On 8 August in Hassakeh, local leaders did what the political center has failed to do for months: put Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Armenians, Circassians, Turkmen, Muslims, Christians, and Yazidis “under one roof” to debate Syria’s political future. For Kurdish analyst Diaa Iskandar, the “Unity of the Position of the Components of North and East Syria” conference was explicitly about redefining national belonging around pluralism and the rule of law, rather than factional gain. Its final communiqué, as summarized by Iskandar, laid out a program for “a new Syria” built on “a democratic constitution, genuine decentralization, meaningful participation by all components, a path of transitional justice, and rejection of demographic change.”
The interim government in Damascus responded with a public broadside via SANA, denouncing the gathering as “sectarian and ethnic,” accusing its organizers of “internationalizing Syrian affairs” and of “reproducing the symbols of the former regime,” and branding it a fragile alliance of actors “harmed by the fall of the bygone regime and by the victory of the Syrian people.” That posture has reinforced Kurdish accusations that the interim authorities are abandoning the dialogue process rather than leading it.
What the Hassakeh Meeting Was — and Wasn’t
For Iskandar, the conveners sought to normalize difference as the foundation of a future civic state. In their own words: “Diversity is not a threat, but the essence of unity; and democracy is not a luxury, but a necessity.” Those are not separatist slogans; they are the minimum vocabulary of any post-conflict compact.
The communiqué’s focus on decentralization and transitional justice aligns with long-standing demands from North and East Syria actors (including the SDF/SDC/AANES constellation). Still, it also reflects themes widely present across Syrian civil society since 2024: local accountability, anti-corruption, and the end of demographic engineering.
Why Damascus Pushed Back
According to Iskandar, by framing the conference as “sectarian and ethnic,” Damascus is signaling that any forum outside its orbit is a rival locus of sovereignty. That helps explain the contradictory line the article highlights: condemning “internationalization” while in the next breath inviting “international mediators to move negotiations to Damascus.” International involvement is acceptable if it routes through the capital’s gatekeepers; illegitimate if it empowers autonomous local agendas.
A government official even criticized the presence of “religious turbans.” However, these clerics, as the piece notes, called for “a civil, secular state, rejected religious despotism, and demanded separation of religion and state.” The objection is less about secularism than about control over who gets to articulate it.
According to the Kurdish analyst, the government linked its participation in the Paris track to rejecting or reshaping the Hassakeh outputs — a clear signal it sees dialogue as valid only when it reflects its red lines.
For Iskandar, there is another factor. The timing is notable. The rejection followed a visit to Damascus by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Iskandar asks whether the “national dialogue” script is now being drafted in Ankara before being read in Damascus. Even if that’s polemical, it points to a fundamental strategic tension: any Kurdish-inclusive national dialogue will intersect — and sometimes collide — with Turkish security priorities in the north. If Ankara’s preferences are dictating Damascus’ stance, the space for a homegrown, inclusive process narrows further.
Damascus’s claim that the SDF seeks to “revive the bygone regime” is, as the article puts it, closer to “heavy-handed jest” than analysis. More importantly, it dodges the structural issue: excluding a principal military-political actor and the communities it administers does not build a pluralist state; it recycles the very crisis architecture that led to the present impasse. Kurds and their allies read this as proof that the interim government’s commitment to dialogue is tactical, not strategic.
Implications for the National Dialogue Track
Iskandar lists the future implications of the recent developments as:
- Freeze risk. Tying attendance at Paris to preemptive delegitimization of Hassakeh’s outputs makes near-term progress unlikely. Facilitators will struggle to square a circle if one side dismisses the other’s inclusivity as “sectarian” and its agenda as “foreign.”
- Entrenchment. Each rebuff nudges North and East Syria toward deeper institutional consolidation. That may be orderly or ad hoc, but either way, it reduces the center’s leverage over time.
- Narrative backlash. The article highlights perceived hypocrisy: a government “built on one color and one sect” condemning others for division; denouncing “reproducing the symbols of the former regime” while rehabilitating figures from that era. Whether one accepts that charge or not, the perception gap is widening — and perception drives alignment.
A More Productive Way Forward
From the Kurdish perspective, if the interim government wants to refute Kurdish and local accusations that it has abandoned dialogue, it has options that do not concede strategic ground:
- Engage the text, not the stage. Respond to the Hassakeh communiqué point-by-point. If “genuine decentralization” is unacceptable, propose calibrated administrative devolution with constitutional guarantees — and say so publicly.
- Agree on an inclusive format. Commit to a sequencing in which all principal actors — including AANES/SDF representatives and minority blocs — participate in working groups on governance, security coordination, and justice, under third-party facilitation.
- Confidence-building steps. Limited detainee releases, a freeze on inflammatory rhetoric (including labels like “sectarian and ethnic”), and pilot joint civilian service delivery in mixed areas would signal seriousness without prejudging end-states.
- Clarify the red lines. State plainly what is meant by “no partition, no militias, no foreign tutelage,” and what forms of decentralization, security integration, and revenue-sharing are compatible with those lines.
The Hassakeh conference was not a coup against national dialogue; it was an attempt to put substantive ideas on the table. Treating such a meeting as a crime confirms Kurdish and local suspicions that the center has little appetite for an inclusive bargain. The Kurdish side believes that the fastest way to reverse that impression is to replace denunciations with proposals — and to test, in public, whether “diversity is not a threat, but the essence of unity” can be operationalized rather than mocked.