Kurdish Migration Waves to Rojava (Northern Syria)

This study aims to present the Kurds and the Kurdish migration waves to Rojava (Northern Syria). The accumulation of huge Kurdish masses on the territory of today's Syria is the result of millennial waves of migration caused by the turbulent events in the Middle East. The article analyzes: The Kurdish settlements in Syria; The French colonial authorities; The French colonial policy in the Middle East; The migration flow to Syria. The authors of the in-depth study of modern Syrian Kurdistan, The Question of Syrian Kurdistan – Reality, History, Mythologisation, argue that in the twentieth century there were two main waves of migration to northern Syria. One is expansionist and the other is restrictive. They form the current profile of the Kurdish community in Syria.


Introduction
The accumulation of huge Kurdish masses on the territory of modern Syria is the result of millennial waves of migration, selected by the turbulent events in the Middle East. Famous French Orientalist Olivier Roa uses the word "macro-ethnicity" to refer to the Kurds during the French mandate in Syria. i To explain the meaning of the term, the researcher uses the methodological tool "comparison". In this regard, he deals with two geometrically located communities, each of which has its own structure. Roa accepts the hypothesis that the diverse internal structure of the Kurds is very similar to the incredible Central Asian ethnic palette. In itself, it is a fan of many social groups of different sizes, before flowing into the even larger ethnoreligious fan of Syria and the entire Middle East.

The Kurdish settlements in Syria
The first permanent Kurdish settlements in Syria are associated with the stay of Kurdish military garrisons in Damascus. It is about the 13 th century and the wars that Saladin waged against the Crusaders. In addition, individual small groups of Kurds have often been deported outside the lands of their historic homeland. Most often this was due to punishment. This is how Kurdish communities emerged in Damascus, Horan, the northern part of the West Bank, and even in Jordan. This most often happened on the way of pilgrims traveling to the holy lands of Mecca and Medina. Kurdish troops have enforced the settlement they have inhabited, but V. Stefanov Chukov -Kurdish Migration Waves to Rojava (Northern Syria) _________________________________________________________________________ 86 have also provided security for the pilgrimage column. Very often Kurds from other countries have joined the Kurdish core of the local janissary corps, perceiving it as a specific social environment. Thus, over time and the constant influx of Kurds from Diyarbakir, Erbil, and Kirkuk, the famous Hai al-Akrad, the Kurdish district of Damascus, was formed. In 1930 it numbered 12,000 people. ii During the 17 th and 18 th centuries, the High Gate sought to settle by force in various areas, in accordance with its plans for a well-structured tribal settlement throughout the Middle East. For example, the concentration of the Kurds in Diyarbakir was planned by the Ottoman authorities, as it was strictly monitored by the governor Mardin. One of the areas to which some of the tribes were sent was Raqqa. However, they did not stay there for long, as apparently the land there was not suitable for grazing the herds with which a significant part of the Kurdish tribes in Syria subsisted. The High Gate often used the services of the Shamar Arab tribe, which attacked the Kurds in northern Syria when they refused to pay taxes to the sultan. An important role in warming relations between the Ottoman authorities and a kind of federation of Kurdish tribes was played by its new leader, Ibrahim Pasha. In the process of improving relations, it came to the point that Ibrahim Pasha committed himself in front of the High Gate to fill with Kurds the composition of the elite Ottoman Hamidiya, created in the late 19 th century. It is no coincidence that some of these elite soldiers of the sultan joined the Kurdish uprisings against the Young Turks. According to Rondot, his successor, Mahmoud Bey has never had such authority among the Kurdish tribe. iii This is the reason why the Kurds began to look at the sultan with hostility.
Towards the end of the 19 th century, the Kurds in Damascus also established their own urban Notabilitet. These are people who manage to reach a high-status social status. Such were the landowners who managed to buy large tracts of land around the Syrian capital. In addition to the activities of such large Kurdish clans as Yusuf, Shamsedin, and Abid, a second neighborhood with a predominantly ethnic population was formed. Its name was Suk Saruja, whose name suggested that there were more people living there who were engaged in trade. This was the first neighborhood built in the 19th century outside the walls of the Old City of Damascus. According to the Lebanese Philip Huri, the creation of the neighborhood in question was not so much an expression of the desire for ethnic identification of the community, as the formation of a clientelistic network in the literal sense of the word of wealthy Kurdish landowners and pastoralists. iv At the same time, such a significant Kurdish community was formed in Syria's secondlargest city, Aleppo. The internal migration waves of Afrin and Jazeera, mainly due to economic reasons, strengthened the presence of the Kurds in the village. v Thus emerged the Kurdish neighborhood of Sheikh Maksud, which played a key role in the division of Aleppo between the opposition and the regime in 2013-2016 during the country's civil war.
In the first half of the 20 th century, it was very difficult to talk about the Kurds in Syria as a whole. It is about groups/tribe, clan, or family, as well as individuals. Ethnic qualifications remain in the background. Due to their strong fragmentation, it was much more relevant for the Kurds to have some social, political, geographical, regional, or sectarian characteristics in order to identify the group. For example, in the Kurd Doug region alone, there are reports of the existence of five major Kurdish tribes, namely the Amikan, Bian, Sheikhan, Shikakan, and Jam. Other, smaller tribes were Robaria, Harzan, Koshar, and Hastian. At the same time, there were twentysix Yazidi tribes in the region with a total population of just over 1,000, who were vassals of the already mentioned small tribe of Robaria. vi This feature of the community has long influenced the assessment of external factors towards the Kurds. Such an approach has been noticeable since the time of the French mandate in Syria. Probably this feature distinguishes the Kurds from other large local communities and therefore their minority status brings them significantly more privileges.

The French colonial authorities
The first took place during the French colonial mandate, namely in the period [1925][1926][1927][1928][1929][1930][1931][1932][1933][1934][1935][1936][1937][1938][1939]. The French authorities not only organized local life, but also introduced new concepts and ideas about the relationship between center and periphery, which are an important component in building each of the new power mechanisms. Instead of the traditionally strong vertical ties typical of Eastern states and, in this case, the Ottoman Empire, the colonial authorities tried to encourage an alternative model based on "horizontal, corporate, and national lines." viii To a large extent, it is a question of institutionalizing the European formula for the nation-state in the Syrian and Lebanese case, looking for the appropriate place for minorities in it. Concretizing the place of the latter is a difficult moment of transition from the Ottoman-Turkish Millis system, in which the ethnoreligious political center is located high above the governed, to the new homogeneously built Middle Eastern states. The Kurdish community, the largest ethnic non-Arab minority in the Middle East since the first decade of the 20 th century, plays a key role in the rapidly accelerating nation and state building process.
The vast majority of Syrian Kurds speak the Kurmanji dialect and practice Sunni Islam. However, there is a difference between the Turks, who are followers of the Hanafi legal dogmatic school, while the Kurds -of the Shafait. In the early twentieth century, they were concentrated in three enclaves along the northern border of the Syrian state -Jazeera, Jarablus, and Kurd Dag (Jebel al-Akrad, the mountainous areas around Afrin).
It is noteworthy that they inhabit isolated areas, either mountainous or peripheral to the center of power. The Yazidi minority, unlike their compatriots, is more "social." It is more likely to mix with non-Kurdish people, Arabs, Christians, Turkmen, and others. In this regard, the Yazidis inhabit areas along the Turkish-Syrian border. The three above-mentioned places become a kind of "corridors" to which the Kurds fleeing from Turkey head and pass.

The French colonial policy in the Middle East
The policy of complete Turkification of all communities inhabiting republican Turkey, adopted by the Young Turks and later adopted by Kemal Ataturk, is the reason for the constant riots of the resisting minorities, including the Kurds. During the period 1925-1938, they raised seventeen revolts against the assimilation actions of the Turkish national state. The uprisings began in 1925 with that of Sheikh Said Biran ix and ended in 1938 with the Kurdish revolt of the Alevi Zaza, led by Seyed Riza in Dersim. x The latter was suppressed in a particularly cruel manner. In 2019, information came out that this was done with chemical weapons imported from Nazi Germany.
The Yeni Ozgur Politika and Junde Welt gazeteleri newspapers, published in Germany, published documents accusing the Hitlerite government of selling mustard gas and polyvinyl chloride to Turkey. The purchase invoices bear the signature of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself. According to the same information, the Nazis also sold the planes, known during World War II, Heinkel He 111, with which the chemical weapons were thrown in the Kurdish areas. In July 2019, three parliamentarians from the left-wing Die Linke party addressed questions to the federal government of Angela Markel. xi Seyed Riza's revolt puts an end to a wave of riots by individual Kurdish tribes in southern Turkey. After each of them passes thousands of Kurdish, persecuted by the Turkish state, rebels in Syria. However, the main flow of ethnic Kurdish refugees from Turkey is directed to al Jazeera, called by the French Upper al Jazeera. The latter was later organized by the colonial authorities in the northeastern province of Hasaka. Unlike the Kurds, the Armenian refugee flow also pushed out of Turkey, is inland, and especially in major Syrian cities. xii If the first group is somewhere around 120,000, then the second is only 9,788 people. The information is based on data from the Syrian civil register in al Jazeera until 1943. xiii An important reference point for the direction of the Kurdish migration waves from Turkey to Syria is the line following the extension of the railway connecting Europe with Istanbul and Nusaybin in the direction of Aleppo, and from there to the cities of Ras al-Ain, Darbasia, Amuda, Kamishli, and Kakhtania. xiv In practice, before the official international borders were delineated, the system of national citizenship was introduced, the first national censuses were carried out, a civil register was established, etc., these lines followed the natural flow of human migration. It has existed since the emergence of the first state formations in the region, based on purely economic and trade principles. The delineation of national borders in the region, following the Syke-Spiko Treaty of 1916, is the circumstance that gives the always existing, until now, in this part of the Middle East, economic and trade movements of huge masses of people, the status of migration wave. The thesis is that in addition to the purely political impetus to cross the Turkish-Syrian border, formed after the collapse of Ottoman Turkey, there has always been an economic factor for such movements.
The Kurds first met with French colonial troops in 1919. They penetrated relatively easily into the mountainous areas of the Kurd Doug. According to Philip Huri, it was noticeable that not only this Kurdish community but also the one in Damascus very quickly turned their backs on their former metropolis. But it also seems that despite its apparent "Arabization", it has been felt that the Damascus Kurds were not strong supporters of Arab nationalism. The Kurds form special military formations within the French army in Syria. They took an active part in the suppression of the revolt of the local Arabs in 1925. xv The situation with the Kurds around the city of Jarablus was a little different. A powerful tribal federation has lived in the region between the present-day city of Suruj and the Syrian city of Jarablus on both banks of the Euphrates River since the 17 th century. Some of the tribalist formations were Arab. Especially around Jarablus lived about 16,000 Kurds, divided into five large tribes -Alaedinan, Bijan, Kitkan, Sheikhan, and Shedanan. When the colonial army arrived on the scene in 1920, members of the Kitkan tribe immediately joined it. The other tribes, however, were not so friendly. Those in Urfa, Enteb, and Marash joined the units of the new Turkish republic commanded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The French tried to form a local gendarmerie, including Kurds, Alawites, and Circassians. However, it was not as effective as the foreign corps in the French army as the Algerians and Armenians. This led to a great battle in Marash between France and Turkey. xvi The strongest resistance to the French army came from the relatively large, compact Kurdish community in al Jazeera. Two region-specific factors contributed to this.
The first is that the Kurds there were heavily influenced by the Pan-Islamic propaganda of Kemal Ataturk's government. This was partly true of some Kurdish communities in Aleppo province. For example, Kurdish riots there were raised under Islamic-motivated slogans such as those for "war against infidels." xvii The second is related to the strong instinct to uphold the specific way of life, to the resistance of the colonial desire to destroy the tribal-clan way of social organization. In fact, in relatively larger minority groups, as was the case with the Kurdish community in al Jazeera, tribalism reflexively spilled over into local patriotism. Thus, the status quo achieved by the fragile balance between the various local Kurdish tribes or between the various smaller clans in the region was equated with the ethnicity's understanding of local patriotism. xviii However, it was applicable to the colonization troops, not to the Arabs, with whom they achieved an incredible tribalistic cocktail. In this case, N. Fucaro uses the term "Arab-Kurdish hybrid socio-political subject", in which each of the two components has its own function. According to him, the Kurds are a binary minority and the Arabs an opposition majority. xix Thus, in al Jazeera, a multi-layered original socially constructed matrix is created, in which the three ethnic groups (French, Arabic, and Kurdish) layer a tangle of dynamic, social interrelations. In it, the external, colonial, non-Islamic, and politically powerful factor stimulates the processes of homogenization of a visibly homogeneous, politically subordinated mass. However, the cohesion between Kurds and Arabs is temporary, but it leaves a strong imprint on the way their own nationalist ideologies are formed.
The French colonial authorities played a major role in directing individual migration flows to parts of their mandated Syria. They tried to create separate territories in which certain ethnic and confessional groups would dominate. Thus, separate autonomous regions were created, which differed in the size of the territory and the population. At the same time, the French governor-general in Damascus granted varying degrees of powers to local ethnoreligious authorities. Examples in this regard are the formed confessional districts -Alawitistan (the state of Jebel Al-Alauin), with capital Latakia (1920)(1921)(1922)(1923)(1924)(1925)(1926)(1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931)(1932)(1933)(1934)(1935)(1936) and Durzistan (state of Jebel ad Druz), with capital Sueida (1921)(1922)(1923)(1924)(1925)(1926)(1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931)(1932)(1933)(1934)(1935)(1936). xx It is noteworthy that these two large minority groups, which are part of the Arab ethnic group but do not belong to the Sunni religion, are given enormous powers by the colonial authorities. They had their own flags and coats of arms, the right to choose their own local authorities, to issue their own passports, and other similar powers within the mandated Syrian territory. The Kurds, as a compact population and independent territory, were not given this. The Kurdish ethnic territories were divided administratively, and so the Jarablus and Azaz districts were initially formed. Within the province of Al Jazeera, which included the present-day Syrian provinces of Hasaka, Raqqa, and Deyrezor, three separate administrative districts were established -Kurdish, Christian, and Arab. This happened in the 1930s, thus counteracting the aspirations of the Kurdish ethnic element to receive such administrative freedom to encourage its aspirations for future secession from mandated Syria. It is not clear exactly why the French authorities did not give the Kurds as much confidence as the Druids and Alawites. It is possible that they feared that they were too close in mentality, national ideas, and historical ties to the Turks. It is possible that they simply considered that the Kurds were not in a position to organize themselves to such a high level that they could call themselves a "state" and be granted privileges corresponding to proto-statehood. However, it is noteworthy that all the more compact minorities during the period were encouraged to create their own ethnic territories along the borders of French Syria. In this way, they become a kind of buffer and a security barrier in the event of a collision with neighbors. Alawitistan is in the northwest corner, Druzistan is in the south, and Kurdistan (al Jazeera) is in the northeast of the country.
Undoubtedly, at that time the majority of the population in al Jazeera was Bedouin, and what was settled in the urban agglomerations was relatively small. This was due to the fact that, regardless of the demarcated border, the pastoralists, who were a large part of the Bedouins, continued to search freely for their animals on both sides of the border. Usually, the climatic conditions were the ones that determined in which season of the year where they would be with their herds -in the Turkish or Syrian part.
Over time, the population of al Jazeera has multiplied. The first data were for 1938. Statistics show that then the number of all inhabitants of this Syrian region was 105,513 people. The enumerators specify that the figure does not include Bedouins, be they Kurds or Arabs. xxi In 1943 the population was already 146,001 people and annually it increased by 5.6%. xxii This was the province in mandated Syria until 1943, which saw the fastest increase in population. During this period, the French colonial authorities quickly granted citizenship to immigrants, thus trying to quell any looming social riots.
The interesting thing, in this case, was that the Kurds who took advantage of this policy of the French governor-general were much more than the Bedouin Arabs. Despite the liberal migration policy during this period, a significant part of the Arabs, faithful to their sedentary lifestyle, remained without official documents of belonging to the Syrian state. According to the authors of the collective work The Question of Syrian Kurdistan -Reality, History, Mythologizing, the Arabs began to be recorded en masse in the registers of Al Jazeera only in the second half of the 40s of the 20 th century. xxiii French colonial policy in the Middle East relied much more on the export of its own nationalism than on the actual introduction of market economic and social relations. In the colonized area between the Mediterranean and the province of Mosul in Iraq, Paris placed a strong emphasis on its traditional "civilization" mission, which yielded much more visible results in Africa than in the Arab Middle East. However, all this led to traditional assimilation, not so much to integration.
After all, France carried out trivial colonial actions based on the principle of "divide and rule." They opposed the urban against the rural elite, the individual minorities in between, but mostly the minorities against the Sunni majority. The approach of the French colonial school in the Levant is based on the so-called "Lyautey-system" in which the main idea is to isolate the representatives of local nationalism. xxiv French colonial policy in the Middle East was based on completely opposite principles to that of Britain's rival in Iraq. London sought the support of the Sunni community, while Paris sought the support of non-Sunni minorities -Alawites, Druze, Christians, and others. The slogans raised by Arab nationalists to create Arab unity were perceived by the French colonizers as a hidden tool of their British rivals to damage Paris' ambitions in the region. However, this also left lasting traces in the policies of the two colonial states. France remained in the minds of the peoples of the Middle East as defenders (and dissenters) of minorities, while Britain -of the Arab nation-state, and subsequently of those circles that later embraced the ideas of Islamic (especially) Sunni radicalism. xxv After 1943, the independent Syrian government tried to change migration policy in areas with a compact Kurdish population. It made an effort to quickly establish control over local registers. However, this did not happen to him quickly, as the final and complete withdrawal of French troops took place only in April 1946. However, the national government tried to obtain all the documentation, especially that concerning the Bedouins, as far as the colonial authorities were able to register them. The Syrian government feared that the former metropolis could use this information to stimulate separatist sentiment in this part of the country. These were mainly the Assyrian-Christian and Jurassic communities, which were the subject of special encouragement for the acquisition of Syrian citizenship by France.

The migration flow to Syria
At the beginning of the transition period 1943-1946, the new rulers in Damascus quickly began to apply a restrictive policy towards migrants coming from Turkey, but there was no significant restriction of the flow to northern Syria. In fact, the momentum was so great that the only thing the Syrian authorities did was to suspend the entry in the official register of new residents of the Syrian Arab Republic. However, at the end of 1947, these actions of the government in Damascus began to bear fruit. Al Jazeera's population growth has dropped to about 1% a year. According to statistics, the Kurds already numbered 151,946. xxvi In the next five years (1947)(1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952) the pace of the immigration process increased again, but with moderate values. It became 1.3%, with a registered Kurdish community of 162,145. This was mainly due to external migration and not to natural growth. xxvii It should be noted that these are official statistics, without taking into account the unregistered, be it those who settled in the cities or the Bedouins, whom no government could force to obtain documents.
The migration flow to Syria directly depended on the political, economic, and social situation in neighboring Turkey. In a worsening situation, a huge group appeared there, wanting to cross the border and which the Syrian authorities usually tried to bring back to Turkey. A very strong factor for Kurdish immigration to Syria was the compulsory military service in Turkey. For this reason, the young people who were to enter the Turkish barracks were particularly active. In fact, there was a kind of migration rotation of Kurdish groups between the two neighboring countries.
Something like the secondary resettlement of these Kurdish masses was reproduced, as some of them were sent not to their native places, but too large cities in the north such as Ankara and Istanbul. The main reason for this was that their houses were destroyed by the Turkish authorities in order not to return once they had left. The Kurds, who still managed to escape forced return to Turkey, usually followed their tribal, clan, or family ties to settle in one of Syria's three already established Kurdish enclaves. Thus, individual Kurdish villages or urban neighborhoods were "transferred" from Turkey to the Arab country. On the other hand, however, this population became a prerequisite for the emergence and accelerated development of hitherto unknown crafts in Syria. There was also a rapid development of agriculture, whose main engine was the Kurds who emigrated from Turkey. In the 1950s, northern Syria marked the characteristics of an economic boom that required more and more labor, which in turn was located in the southern regions of Turkey.
A classic example in this regard is the accelerated development of cotton production. In the 1950s, there was an increased demand for world stock markets due to the three-year war on the Korean Peninsula (1950)(1951)(1952)(1953). The land in northern Syria has proved very suitable for sowing this technical crop, which has led many entrepreneurs and investors to attract additional labor. The agricultural workers were of different ethnicities -Kurds, Arabs, and Christians. At the same time, the leaders of two large Kurdish tribes, namely Malia and Huirkia, turned mainly to their compatriots in Turkey. They signed a contract for the provision of labor with the leaders of the leading company "Asfar wa Nudjar".
Thus, the latter undertook to provide more competitive pay and working conditions in the area of the city of Ras Al-Ain to the members of the Kurdish tribe in question, which inhabits mainly southeastern Turkey. Moreover, tribal chiefs began to compete in this occupation and even began to call them "cotton sheiks". The latter received a high social status, which directly made them the last between the Kurdish tribes and the political regime in Damascus.
At the same time, the expanded commercial railway station in Kamishli, the city became the subject of a serious influx of economic immigrants. In the early 1950s, it had a population of over 30,000. This fact made it the economic center of the region and the future capital of Syrian Kurdistan. Once in Syria, the Turkish Kurds did their best to meet the conditions for obtaining Syrian citizenship. For them, the Arab country was a kind of "paradise" compared to the extremely difficult living conditions they had in Turkey.
Serious social transformations began in Syria in the 1950s, thanks to dynamic agrarian reforms. The stratification among the farming class has already become visible. A stratum of landowners also emerged, including large Kurdish owners. The agricultural infrastructure is constantly being improved. For example, in 1951, the pumping stations doubled to 5,068. Irrigation of thousands of hectares of Syrian fertile land, more than half of which was along the Euphrates and Al Jazeera rivers, was ensured.
The Syrian authorities continued to take all possible measures to limit the immigration of Turkish Kurds and encouraged the settlement of Arabs in this most northeastern region of the country. The rulers of Damascus feared ethnic-separatism. The latter believed that many soldiers in the Syrian army, recruited since the French term, have Turkish roots, but have successfully disguised their Turkish names.
The Syrian government feared that Kurdish migrants and Turkish officers who hid their real names could create many headaches for the independent Arab state if they united in their actions. In addition, participants in the highly destabilized regime in Damascus under Hosni Zaim, Hashim al-Athasi, Fawzi al-Sulu andAdib al-Shishekli (1949-1954) had doubts that it was the Kurds who would be the target of active communist propaganda in Syria. of the USSR, at the beginning of the Cold War. Moreover, the latter two were Syrian Kurds formed as officers in the former French colonial army. xxviii However, they did not rule differently from the other Syrian presidents who came to power through a coup.

Conclusion
As the country's health system has improved, the average age of the Syrian population has been gradually increasing. During the period 1952-1963 al Jazeera was constantly in the first place of all provinces in the country in terms of population growth. In a period of seven years, it has almost doubled. For example, in 1952 the total number of people living in this northeastern part of Syria was 162,145, while in 1959 they numbered 293,140. In just four years, the registered population of al Jazeera was 316,083. Thus, for the period under review, the population there increased by as much as 3.6%. According to the Ministry of Interior, the demographic situation there is an unprecedented example, as Al-Jazeera had the highest population growth rate in the world. xxix Thus, gradually, at the end of the fifth decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the sixth, official documents in Syria began to mention the existence of two categories of citizens, namely those living in Syria and Syrian citizens. At the same time, there was talk of "extraordinary statistics", the purpose of which was to provide information both to those who have regular documents and to those who obtained passports illegally. All this was due to the fact that the Syrian authorities began to automatically refuse to grant citizenship to the incoming Kurds. Initially, this happened after a period of five years, but over time it was extended to ten years.
Thus, in the 1960s, a stratification began within the Kurdish Syrian community itself. Those who have lived in this country for centuries have been grouped mainly in large cities, mostly Damascus. They were radically different from those living in the areas bordering Turkey. Normally, over time, they will be classified as "internal" and "external".