ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the underlying motives for the political distance between the Syrian opposition – including the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the National Coordination Committee (NCC) – and the Kurdish opposition, which is represented by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Kurdish National Council (KNC). It analyses the incongruity between the political aims of the Syrian opposition and the Kurds, primarily by analysing data obtained from interviews conducted with the Syrian Kurdish party leaders in the UK, Turkey and Iraq. The chapter discusses the marginalised place of the Kurds within a Syrian state that identified itself as Arab, tracing the Ba'th regime's policy towards the Kurds and the relationships that developed in the 2000s between the Syrian Arab and Kurdish oppositions to the regime. It examines the disagreements between the Syrian opposition and the Kurdish opposition that emerged after the Uprising started by examining the KNC's and the PYD's political stances over the course of the Uprising.
