With HTS expanding its control, can Kurds maintain autonomy in parts 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.

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