Mazloum Abdi presses for Kurdish as an official language now that the SDF no longer exists
The former commander, now an adviser to the presidency, says the campaign for official status continues and urges families to enrol children in Kurdish-language schools.
Mazloum Abdi said on 30 September that efforts were continuing to have Kurdish recognised as an official language in Syria, describing the language as central to the community’s identity and urging families to send their children to schools where it is taught, The New Arab reported from London. The statement is not isolated: a Getty photograph dated 22 September shows demonstrators in Qamishli with placards and flags demanding the right to education in Kurdish. Abdi’s position has changed since he last had a force behind him. The Security Council Report’s September forecast refers to the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces as an accomplished fact, and Abdi now holds the post of adviser to the Syrian presidency. In early September, in interviews with the Turkish broadcaster İlke TV and with Yeni Yaşam reported by Enab Baladi, he said relations between the Kurdish side and Turkey should move onto a “normal and constructive” footing and that channels of communication remained open.
Assessment: The military half of the north-east settlement is, by the UN’s own framing, finished. The constitutional and cultural half has barely started, and that sequencing determines what Abdi can still ask for. An adviser to the president has no force to withhold; what he has is a mobilised constituency and a demand — official-language status — that costs Damascus nothing in money and a great deal in precedent, because it is the first test of whether the new state is unitary in form as well as in arms. Watch for an answer from Damascus rather than for more statements from Qamishli. Silence is itself the answer, and so far there has been silence.