After years of revival, what is the Kurdish language’s future in Syria?

QAMISHLI — At her home in Syria’s northeastern Qamishli city, high school student Sima Ahmed sits down to study and do her homework in Kurdish, her mother tongue and the language that “reflects my identity and belonging,” she said. 

Sima, 16, began learning Kurdish from her father, who was keen to teach her “to read and write at home” from an early age. Studying the language was an act of preservation in a country where Kurds had been deprived of learning and writing their language and practicing their traditions, such as celebrating the Newroz holiday, for decades under the Assad regime.  

But when the time came for Ahmed to enter kindergarten, she hit a language barrier. At a school that only taught in Arabic, “I couldn’t interact with the teacher, or understand what was being said around me,” she told Syria Direct. 

The next year, Ahmed’s family enrolled her in a Kurdish school. Ever since, she has learned in her native language, which Kurds celebrate every year on May 15: Kurdish Language Day. While her entire education so far has been primarily in Kurdish, she does not know what her future holds under Syria’s new administration, led by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa. 

On March 10, Damascus reached an agreement to merge all institutions of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES)—including schools—with the Syrian state. 

For Ahmed, studying Kurdish has meant more than learning its grammar. She “studied syntax and literature, and learned about Kurdish history and culture,” which made her more passionate about learning, she said. 

“Yesterday, my daughter sent me a video of her explaining the difference between an epic and a legend, with examples from Kurdish and world heritage. I am proud of that,” her father, Hakim Ahmed, 46, told Syria Direct from Damascus, where he is currently visiting. The Kurdish language represents “identity and culture,” he emphasized. 

As a student at Aleppo University in 2001, Ahmed’s father and a group of his peers called for the Kurdish language to be added to the university curriculum at a student conference. “The head of the student union accused us of trying to harm national unity, and said he would cut off our tongues and hands if we repeated that demand,” he recalled. 

Marginalization and exclusion

Before the Syrian revolution broke out in March 2011, Zehriban Hussein, 29, was deprived of using her language or speaking it in public places—like other Syrian Kurds. She believed it was “impossible for children to be taught in Kurdish, or for there to be educational institutions in this language,” she told Syria Direct from her residence in Qamishli. 

Hussein, who is from Afrin in northwestern Syria, recalled her childhood, when she was shocked to find that “schools taught in Arabic.” Going in, she did not know Arabic or its alphabet, since Kurdish was the language she used at home and with people in her area. 

In elementary school, Hussein was one of 45 students in her class, all but six of whom were Kurds. She spoke with her classmates in Kurdish, until “the teacher threatened us not to speak our language, saying those who did would be sent down to the [punishment] room in the school basement.”

“We didn’t understand, at the time, why speaking Kurdish was forbidden. We always wondered: Why do we speak Kurdish at home, and are forced into Arabic at school?” she said. 

Many Kurdish students, like Hussein, grew up only speaking Kurdish, without knowledge of its alphabet or grammar. She thought “Kurdish was a spoken language that had no alphabet or grammar.”

The policies of the former ruling Arab Socialist Baath Party—which the new Syrian administration disbanded at the start of the year—went beyond banning the language, to “a psychological war aimed at tarnishing its image” among other Syrians, Hussein said. “Those who spoke Kurdish were accused of being backward, not keeping up with the times.”

While freedom of opinion and expression was among the most important demands of the Syrian revolution, the attitude of the opposition and many Syrians towards the Kurdish language did not change. Kurdish continued to be marginalized in official opposition institutions and education, even in Kurdish-majority areas. Later, the political opposition did not recognize educational certificates issued by the AANES, which teaches students in their native languages in its schools. 

‘Historic’ achievements

A few years before the revolution, Kurdish was already being taught in secret to small groups at homes in several Kurdish areas. This activity gradually developed after the revolution, and several schools launched Kurdish language courses towards the end of 2011, Samira Haj Ali, co-chair of the AANES Education Board, said. What happened that year was “a historic step, and a source of great pride for Kurds,” she added. 

The “July 19 revolution” of 2012, which ended with the expulsion of the Assad regime from northeastern Syria and the establishment of the AANES, was a milestone for Kurds, “when the Kurdish Language Institute (SZK) began to openly organize language courses,” Haj Ali said. October 14, 2012 saw the Kurdish language introduced as a subject in 97 schools that were still overseen by the former Syrian regime in the northern Aleppo city of Kobani (Ain al-Arab). 

From there, the AANES’ Curriculum Institution, established in 2014, began to prepare curricula in Kurdish, with a team of seven people later expanded to more than 100, with the help of a number of experts, she said. 

In the 2012-2013 school year, three weekly classes were introduced to teach Kurdish at all levels in schools in Kobani, Afrin and the Jazira region of northeastern Syria. This approach continued until the 2015-2016 school year, when the regime curriculum was canceled, outside of security squares in Qamishli and Hasakah city that remained under Damascus’s control. The new AANES curricula were adopted, and the approach of teaching students in their native languages was introduced through the sixth grade in Kobani and Afrin, and through the third grade in Jazira, Haj Ali said. 

The next school year, native language education was extended through high school in Kobani and Afrin, and through sixth grade in Jazira. In 2020, Jazira schools fully adopted the AANES curricula through high school. 

With that, local languages—Arabic, Kurdish and Syriac—were officially adopted as languages of instruction at all levels in AANES areas. Under the former Assad regime, Arabic was imposed as the sole language for all communities, without regard for their linguistic and cultural diversity. 

Today, 714,214 students learn in their mother tongue in AANES schools. This includes 102,142 Kurds, 612,047 Arabs and 25 Syriacs, according to figures the Education Board provided to Syria Direct. 

The Education Board also opened universities in Kurdish areas. These included Afrin University, the first to be founded in 2016, followed by Rojava University in Hasakah later the same year.

“It was our dream to have schools and universities where we could study in Kurdish, to write the names of our villages and streets in our language—and that dream came true,” Hussein said. She started learning the Kurdish alphabet and grammar in 2012. What happened over the past years “is more than a linguistic achievement,” she added. “It is a profound sense of pride and belonging, a feeling of victory. We were able to tell the world that we have a language, history, identity and roots.” 

Numerous Kurdish publishing houses opened over the past decade, printing and publishing books in Kurdish. That encouraged “writing in Kurdish in various fields, contributing to a Kurdish cultural renaissance that lays the foundation for a cultural revolution,” Kurdish writer Marwan Barakat, who is from Afrin and currently lives in Qamishli, said. 

Dozens of artistic groups and theater troupes also emerged, alongside Kurdish-language documentary screenings and theater, cinema and literature festivals. 

Challenges Kurdish faces

In March 2025, Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa signed the Constitutional Declaration, an interim constitution setting the legal framework for a five-year political transition period. Article 7 stipulates that “the state guarantees the cultural diversity of Syrian society in all its components, and cultural and linguistic rights for all Syrians.” The document does not include any articles directly addressing the rights of Kurds or other minorities in Syria. 

Among the many decrees and decisions issued by Syria’s new administration, none have addressed the Kurdish language—whether by recognizing it as an official language or clarifying its future status. 

“The interim constitutional declaration does not recognize the Kurdish people or the Kurdish language,” Abdo Sheikho, the director of Naqsh Publishing House in Qamishli, said. In his view, “it is virtually a Baathist constitutional declaration, cloaked in religious garb.”

Sheikho worries “the Kurdish language will continue to be ignored by the central authority in Damascus, not treated as a national language that represents an indigenous people in Syria.” 

What currently bothers student Sima Ahmed is not the question of formal recognition. Rather, it is “how people view education in Kurdish, wondering how an excellent student can waste her future in Kurdish schools,” even though she is proud of learning in her language, she said. 

Beyond the obstacles Kurdish and its speakers may face in the new Syria, the language itself faces internal challenges, writer Barakat said. “There is no language academy, and Kurdish dictionaries do not meet contemporary needs and requirements, with ambiguous definitions and unclear categorizations.” 

Kurdish also suffers from “an absence of publications and references that meet the needs of the educational system, especially higher education,” Vian Hassan, the co-president of the Kurdish Language Institute, said. 

“Decades of suppression and denial led to a state of forced stagnation for more than 70 years, during which no scientific or educational production was published in Kurdish,” she added. “Today, we are in the process of compensating for this historical lack through intensive and redoubled efforts.” 

Hassan stressed the need to “establish Kurdish as an official and functional language in various aspects of life” in the new Syria. “We have entire generations who have not received education in their mother tongue, and suffer from linguistic alienation. We seek to bridge this gap through intensive courses and specialized programs teaching the language through social media.” 

To that end, the Education Board is calling on Damascus to adopt Kurdish alongside Arabic as an official language, and for education in Kurdish to be guaranteed and affirmed in the constitution. They also call for the education system and certificates issued by the Education Board to be recognized, “a right that we will not accept being excluded again, as it was by the authoritarian former regime,” Haj Ali said.

The Education Board, in coordination with the advisory and coordination office of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Abdi, previously contacted the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to open official channels of dialogue with the Damascus government’s Ministry of Education. 

The first step taken, earlier this year, was an online meeting to discuss the situation of students in northeastern Syria, including the issue of certifying diplomas and exams, according to Haj Ali, who described the meeting as “positive.”

Following the meeting, a delegation from the Education Board visited the capital on April 13 and 14 and met directly with representatives of the education ministry. Several issues were discussed, including the exam process and teaching the Kurdish language. “Some points were written down as a preliminary agreement,” Haj Ali said.

However, the Education Board has yet to receive any official response from the Ministry of Education, particularly concerning diploma certification and exams for students studying the state curriculum in northeastern Syria, she said. 

Syria Direct reached out to Minister of Education Muhammad Terko—who is himself a Kurd from Afrin—for a statement on the future of Kurdish in Syria’s official education system, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

Despite the voices on all sides warning Ahmed the future does not wait for those who study in unrecognized schools, she is committed to continuing the educational path she is on. “As students, we will not accept that 10 years of learning our mother tongue are wasted,” she said. “We have great hope that the Syrian government will recognize the Kurdish language, because this is our natural right.”

Her father hopes she and her siblings will be able to “achieve their academic dreams without having to give up their native language,” and that Kurdish has a future “in all fields: literary, scientific and philosophical.”

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.