On January 16, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree guaranteeing an array of rights of Syria’s Kurds. The document is in sharp contrast with a ruling issued in the early days of the Syrian revolution by then-president Bashar al-Assad. The two decrees differ in both their motivations and in the scope and implications of the rights they grant.

When Assad issued Decree No. 39, on April 11, 2011, his aim was to dissuade the Kurds from taking part in the anti-government uprising that had erupted less than a month earlier. The move was part of a broader regime strategy to portray the revolution as a threat by the Sunni Arab majority toward Syria’s other religious, sectarian, and ethnic groups—including Christians, Druze, Alawites and Kurds. In other words, the decree sought to alienate and detach these groups from the revolution, whose demands were national and concerned all elements of the Syrian people.

By contrast, President al-Sharaa’s new Decree No. 13 aims to integrate Kurdish citizens into the Syrian national fabric, casting them as an integral component of the Syrian people. The document affirms that the Kurdish cultural and linguistic identity is an inseparable part of the Syrian national identity, which it describes as inherently multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-sectarian yet unified under one flag.

Despite attempting to win over the Kurds, Assad’s decree refrained from granting them any rights other than that of citizenship, something the Baathist regime had denied the Kurds for decades. Yet that citizenship only placed them on a par with the rest of the Syrian population, who despite having citizenship were deprived of many political, constitutional, religious, social, and cultural rights due to the totalitarian nature of the Baathist regime.

In contrast, Al-Sharaa’s decree recognizes Kurdish as a national language, allowing it to be taught at both public and private schools in areas where Kurds constitute a significant percentage of the population. The order also rescinds all exceptional laws and measures based on the 1962 census in Al-Hasakah governorate.

The new decree has implications well beyond the rights the Kurds have long demanded. It designates Nowruz, celebrated on March 21st each year, as a national holiday. While Nowruz holds cultural and social significance for all the peoples who celebrate it, Kurds see it as having a particular national character, which expresses their ethnic identity. The inclusion of a clause in the decree stipulating punishment for “anyone who incites national sedition” signals the new Syrian government’s recognition of the country’s multi-ethnic nature, which is one of the most significant political and constitutional demands of the Kurds in Syria.

The new decree also orders state educational institutions to promote a unifying national discourse, integrating that discourse not only into state media, but also into all levels of educational curricula. This represents a major step toward fostering social peace. The post-Assad government’s Constitutional Declaration issued on March 13, 2025—just three days after the March 10 agreement between Damascus and Kurdish forces—committed the state to preventing “sedition, division, incitement of sectarianism, and incitement to violence.” The new decree goes further, stipulating punishment for “anyone who incites national sedition according to applicable laws.”

This reflects the determination of Damascus to prevent incitement against Kurdish nationalism in particular, even as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its affiliates in Syria (such as the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF), escalate their racist rhetoric against Arabs and accuse them of violating the rights of Syrian Kurds, in order to mobilize the latter against the Syrian state. Despite this, the decree seeks to ensure that any reaction against these calls is directed toward the PKK and the SDF, rather than holding Syrian Kurds in general responsible for inciting racism.

In summary, Presidential Decree No. 13 reflects a far-reaching national and political vision. As the political project of the PKK-affiliated autonomous administration nears its end, having failed to establish a semi-independent Rojava or Syrian Kurdistan region along the lines of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, Syrian Kurdish political parties and national figures are facing a pivotal historical moment.

They now face the challenge of translating the Kurdish rights stipulated in the Constitutional Declaration and the Presidential Decree into constitutional provisions within Syria’s final constitution, as well as urging Syrian Kurds to play a genuine role in building the new Syrian state, one based not on quota-based power-sharing but on equal citizenship.