A top Syrian Kurdish official has rejected Turkish calls for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to give up their weapons as part of Ankara’s broader peace efforts with Kurdish militants, saying the situation in Syria requires integration, not the laying down of arms.

Ilham Ahmed, co-chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava), told BBC’s Turkish service that the SDF’s continued armed presence is necessary due to ongoing security threats, particularly from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) remnants and the lack of a permanent Syrian constitution.

Syrian Kurdish official rejects Turkish calls to lay down arms, says SDF seeks integration instead

The U.S. continues to back the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—a coalition dominated by the YPG, which Turkey sees as indistinguishable from the PKK. Despite the PKK’s recent disarmament announcement, Washington has resuscitated funding and military coordination with the SDF—a coalition whose very name was crafted to obscure its PKK lineage. This comes even as the U.S. consolidates its military presence to a single base in Hasakah, signaling a shift from occupation to strategic entrenchment.

In 2019, as Trump was weighing a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria during his first term, Tulsi Gabbard brought Ilham Ahmed—the then-head of the Syrian Democratic Council, political wing of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Rojava—as her guest to Trump’s second State of the Union. The message was clear: autonomy should have air support. Ahmed currently serves as Co-Chair of the Foreign Affairs Department of Rojava, also known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

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