Citizenship revocation and statelessness of Kurds in Syria Accordingly, President Bashar Al-Assad issued Legislative Decree No. 49 on April 7, 2011, which stipulated granting citizenship to those registered as ‘foreigners’. Considering that up to 2011 the number of persons categorised as ‘foreigners’ amounted to 346,242, and around 171,300 as unregistered, this legislation has changed the whole status of stateless Kurds.33 Firstly, most of the ‘unregistered’ were able to get citizenship after managing to get registration as foreigners first. As a result, during 2011, about 50,400 Syrian stateless Kurds were able to obtain citizenship, identity cards and travel documents. In 2013, according to UNHCR, around 104,000 stateless individuals had acquired citizenship.34 By the end of May 2018, 326,489 had obtained Syrian citizenship, according to Syrians for Truth and Justice Organisation. However, there are about 41,000 who did not correct their legal status due to problems encountered by the local directorates during the entry of their files in the category of ‘foreigners’.35 Due to the outbreak of clashes in different areas of Syria, there are still up to 5,000 people who did not come, or were unable to correct their legal status, or likely to have emigrated or been displaced to Lebanon, Jordan, Europe, Kurdistan, and Turkey. Conclusion Comparing the Syrian Kurdish case to other contexts, it is worth mentioning the growing trends and patterns in citizenship revocation and denationalisation in many European countries. Between 2014 and 2019, in several European states, including Italy, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, many proposals and new legislations have been introduced to meet common domestic concerns about national security regarding ‘foreign fighters’ and suspected ‘terrorists’, through the power to revoke the citizenship of citizens and, in particular, citizens of migrant origin.36 In contrast to the case of Syria, the European denationalisation practices have been a clear policy response or instrument, in line with the expansion of state security measures to prevent terrorist acts. In Syria, denationalisation has been used as an instrument, practice and policy for regime security for authoritarian regimes. Given the rise of several strong Kurdish political movements in Iraq and Turkey in the 20 th century, Syria’s regime has successfully bought off, infiltrated and coerced notably weak and ineffective Kurdish opposition groups. This authoritarian approach has been driven by the threat posed by all Kurds to the ‘Arab nation’ slogan of Assad’s regime and Ba’athist Party, taking into the long and bloody struggle between Kurds and other governments in Iraq and Turkey. All of these contributed to making sustained and meaningful Kurdish political organisation extremely difficult and hazardous. However, Kurds were one of the key sources and enablers of the Syrian Uprising in 2011, and from 2012, Kurdish parties and groups started to demand secession from Syria. As the Syrian conflict turned into a proxy war, things have partially improved for the Kurds after the local Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration (AA) succeeded in getting the power and rule large parts of the northeast of Syria, which is now an internationally-accepted administration and de-facto autonomous by the American-supported Kurdish forces and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) 33 Skype interview with UK-based Syrian-Kurdish activist, August 2020. 34 UNHCR (2015), Global Trends. http://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends-2015.html. 35 Asharq, A. (2018), ‘Over 19,000 Syrian Kurds Deprived of Citizenship, 46,000 Remain Stateless’. Available at: https://english.aawsat.com//home/article/1393276/over-19000-syrian-kurds-deprived-citizenship-46000-remain-stateless 36 Birnie, R. & R. Bauböck (2020), ‘Introduction: Expulsion and Citizenship in the 21st Century’, Citizenship Studies 24(3): 265-276. European University Institute 11