With HTS increasing its management, can Kurds preserve autonomy in components of Syria? | DW News

The victorious Islamist-led HTS are now in control of most of Syria. Now that they’ve set up a government in Damascus, they’ve set their sights on the rest of the country. Much of the northeast is held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces while the Turkish-backed group calling itself the Syrian National Army controls much of the territory along the northern border.
Syria’s Kurds had been hoping for autonomy or self-rule – but the HTS’s advances has people there fearing the worst.

For more on this, we are joined in the studio by Guido Steinberg. He is a Middle East analyst and International Terrorism expert from the German Institute for International & Security Affairs.

We also have Joost Hiltermann on the program, Director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group. He joins us from New Haven in Connecticut.

Henri Barkey is a Senior Fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and Cohen Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

And we talk to Middle East expert Bente Scheller of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation.

00:00 Kurds in Syria
04:41 Studio talk with Guido Steinberg
11:00 Interview with Joost Hiltermann
15:45 Interview with Henri Barkey
21:04 Interview with Bente Scheller

For more news go to: http://www.dw.com/en/

For more news, analysis and background information on the German election 2025 go to our dedicated page: https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-2025/t-70794502

Follow DW on social media:
►Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwnews
►TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dwnews
►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deutschewellenews/
►Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwnews

Für Videos in deutscher Sprache besuchen Sie: https://www.youtube.com/dwdeutsch

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/deutschewelleenglish?sub_confirmation=1