The Syrian revolution that erupted in March 2011 revealed a major crisis of confidence among different social elements in Syria: between Christians and Muslims; between Sunni Muslims and other sects, primarily the Alawite and Druze communities, and between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. However, while we purposefully omitted to mention Chechens and Ismailis, since their crisis of confidence was not fully revealed by the revolution, we counted the Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian and Armenian communities as part of the Christian community, in general. These distinctions fall outside the scope of this paper. They are mentioned here only to set the wider national context in which the Arab-Kurdish crisis of confidence evolves.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.