As stateless Syrian Kurds begin applying for citizenship under a recent presidential decree, hopes of restoring long-denied rights are tempered by bureaucratic hurdles and past disappointments. The post Denied for decades, Syria’s stateless Kurds edge towards recognition appeared first on Syria Dire
As stateless Syrian Kurds begin applying for citizenship under a recent presidential decree, hopes of restoring long-denied rights are tempered by bureaucratic hurdles and past disappointments.
9 April 2026
QAMISHLI — Standing outside the municipal stadium in Qamishli, Assem Abdullah Hamou, 51, and his brother joined dozens of other stateless Syrian Kurds holding sheaves of documents on Monday. In their hands were identification certificates, proof of residence, school records—anything they could gather to support their applications to finally become citizens of their own country.
Those gathered hoped to benefit from Presidential Decree No. 13 of 2026, issued this past January, which nullified the effects of a 1962 census in Hasakah province that deprived an initial estimated 120,000 Kurds of citizenship and produced a legacy of more than 60 years of exclusion. An initial one-month window to apply for citizenship began at the start of this week.
The one-day census, officially framed as a response to the emigration of Kurds from Turkey in the preceding years, was part of a string of discriminatory measures and demographic engineering policies throughout the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s aimed at Syria’s Kurdish minority.
It created two categories of Syrian Kurds who officials considered unable to prove residency in Syria since at least 1945: those with some identity documents became Hasakah ajanib (“foreigners” in Arabic), while those with no documents—or who were simply not reached by the census takers—became maktoumeen (from the Arabic maktoum al-qaid, “concealed from the registry”). Both groups experienced widespread discrimination from public institutions, and lost rights to property, education and healthcare reserved for citizens.
Maktoumeen, like Hamou and his brother, hold only an “identification certificate”—a paper signed by two witnesses and certified by a mukhtar that indicates its holder is known to local authorities. “It has to be renewed annually,” so “I have accumulated many of these certificates,” Atiya Muhammad Amin Issa, 48, a stateless Kurd from Qamishli, told Syria Direct.
Atiya Muhammad Amin Issa’s identification certificate, the main form of documentation she holds as a stateless Syrian Kurd. (Courtesy of Atiya Muhammad Amin Issa)
In addition to his own documents, Hamou brought his wife and daughter’s identification cards—both are Syrian citizens—as well as an individual civil registry extract and the names and pictures of his children, he told Syria Direct.
The families waiting at the Qamishli application center had a range of legal statuses, Syria Direct observed. While all the members of some families were stateless, others had mixed statuses within a single family. For example, one brother could be a Syrian citizen, while another is classified as ajnabi or maktoum al-qaid.
On Monday, Syria’s new government began receiving applications for Syrian citizenship from those covered by Decree No. 13 at nine centers in five provinces: one each in Aleppo, Deir e-Zor, Raqqa and Damascus, and five in Hasakah.
The application process consists of several stages, from submission to registration, followed by an interview with a specialized committee to verify the information, data processing and finally, if successful, a naturalization decision issued by the Ministry of Interior, Abdullah al-Abdullah, Syria’s Director-General of Civil Affairs, explained to Syria Direct.
The interior ministry has set an initial period of one month to receive applications, al-Abdullah said, noting that the length of this initial phase would determine the ultimate processing time for requests. He did not specify an anticipated timeframe for obtaining citizenship.
The two most important documents for stateless applicants to prove eligibility for Syrian citizenship are the identification certificate and proof of residence, the civil affairs director added. If neither is available, “supporting [documents] can be used, such as an electricity meter in their name, registration of children in schools, a contract of sale or purchase or any evidence proving presence in Syrian territory,” he added.
The stripping of citizenship during what is known as the 1962 “exceptional census” in Hasakah was among the most critical issues in Syria’s modern history. As the decades passed, the number of stateless people swelled: by the start of 2011, the number of ajanib alone in Hasakah reached 346,242 people.
In April of that year, shortly after the start of the Syrian revolution, then-president Bashar al-Assad issued Presidential Decree No. 49, allowing ajanib to apply for citizenship while making no mention of the maktoumeen. By the end of May 2018, some 326,489 people had obtained Syrian citizenship, leaving 19,753 in the ajanib category without status, according to an investigation published by the rights organization Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) in September 2018.
In 2011, the number of people in the maktoumeen category had reached 171,300, the same investigation noted. Under the 2011 decree, around 50,400 later managed to obtain citizenship by first changing their status from maktoumeen to ajanib.
There are no precise current statistics on the number of stateless Kurds from either category who have not obtained citizenship, which leaves the number of possible beneficiaries from Decree No. 13 unclear. “They are not registered in the first place, which makes the process of counting them very difficult,” al-Abdullah said.
Most maktoumeen live in Hasakah province, where the 1962 census was carried out, while there are also populations in Damascus, Aleppo, Raqqa and Deir e-Zor due to internal displacement during the war, according to Abbas Ali Musa, a member of the Network of Statelessness Victims in Hasakah (NSVH) and the Qamishli-based human rights organization Hevdesti.
To apply for citizenship, a maktoum Kurd must submit a file folder containing an identification certificate, proof of residence and personal photo matching the one on their identity certificate, as well as possible supplements such as school documents, a water or electricity connection or proof of parentage.
Each application must be made in person, without a lawyer or other proxy, said lawyer Avin Said al-Naama. Al-Naama, who lives in Qamishli but is originally from Ras al-Ain (Serekaniye), is following the cases of several applicants, including the Hamou brothers.
The requirement for supporting evidence is difficult for maktoumeen to fulfill, since they were “excluded from all official institutions, and have no legal existence or personal documentation of any kind, including things like registering electricity meters,” al-Naama told Syria Direct. Even “school documents are difficult to preserve, due to the conditions that all Kurdish-populated areas have faced, from bombardment and displacement to emigration.”
There are widespread fears among maktoumeen—and even ajanib—that bureaucracy and legal complications could become obstacles that once more deprive them of their right to citizenship, as happened in the past. Evidentiary requirements or administrative hurdles, they fear, could exclude Syrians who are eligible.
Hamou and Issa’s experience at the application center on Monday was “smooth and free of complications,” they said. Still, both fear another disappointment. Following past decrees issued by the Assad regime, they ran up against administrative obstacles and complications—namely requests for documents and proof they did not have by virtue of their legal status.
It is difficult for Hamou to believe that his lifelong dream could be realized, that he will have “a name and official existence in my country, Syria” where he was born in 1975 and where he stayed despite all the country experienced in recent years.
“I can’t believe that I could become a Syrian citizen after 51 years! Can I prove that I have seven children, have my marriage officially registered, obtain a Syrian ID, register my house in my name? Will my children and grandchildren be able to complete their education?” he wondered. “Can the new Syrian government really remove all these obstacles? Will that be realized?”
Civil affairs director al-Abdullah said no group has been excluded from the decision, and that Decree No. 13 clearly “specified that every Syrian Kurd residing in Syrian territory has the right to apply for citizenship.”
Hamou submitted his application on Monday, while Issa is waiting for her brother—who lives in Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq—to arrive in a few days so he can apply with his sisters in Syria. As for her other brothers, who live in Turkey and Germany, exactly how they can submit their applications is still unclear to her.
“Regarding expatriate maktoumeen al-qaid, the head of the family can submit a collective application on behalf of himself and his children, and indicate if one of them is absent,” al-Abdullah said. “When they return, they can submit a new application for citizenship.”
However, lawyer al-Naama stressed the need to receive applications and registration at embassies and consulates abroad. Suspending registration for stateless Kurds until they return is “a great injustice and exclusion, effectively removing them from the category covered by the new decree, which was the case with prior decrees,” she said.
The current arrangement could harm those abroad if they are compelled to return to Syria in order to apply, impacting their legal status or asylum cases in the countries where they live, she added.
Read more: ‘There is no future for us in Iraq either’: Statelessness plagues Syrian Kurdish refugees
At her home in Qamishli’s al-Arbawiya neighborhood, Issa recounted the “cruel reality” of living as a legal nonentity in her own country. She has faced great difficulty moving about inside Syria, as her identification certificate is not officially recognized, forcing her to use the family ledger and her husband’s ID to make hotel bookings. Once, she was stopped from traveling on a domestic flight from Qamishli’s airport for the same reason.
In a painful irony, Issa is often asked at military checkpoints and official institutions about why she has not obtained an ID card—the person asking not realizing that being maktoum al-qaid means she has no legal existence. This is even officially written in the family ledger: as her husband’s wife, Issa is listed as “concealed from the registry.” As she put it: “In the eyes of the state, I do not exist in my own country—even though I exist.”
For Hamou, chance as much as anything sealed his fate as maktoum. On the day of the 1962 census, his uncle was able to register, making him and his family Syrian citizens. But his brother, Hamou’s father, was off working as a shepherd outside of town at the time and did not know about the census. Hamou and his siblings were deprived of citizenship, and their mother being a Syrian citizen was not enough to save them.
In 2011, Hamou tried to apply for citizenship after Decree No. 49 was issued to allow ajanib to obtain citizenship, relying on official statements that insinuated maktoumeen could be included. His request was rejected because of what he called “government complications,” most notably a demand to produce witnesses of the signing of his parents’ marriage contract to prove they were married and living in Syria before 1945.
Still, over the years after 2011, hundreds of families were able to work on their cases and change their legal status from maktoumeen to ajanib, allowing them a pathway to citizenship. However, this “pathway was not entirely legal, so those working on these files were forced to pay bribes to government officials and influential Syrian security figures,” said Musa of NSVH and Hevdesti. As a result, most maktoumeen could not take advantage of it.
Despite the hopes pinned to the latest decree, Musa expected the actual percentage of people to initially acquire citizenship would be less than those covered, in principle, by the text itself. He pointed to problems related to documentation and displacement, as well as the large number of impacted people currently outside of Syria.
“The more flexible and broad the implementation, the more people will benefit,” he said. “Much will depend on the flexibility of the committees, and how they handle the fragile situation of families that have lived for decades as victims.”
Since 2011, around 13 million Syrians have been internally displaced and fled abroad. Many have lost their vital documents as a result, making it difficult for some maktoumeen to collect and submit necessary documentation.
Other challenges include the difficulty and transportation costs of journeying to reach the application centers, especially for those living in far-flung or underserved areas, Musa said. Maktoumeen, “for the most part, have not been able to complete administrative procedures in the past because they needed to pay bribes to officials, middlemen and security personnel. Their financial precarity was a barrier, which persists to this very moment,” he added.
Added to this is the legal vulnerability of some applicants—particularly those who fear their applications may be rejected due to weak evidence or inconsistencies in their documents. A lack of awareness and publicity about the practical procedures and process also plays a role. “Most of these groups live in difficult financial circumstances, and many have not completed their education due to their legal status as maktoumeen,” Musa said.
Al-Abdullah, for his part, offered assurances of “justice and transparency” in implementing the decree, including the establishment of “multiple committees to enhance transparency and the right to appeal.” An applicant may “appeal the sub-committees’ decisions to the supreme committee, and can appeal the supreme committee’s decisions through the administrative courts,” he said.
Avin Yousef, a Kurdish journalist from Qamishli who is herself among the victims of lost citizenship, said the number of application centers “should be increased to include all Hasakah cities and towns, and the inability of some to travel and [cover] expenses should be taken into consideration.”
Decree No. 13 of 2026 marks an “important step” and is a turning point in addressing statelessness for Syrian Kurds, but “still needs broader legislative and constitutional backing so it does not remain subject solely to an administrative or executive framework,” Musa said. While the decree addresses the question of citizenship in principle, it “does not, as of yet, establish a clear mechanism for redressing the harm resulting from decades of deprivation of education, work, ownership and movement,” he added.
“The practical implementation depends on administrative committees, which could open the door to discrepancies in implementation, or slow bureaucracy” from one center to another, Musa said.
The decree, and subsequent interior ministry decisions, can be described as a “major legal and political shift compared to [previous] stages, because they explicitly include maktoumeen al-qaid,” Musa acknowledged. At the same time, the step is “not enough on its own, if it aims to resolve the problem in a just and definitive way.”
“What is required is not only to grant citizenship, but to legislatively and constitutionally enshrine this right, address the civil consequences of years of deprivation, open the door to those who are outside the country and provide effective mechanisms for review and appeal,” he added. “The decree is a fundamental step, but it requires legal, administrative and rights-based follow-up.”
To ensure the current process succeeds, “the deadline should be extended and kept flexible,” alongside “adopting flexible means of documentation…[and] not limiting proof to narrow forms of documents, while opening paths for those outside Syria through embassies or special procedural platforms,” Musa said.
He suggested Syrian authorities “establish an independent and transparent grievance mechanism for those whose applications are rejected or flounder, expand the number of centers and committees or use mobile teams to ease the transportation burden.” He also called for linking “restoration of citizenship to resolving other civil restrictions—such as recording births, marriages, study and ownership.”
It is also crucial to “formally recognize that what is happening is the restoration of a stolen right, not just an administrative procedure, because that is important from the perspective of justice and redress,” Musa said.
For now, his application submitted, Hamou is anxiously waiting to recover his own stolen right to citizenship. As he does, he wonders: “Will we be compensated for the years of suffering we endured, feeling as though we were imprisoned within Syria, deprived of education, land and rights?”
This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.
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