Muhamad Alh movement in Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, as well as the emergence of Pan-Arabism after independence. All of this meant that Kurdish sovereignty was not a priority for pan-Arab leaders in Iraq and Syria and was a great threat for Kemal Atatürk’s Turkey. In Turkey, the government forcibly displaced over a million Kurds after several Kurdish revolts in the 1920s and 30s, the Kurdish language and culture were banned, and violence against the Kurdish population included torture and destruction of villages.3 In Iraq, there was widespread violence against Kurds by the Iraqi Ba’athist regime in the late 80s and early 90s (under the leadership of Saddam Hussein).4 Kurdish settlement in Syria goes back to the times before the Crusades of the 11th century. During the Ottoman period (1516–1922), large Kurdish tribal groups both settled in and were deported to areas of northern Syria from Anatolia. In the 1920s, after the failed Kurdish rebellions in Turkey, there was larger migration of Kurds to the Jazira area in the Northeast of Syria. It is estimated that 25,000 Kurds fled at this time to Syria. On one account these migrants constituted around 10% of the Kurds of the Jazira area at the time.5 All were granted citizenship by the authorities of the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon (1923-1946). However, French government sources indicate the existence of at most 45 Kurdish villages in Jazira prior to 1927. With a new wave of refugees arrived in 1929, the French mandatory authority continued to facilitate the Kurdish immigration into Syria, and by 1939, the villages numbered between 700 and 800. Other estimates suggest6 that in 1953, out of the 146,000 population of Jazira, Kurds made up 60,000 (41%), nomad Arabs 50,000 (34%), and a quarter of the population were Christians.7 Therefore, the issue of the Kurds has been treated differently by several governments and ruling authorities and has been a historical problem during the 20th century and the current crisis of Syria. Despite the fact that Kurds have a long history and wide presence in Syria, the ruling regimes have used the fact that many Kurds fled to Syria during the 1920s to claim that Kurds are not indigenous to the country and to justify its discriminatory policies against them.8 In general, it has been complicated and escalated due to the Kurdish autonomist movement in the Jazira region in 1936, the ‘Kurdish-Christian bloc’, during the French mandate, as well as the separatist efforts by Kurds and different minorities in Syria during the 1930s.9 According to many Syrian and Kurdish scholars,10 this is mainly the consequence of the borders of modern Syria determined by the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), and the settlement of the Syrian Kurds between France and Turkey through the Treaty of Sèvres. However, after the independence of Syria in 1945 and considerable settlement in the region, the problem of nationality and recognition of the Kurdish minority took a new turn in 1962, when a statute was established according to Legislative Decree No. (93) issued by the government of the Ba’athist regime, that ordered a census of the population in Jazira (North East of Syria). The Jazira census of 1962 was an exceptional census.11 The decree stressed that Kurds in northern 3 Arin, K. Y. (2015), Turkey and the’ Kurds – From war to reconciliation? UC Berkeley Center for Right Wing Studies Working Paper Series. 4 Smith, B. (2010), Land, History and Separatist Conflict: The Origins of National Rebellion in the Post-Colonial World. APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper. 5 Kreyenbroek, P. G. and S. Sperl (1992), The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview. London: Routledge. 147. 6 Fevret, M. and A. Gibert (1953), ‘La Djezireh syrienne et son réveil économique’. [‘The Syrian Jazireh and its economic awakening’. Lyon geography review]. Revue de géographie de Lyon (28): 1–15. 7 Tejel, J. (2008), Syria’s Kurds: History, Politics and Society. London and New York: Routledge. 40-45. 8 Human Rights Watch (1996). Syria: The Silenced Kurds. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/SYRIA96.pdf, 910. 9 Radpey, L (2016), ‘Kurdish regional self-rule administration in Syria: A new model of statehood and its status in international law compared to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq’, Japanese Journal of Political Science 17(3): 468–488. 10 Ibid. 11 Albarazi, Z. (2013), The Stateless Syrians. Tilburg Law School Research Paper No. 011/2013. 6 Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Working Papers