The fall of Bashar al-Assad after the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) takeover in Syria is bad news for the country’s Kurds. It is worth charting how things got here from the start of the war in Syria in 2012. During the conflict, the Democratic Union party (PYD) emerged as the biggest and most influential Kurdish political actor in Syria, taking territorial control in the north and maintaining an autonomous administration, albeit a fragile one.

The PYD’s position is even more precarious after the HTS takeover. Turkey, emerging as the most influential foreign actor in Syria, is laser-focused on limiting any Kurdish push for autonomy domestically and regionally. Another challenge the PYD faces is that the HTS-led regime is very unlikely to tolerate existing Kurdish autonomy in Syria.

The emergence of an autonomous region run by the Kurds in northern Syria was unexpected. Syrian Kurds, who make up about 10% of the population, had been more suppressed and less visible than Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. However, very quickly after the war started, this hitherto quiet Kurdish presence evolved into a highly active political and military movement that garnered significant regional and international attention.

From the beginning of the Syrian war, the PYD chose to side with neither Assad nor the anti-regime rebel groups, and instead sought to secure its position in the north. In 2012 it unilaterally declared the establishment of an autonomous region called Rojava (Western Kurdistan), formed of three........

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