One of the missing links to a viable Syrian opposition is the Kurds. While comprising only 8% of Syria’s population, they represent the minority voice needed to help strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood-based Syrian National Council (SNC). This is why the SNC recently named a Kurd as its new leader while the Free Syrian Army is now calling on its "Kurdish brothers" to join forces against President Bashar al-Assad. Yet, if the SNC and its partners want to gain and sustain a Kurdish buy-in, then they will have to move beyond the anti-Assad rhetoric and focus on the source of the problem, regime alternatives the Kurds can trust. At minimum, this effort will require restructuring the SNC or creating a real umbrella opposition group that is inclusive of secular and locally-based leaders and de-linked from Turkey and its Kurdish problem.

It is a mistake to think that Syrian Kurds are eschewing the SNC because of uncertainty about the future. On the contrary, like Christian and Alawite groups, most are clearly aware of their political prospects under a Muslim Brotherhood-SNC influenced, post-Assad government. Repercussions of regime change on minority groups in the Middle East and the particular fallout from the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia have confirmed these fears. Sectarian conflict in Iraq is another clear reminder for Syrian minority groups of what is likely to emerge in a post-Assad state.

Syrian Kurds’ distrust of the SNC also is tied to ethno-nationalist and cross-border politics. Their historical trajectory not only is tainted by exclusionary Ba’athist policies inside Syria, but by close relations with Turkey’s Kurds and their own displacements to and from southeastern Turkey. With the SNC integrally linked to Ankara and the Kurdish problem in Turkey unresolved after nearly three decades, many Syrian Kurds see a similar fate under an SNC-influenced regime. Even those Syrian Kurdish groups who support Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, now an ally of Ankara , are reticent to join the SNC.

The SNC is attempting to address these weaknesses. Replacing its previous leader Burhan Ghalioun, a Paris-based intellectual with Abdul Bassett Sayda, with Kurdish academic, and promising to safeguard Kurdish rights in a post-Assad Syria may appease Kurdish and other minority groups. Some Kurds from the Kurdish National Council (KNC), which represents 11 Kurdish groups in Syria, have expressed willingness to compromise, affirming they do not seek to divide Syria, but to assure a secular state that protects Kurdish national identity, gender equality, and religious freedoms.