A sign in Kurdish is a threat to no one

Hasakah province has, for several days now, been gripped by fears that tensions between the SDF and the Syrian government may escalate again. At the centre of the dispute is the presidential delegation overseeing implementation of the 29 January agreement between the two sides. The immediate trigger is the "dispute" over whether the sign identifying the Hasakah Palace of Justice should be written in Kurdish alongside Arabic, or whether Arabic alone should suffice. Taking matters into their own hands, groups associated with the Autonomous Administration and the SDF have repeatedly taken down signs that did not include Kurdish.

At first, a sign was put up bearing the words: “The Syrian Arab Republic, Ministry of Justice, Palace of Justice in Hasakah” in both Arabic and Kurdish. It was later replaced by another sign written in Arabic and English. The oddity is that English does not appear alongside Arabic on the signs of the Ministry of Justice or the Palace of Justice in Damascus. So why introduce English instead of Kurdish?

Legally speaking, Article 12 of Chapter Two of the temporary Constitutional Declaration states that the state shall safeguard human rights and fundamental freedoms, and that all rights contained in international treaties and conventions ratified by Syria form an integral part of the declaration itself. This includes the rights of peoples and national communities to preserve and use their languages in education, administration, and public life. Official recognition of Kurdish, therefore, is not a special concession or privilege. It is a natural application of Syria’s own human rights obligations.

Article 13 of the same chapter guarantees freedom of opinion, expression, media, publication, and the press. In practice, such freedoms cannot be fully realised without protecting citizens’ ability to use their mother tongue. That is because language is a medium through which thought, culture, identity, and belonging are expressed. 

Rights-based citizenship also depends on participation in public institutions. In the absence of a functioning parliament and a law regulating political parties, participation by communities - including the Kurds - currently rests largely on equal rights and duties within administration, education, the judiciary, and public life more broadly. The message sent by excluding Kurdish from public display is unambiguous.

It is also worth recalling that Celadet Bedir Khan founded the Kurdish-language magazine Hawar in 1932 between Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo under the French Mandate. Kurdish public expression, in other words, has precedents in Syrian history.

Article 15, which affirms the principle of equal opportunity among citizens, provides one of the strongest foundations for recognising the Kurdish language. If only the language of one group of citizens is recognised in state institutions while another national language spoken by millions is marginalised, then inequality is inevitably reproduced in access to education, employment, representation, and public participation. If Kurdish judges serve within the courts, why should their language disappear at the courthouse entrance? Can a Kurd even hold the post of justice minister? Kurds ask themselves these questions for good reason.

Presidential Decree No. 13, issued during the January negotiations, opened new space in the handling of the Kurdish question by recognising Kurdish as a “national language”, even if it stopped short of granting it official status alongside Arabic. Yet the decree also did nothing to prohibit the use of Kurdish in public institutions or alongside Arabic on official signs. There is a considerable degree of ambiguity, and it should be used constructively. While the broader questions of Syria’s linguistic and cultural order are still to be settled, the presence of additional languages alongside Arabic on local signs should not be treated as a threat. This is not the time for stubbornness.