A Syrian Kurd without an identity: a Syrian for just seven months, and 46 years searching for a homeland

I was born in Al-Hasakah in 1980, a Kurd on land that should have been my homeland. But for thirty-one years of my life, I was a stranger in my own country. 

The special census carried out by the Syrian regime in 1962 in the province of Al-Hasakah stripped tens of thousands of Kurds, including my family, of their Syrian nationality. We carried red cards that reminded us every day that we were strangers in our own country.

I couldn’t study properly, because I was forbidden from holding an official government job, and I couldn’t buy a house, travel or even get married easily (my wife also had to be a ‘foreigner’, just like me). I existed physically, but not legally. For decades, I lived as a shadow of a human being. I breathed Syrian air but had no rights as a citizen. This is not just a statistic in a human rights report; it is a daily reality that thousands of people like me have experienced.

A strange feeling

At the end of 2011, following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, President Bashar al-Assad issued a presidential decree (Legislative Decree No. 49) granting Syrian nationality to people who were registered as ‘foreigners’. I finally received a Syrian identity card. It was a strange feeling: for the first time in my life, I felt like a citizen. But this feeling of joy lasted only seven months.

Due to the escalation of the war and the increasing violence, I was forced to leave Syria. I went to the Kurdish region in Iraq. There, I was treated as a Syrian refugee, and not as a Kurd from part of Greater Kurdistan. Even amongst my Kurdish brothers, my Syrian documents defined my identity more than blood or language. There, too, I did not feel a complete sense of belonging. It was a painful experience that showed that ‘Kurdistan’ is not yet a unified political identity that brings together the four parts of Kurdistan.

In 2022, I applied for asylum in the Netherlands. Here, too, the Dutch authorities treat me as a Syrian refugee on the basis of the official documents I hold. The irony is that I am Syrian only on paper. In reality, I was a Syrian citizen for only seven months of my forty-six years of life. For the rest of my life, I was either a foreigner in Syria or a refugee classified on the basis of a temporary, paper nationality.

I now live in the Netherlands and am waiting for a permanent residence permit and, subsequently, Dutch citizenship. I know that the law usually requires five years’ legal residence, and that I must also pass the integration exam. I am following the procedures in good spirits, because this citizenship means more to me than just a passport. It offers an opportunity to finally build a stable identity – one that gives me a sense of belonging and security after decades of alienation.

True identity

But the fear never leaves me. I’m afraid that the rules on immigration and nationality in the Netherlands might change, as has happened in other European countries. At the age of forty-six, I realise that I’m still searching for a ‘true identity’. The Kurds do not have an independent state to bring our scattered community together, and the Syrian identity I was temporarily granted was never ‘inclusive’.

The inclusive Syrian identity, which thinkers and activists are discussing today, should be a national and civic bond that unites all Syrians: Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmen and others, regardless of ethnicity or religion. It must be based on equality in citizenship, respect for diversity and equal rights, and not on a dominant ethnic nationality or historical exclusion. But my personal experience shows that, under the previous regime and also under the current regime – which oppresses anyone who is different – this identity has remained nothing more than words on paper. How can it be inclusive when it has deprived me of my most basic rights for thirty-one years?

In the Netherlands, I am learning the language and trying to integrate into society. Here, I see a model of a state based on civil rights and equality before the law. I hope that my Dutch nationality (if I am granted it) will not simply be a new document, but the start of a new identity based on respect and stability.

Not just a document

Yet a part of me remains behind. A part that dreams of a Kurdish state, one day, or of a truly pluralistic Syria in which all identities come together to form a single whole, without exclusion. Until then, I live amongst temporary identities: Kurd by blood, Syrian on paper for a short while, and a Syrian refugee in Europe.

I now realise that identity is not just a document. It is a sense of belonging, of security, of a future. I am waiting for Dutch citizenship as a final chance to build this sense of belonging. And I hope that Europe, and Dutch society in particular, understands that thousands of refugees like me carry with them complex stories of long-term alienation. True integration begins with acknowledging these stories, not by ignoring them.

Perhaps one day I will become Dutch. But my heart will always bear an old wound: the wound of a man who has lived for forty-six years without a homeland that has truly embraced him.