The Unresolvable Question

Four states, forty million Kurds, and the three futures of a region no one can afford to stabilise

There is a category of geopolitical problems that cannot be solved, only managed. The Kurdish question is the most instructive example of that category in the modern Middle East. It has outlasted four empires, three American presidents who promised to do something about it, and one referendum that was meant to change everything but changed nothing. What has not outlasted is the regional order that kept the question frozen. That order ended in December 2024, when Bashar al-Assad fell in eleven days. The region has not found a new equilibrium since.

This is not an analysis of the Kurdish people. It is an analysis of the structural interests of the four states that surround them: Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Each of those states has a Kurdish population it cannot fully integrate and cannot fully suppress. Each has a different calculus for how much Kurdish autonomy it can tolerate and how much it will pay to prevent. When Assad fell, those four calculuses, previously stabilised by a shared enemy and a frozen conflict, came suddenly into contact with one another again. What emerges from that contact will determine the shape of the region for the next decade, and will set the risk parameters for every commercial and strategic actor operating within it.

The Architecture of Competing Interests

Turkey’s position is the clearest of the four. Ankara’s core objective in the Kurdish space is not territorial expansion; it is denial. The Turkish state has fought the PKK for four decades and has never fully pacified the southeast. What it cannot accept is a functioning Kurdish political entity along its southern border, one that the PKK and its Syrian affiliate, the YPG, could use as a staging ground, a legitimacy claim, and a precedent. The fall of Assad presented Ankara with what it had wanted for years: a window to finish what earlier operations in northern Syria had begun. Turkish-backed forces moved quickly. The window was real. So were the limits.

Those limits are structural, not incidental. The United States built its anti-Islamic State campaign in Syria around the SDF, the Kurdish-led force that controls the northeast of the country. American special operations forces remain embedded with those units. A Turkish offensive that goes too far does not just risk confrontation with a NATO ally; it risks destabilising the only functioning counter-terrorism architecture in the region. Ankara knows this. It calibrates accordingly, which means the Turkish approach is not annihilation but attrition: steady pressure, periodic operations, and the patient erosion of Kurdish territorial control over months and years rather than a decisive campaign.

Syria’s new government, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its political successor structures, faces a different problem. The northeast of the country, the region the Kurds call Rojava, is approximately one quarter of Syria’s territory. It also contains the majority of Syria’s recoverable oil and gas infrastructure, the Omar and Conoco fields among them, which currently generate the primary source of revenue for the SDF administration. Damascus needs that revenue base to fund reconstruction. It cannot afford to leave it under autonomous Kurdish administration indefinitely, and it cannot take it by force without triggering a confrontation with American-backed units it is not yet capable of winning. The negotiating position of both sides is therefore a function of time: the stronger the new Syrian state becomes, the less it needs to offer; the longer the Kurds hold the ground and its resource base, the more they can extract. That race between institutional consolidation and resource leverage is the central dynamic of the Syrian Kurdish question for the next two years, and it is the dynamic that will determine the investment climate for any firm considering entry into Syrian reconstruction.

Iran’s interest is less about Syria than about containment at home. The PJAK, the Kurdish militant organisation active in Iranian Kurdistan, is structurally linked to the PKK. Tehran has always understood that a strong, autonomous Kurdish region anywhere in the neighbourhood is a precedent that reverberates inside its own borders. The Iranian response has been characteristically direct: drone strikes and missile attacks on Kurdish positions in northern Iraq, targeted at what Tehran calls PKK infrastructure. Those strikes have continued regardless of diplomatic atmospherics. They will continue. Iran is weakened by the losses of the past two years, its proxy network degraded and its regional influence reduced. But containment of Kurdish autonomy is not a policy preference for Tehran; it is a domestic security imperative. Weakened states do not abandon domestic security imperatives. They pursue them with fewer tools and less restraint.

Iraq is the most passive of the four actors, and that passivity is itself a structural fact. Baghdad governs a federal state in which the Kurdistan Region has had recognised autonomy since 2005. The Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil is a functioning political entity with its own security forces, its own external relationships, and its own economic interests, including an energy export corridor through Turkey that generates significant revenue independent of Baghdad. What Iraq cannot accept is the transformation of its northern territory into a base for PKK operations that provoke Iranian retaliation on Iraqi soil, or Turkish military incursions that treat Iraqi territory as a free-fire zone. Complicating Baghdad’s position further are the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilisation Forces, whose presence in disputed territories between the federal government and the KRG creates a second layer of armed actors that neither Baghdad nor Erbil fully controls. Baghdad is caught between actors that are all more powerful than it is. Its strategy is the strategy of the structurally weak: procedural objection, delay, and the invocation of international norms it cannot enforce.

The Kurdish Fragmentation Problem

Before the scenarios can be mapped, one structural feature of the Kurdish side demands attention, because it shapes every possible outcome and every risk calculation for external actors in the region. The Kurdish political landscape is not unified. It is divided in ways that systematically prevent the collective action that durable autonomy would require, and those divisions are not incidental. They are structural, and each of the four surrounding states has a direct interest in maintaining them.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party, based in Erbil and led by the Barzani family, has built its political survival on a functional relationship with Turkey. Ankara is the KDP’s main trade partner and energy customer; the KDP-controlled pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is the primary export route for Iraqi Kurdish oil. The KDP and the PKK are not allies; in several documented cases they have been adversaries. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, based in Sulaimaniyya, has historically maintained closer ties with Iran, a relationship that is not merely political but operationally dense. IRGC Quds Force structures maintain a sustained presence in the Sulaimaniyya governorate, using PUK-adjacent networks for intelligence access and as leverage against both Ankara and the KDP. The two Kurdish parties have fought a civil war. They have not fully reconciled, and the IRGC presence in the PUK’s territory is one reason the reconciliation remains structurally incomplete.

In Syria, the SDF and its political wing, the AANES, represent a third model: a territory governed on quasi-democratic confederalist principles, drawing on PKK ideology but distinct from it in important ways. That territory controls the oil and gas fields that make the northeast economically significant, and it is now negotiating its survival simultaneously with Damascus, Washington, and Ankara, while managing internal tensions between Arab and Kurdish communities within its own administration.

The consequence of this fragmentation is not merely that the Kurds cannot present a unified negotiating position. It is that each Kurdish faction is, to varying degrees, instrumentalised by one of the surrounding states against the others. The KDP’s dependence on Turkey gives Ankara a lever inside Iraqi Kurdistan and over its energy exports. Iran’s operational presence in Sulaimaniyya gives Tehran a lever against the KDP, against Ankara, and against any American strategic design for the north. The SDF’s control of Syrian energy assets gives it bargaining power with Damascus, but simultaneously makes it a target for every actor that wants to deny Damascus that revenue or control that territory. Forty million Kurds, divided among incompatible strategies and dependencies, facing four states united only in their opposition to Kurdish statehood: that structural condition does not change across any of the three scenarios below. What changes is how it is exploited, and by whom.

The Pivotal Variable

One variable sits above all others in determining which scenario becomes reality: the American presence in northeastern Syria.

Approximately nine hundred American troops remain embedded with SDF units in the northeast. Their presence is justified by the counter-terrorism mission against Islamic State remnants. It has a secondary function that everyone understands and no one states officially: it deters a Turkish offensive large enough to destroy the SDF as a political and military organisation, and it preserves American leverage over the energy-rich territory whose future ownership is still undecided.

Under the current administration in Washington, that presence is under sustained internal pressure. The argument for withdrawal is familiar: the Islamic State territorial caliphate is gone, the mission is complete, American troops should not remain in a conflict that serves no clear American national interest. The argument against withdrawal is equally familiar: the SDF holds approximately ten thousand Islamic State prisoners in detention facilities that no other actor is willing or capable of managing; withdrawal would trigger a Turkish offensive; and the United States would lose its only meaningful leverage in Syria, including over the question of who ultimately controls its energy infrastructure. That debate has not been resolved. Until it is, the three scenarios below remain open.

Scenario One: Negotiated Stabilisation

Premise: The United States maintains its presence. The HTS-led government in Damascus stabilises sufficiently to offer the Syrian Kurds a credible constitutional autonomy arrangement. Turkey accepts this arrangement as a functional security guarantee.

This scenario is the least likely of the three, not because any single component is implausible, but because all three must occur simultaneously, and the third is the hardest to achieve.

Why would Turkey accept a Kurdish autonomy arrangement in Syria? The answer is not goodwill. It is conditionality. If the new Syrian government explicitly prohibits PKK operational presence, separates the SDF administratively from PKK command structures, and provides Ankara with verifiable monitoring mechanisms, the Turkish calculation changes. Turkey’s core interest is not the suppression of Kurdish cultural or political life. It is the elimination of PKK operational capacity near its border. A constitutional autonomy framework that structurally severs that link could, in principle, satisfy that interest. This has no precedent in the region. But it is the only logic under which Turkish acceptance is analytically coherent.

Iran does not cooperate in this scenario, and that is a structural ceiling on what stabilisation can achieve. Its drone campaign against PJAK positions in northern Iraq continues regardless of what is agreed in Damascus, because Tehran’s calculus is driven by domestic Kurdish unrest and IRGC strategic positioning, not Syrian politics. Even the best-case outcome in Syria leaves Iran as an active spoiler in Iraq, maintaining its Quds Force networks in Sulaimaniyya and its pressure on PUK structures, which means Scenario One is partial stabilisation with a persistent eastern fault line. The KDP in Erbil, dependent on Turkish goodwill for its energy revenues, distances itself from the SDF agreement. Baghdad welcomes the reduced pressure on its territory and does nothing.

Under this scenario, Syrian reconstruction becomes a viable commercial proposition. International capital, including Gulf sovereign funds already in contact with the new Damascus government, begins to price entry. The energy assets of the northeast come under a negotiated revenue-sharing arrangement rather than a contested ownership dispute. The Kurdish administrative structures remain in place but within a Syrian constitutional framework, reducing the political risk premium on contracts concluded in the northeast. This is the scenario in which the region becomes investable.

Scenario One is the condition under which long-term infrastructure and energy commitments in northern Syria carry manageable risk. The window for early positioning, if this scenario materialises, will be narrow. Entry during the negotiation phase, before constitutional arrangements are finalised, carries the highest leverage and the highest uncertainty.

Scenario Two: Managed Fragmentation

Premise: The United States reduces its force presence gradually without a decisive break. Turkish operations continue at current tempo. The Syrian government and the SDF reach no agreement but avoid open war. The situation freezes at a lower level of Kurdish territorial control than today.

This is the most likely scenario, because it is the path of least resistance for every actor involved. Washington reduces its exposure without triggering a crisis. Ankara continues its attrition strategy without risking a direct confrontation with a NATO partner. Damascus consolidates where it can and accepts de facto partition where it cannot. The Kurds lose ground incrementally but retain a residual territorial presence, including partial control of the energy fields.

Iran sustains its pressure on northern Iraq independently of events in Syria. Baghdad, unable to stop Iranian operations on its soil and unwilling to confront Ankara over cross-border incursions, drifts toward deeper institutional dysfunction. The PMF presence in disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil becomes more entrenched as federal authority weakens. The PUK, squeezed between Iranian pressure and KDP consolidation around its Turkish energy relationship, fragments further. The KDP deepens its economic integration with Ankara, which suits both parties but reduces Baghdad’s fiscal leverage over the Kurdish north.

The Syrian energy assets remain in a legal grey zone: the SDF administers them, Damascus claims sovereignty over them, and no international framework exists to clarify ownership or contract validity. This creates a sustained period of commercial limbo in which investment risk is not catastrophic but is also not calculable. Companies operating in adjacent sectors, logistics, infrastructure services, humanitarian supply chains, face periodic disruption from Turkish operations and localised security incidents without facing systemic collapse.

The Islamic State does not disappear in this scenario. It reconstitutes slowly in the ungoverned spaces that managed fragmentation produces, drawing on the pool of radicalised individuals in under-resourced detention facilities and exploiting the security degradation in areas where no actor has consolidated control.

Scenario Two is the environment in which project finance for Syria is not viable, but service and advisory contracts with defined exit clauses remain feasible. Iraq’s Kurdistan Region remains commercially open but operationally exposed to Iranian pressure on a recurring basis. Risk assessments must model periodic disruption rather than systemic stability. Supply chain routing through Turkish-KDP corridors carries lower political risk than routes transiting contested SDF territory.

Scenario Three: Cascading Collapse

Premise: The United States withdraws fully. Turkey launches a comprehensive operation against SDF-held territory. Iran escalates simultaneously in northern Iraq. The SDF collapses or disperses. The detention facilities holding Islamic State prisoners are overrun or abandoned.

This scenario does not require anyone to choose catastrophe. It requires only that Washington choose withdrawal, Ankara choose to act on the opportunity, and the system do what systems do when the deterrent is removed.

The mechanism is sequential but fast. A full American withdrawal removes the political cost of a Turkish offensive. Ankara’s calculation, which has until this point been constrained by the risk of direct confrontation with American personnel, changes immediately. The SDF cannot hold its territory against a sustained Turkish military operation without American air support and political cover. It disperses. The KDP in Erbil, reading the moment correctly, does not come to the SDF’s assistance; it deepens its accommodation with Ankara, securing its energy export corridor in exchange for non-interference. The PUK, watching Iranian drones over Sulaimaniyya and Turkish forces advancing in Syria, concludes that the cost of resistance exceeds the benefit.

Tehran, observing the Turkish advance and the American absence, draws its own conclusions about what the moment permits. The Qandil mountains, where PKK leadership has maintained a presence for decades, come under intensified bombardment. The IRGC consolidates its network in Sulaimaniyya, which in the absence of American deterrence and with PUK structures under pressure becomes a more permissive operating environment than at any point in the past decade. Iran does not coordinate with Turkey; the two states have incompatible interests in Syria and the Gulf. But their simultaneous operations against Kurdish targets produce a convergent effect: the Kurdish political geography of the northern Middle East contracts sharply, and with it the zone of relative institutional stability that made the Kurdistan Region commercially accessible.

The Syrian energy fields change hands under contested conditions. Turkish-backed forces and Syrian government forces will both attempt to assert control over the Omar and Conoco infrastructure. The resulting ownership dispute will not be resolved quickly, and any contracts concluded with the SDF administration during the preceding period will have no enforceable legal standing under any successor authority. The release of Islamic State prisoners from SDF-managed detention facilities is not a secondary consequence; it is the most immediate security event with direct regional and European implications. An organisation that rebuilt a territorial caliphate from a prison break does not need years to reconstitute from ten thousand released operatives.

The tipping point from Scenario Two into Scenario Three is not a dramatic decision. It is a threshold crossing: the moment when American force presence drops below the level that Turkish military planners assess as operationally constraining. That threshold is not publicly known. But Ankara’s military planning capacity is sophisticated enough to track it, and the decision to act will not be announced in advance.

Scenario Three triggers immediate suspension of all non-essential operations across the Kurdish north of both Syria and Iraq. The security perimeter of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq contracts significantly, with Erbil itself remaining relatively stable but access to southern and western KRI territories becoming non-viable. European firms with MENA exposure face renewed terrorism risk at home as IS reconstitution accelerates. Any asset or contract with SDF-administered territory as its legal anchor has no residual value.

Structural Verdict

The Kurdish question has no solution available to it in the current structural environment. What it has is a range of management outcomes, from the tolerable to the dangerous.

Scenario Two, managed fragmentation, is where the logic of the situation points. Every actor’s rational calculation leads there: not enough interest in stabilisation to pay the political cost of Scenario One, not enough recklessness to trigger Scenario Three deliberately. But Scenario Two is not an equilibrium. It is a condition sustained by the continuous management of actors whose attention is finite and whose patience is shorter than the problem requires. It is structurally unstable in one specific direction: toward Scenario Three. The fragmentation of the Kurdish political landscape, which stabilises Scenario Two by preventing Kurdish actors from presenting a unified claim, simultaneously accelerates the collapse in Scenario Three by ensuring that no Kurdish actor is capable of organised resistance when the deterrent falls. The energy assets at the centre of the dispute amplify this dynamic: they are valuable enough to fight over, too diffuse to defend, and legally ambiguous enough that no international framework currently protects whoever holds them.

That is the deeper structural logic of the Kurdish question. The same fragmentation that makes the Kurds manageable in the short term makes the consequences of mismanagement catastrophic in the long term. The region has never found a way out of that trap. It is not obvious that it is looking for one.