent attacks carried out by the gangs of the Syrian Interim Government against our Druze people. We strongly condemn these illegal assaults that defy human ethics, as they target civilians, including women and children. At the same time, these unrestrained attacks aim to loot villages, violate human dignity, and destroy the culture of the Druze people. The ancient and rich culture of the Druze community is an inseparable part of Syria’s diverse mosaic heritage.

As a result of these brutal assaults, the local people have sought to preserve their culture and dignity. In doing so, they exercised their legitimate right to self-defense, which led to clashes in several areas. Many individuals who are deeply rooted in their land lost their lives during these confrontations.

We, as the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), extend our deepest condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the wounded. We consider these attacks a serious threat to the construction of a democratic Syria that safeguards the unity of all its peoples and components. These assaults stem from a dominant patriarchal mindset and represent a grave danger to all communities of the region. Undoubtedly, those responsible attempt to justify these acts under the guise of regional security, yet in doing so, they undermine Syria’s security on the global stage and endanger the peace and stability of the entire region.

In the face of this, our Druze people continue to resist and rightfully exercise their legitimate right to self-defense. No issue, regardless of its nature, can justify such barbaric attacks. For the sake of regional peace and security, we call on all Syrian forces to resolve their issues through dialogue. To open the door for such dialogue, it is essential to unify the front of women and peoples. Therefore, we once again call on all parties to work together in resolving Syria’s issues and building a democratic Syria.

In the village of Al-Dour in the province of Suwayda, many lives were lost due to ongoing attacks and fierce clashes. Several women were also abducted by the attackers. Among those who were subjected to brutal assault, Mother Fouziya Fakhr Al-Din Al-Sharani took an honorable and courageous stand. She defended her dignity and willpower, protecting her neighborhood and village from these barbaric gangs. This rebellious and fierce warrior woman killed six gang members during the clashes and fought until her last bullet.

The stance of this mother serves as a call to all components of the Syrian people — especially women — to protect and organize themselves. Without legitimate self-defense, there can be no talk of a free, safe, and dignified life. We bow with reverence and respect before the immortal martyr Fouziya Fakhr Al-Din Al-Sharani, honoring her memory with the utmost gratitude. Martyrs like Mother Fouziya light our path and guide us on our journey toward a democratic Syria.

July 15, 2025

---

YPJ: ‘We are ready to confront all dark forces that target women’

We strongly condemn and denounce the massacre being carried out against the Druze people, and we reaffirm our solidarity with the women and civilians affected. Once again, the extremist jihadist groups, under the leadership of the Damascus government, have targeted innocent civilians. This violence is systematic and directed against the Druze community. The massacres and brutal assaults on women are a direct threat to human dignity and women’s freedom.

We, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), firmly condemn these heinous attacks. The targeting and abduction of women, children, and civilians is incompatible with any moral or human principle. Such acts are enemies of diversity, the freedom of peoples, and the very existence of women. The Druze people are not alone. As women fighters, we are fully prepared to stand against any aggression targeting the will of the people, the right to life, and the belief in freedom.

If called upon, we are ready to confront all dark forces that target women. In order to protect Druze women and civilians, we will shoulder all responsibilities placed upon us without hesitation. As the Women’s Protection Units, standing against attacks on women and oppressed peoples wherever they may be is not only our duty — it is the foundation of our existence.

Those responsible for the massacres committed against Druze women must be held accountable, the perpetrators must be prosecuted, and justice must be served. The struggle for the brotherhood of peoples, women’s freedom, and interfaith coexistence must not be allowed to take even a single step backward. We stand with the Druze people. Women will never be silent, and they will never bow their heads.

Women, Life, Freedom.

July 16, 2025