The state-owned Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA, is preparing to begin publishing in the Kurdish language this week, a groundbreaking move that may improve the mood as the central government and the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria continue bumpy negotiations over the latter’s future status.

For decades, successive Syrian regimes suppressed Kurdish rights, banning and criminalizing use of the Kurdish language. Kurds were not permitted to buy property, and a large number were not even granted official identity papers. As such, the move is a historic first.

The rebranding of SANA, the colorless mouthpiece of the Assad regime, follows an extensive restructuring process that began after Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, seized power in a surprise December offensive. The agency’s new director, Gen. Ziad Mahameed, told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency on Tuesday that SANA would broaden its multilingual content to include Kurdish, revamp its creaky infrastructure and open new bureaus overseas.

The announcement comes amid a burgeoning detente between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds after a stormy few weeks that saw US- and French-mediated talks aimed at securing the integration of Syrian Kurdish military and civilian structures with the central government collapse. Clashes between government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in and around Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor erupted in parallel, prompting fears of full-blown conflict.