Extraordinary weeks for the Kurds

From al-Sharaa's reception of the Kurds to Turkey's amnesty law, a fortnight that moved the Kurdish issue forward on several fronts at once.

Clockwise from top left: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa with Nechirvan Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq; Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani meeting Mazloum Abdi and Ilham Ahmed, senior Kurdish political leaders in Syria; a collage of Devlet Bahçeli, chairman of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned founder of the PKK, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; and New Party (Yeni Parti) leader Özgür Özel.

I followed the political developments regarding the Kurds in multiple countries over the last couple of weeks with a mixture of relief and anxiety.

Syrian president al-Sharaa hosted Iraqi Kurdistan leader Nechirvan Barzani. What a hosting, though. A giant Kurdistan flag was put next to the Syrian flag. Sources close to Barzani claimed that he was very impressed. Al-Sharaa then tweeted about the meeting in Kurdish, but this time his audience was Kurds in Syria, because the dialect was Kurmancî, the dia…