Muhammad Ismail, president of the Syrian Kurdish National Council (ENKS), has admitted that the US and France expressed “concern” after the ENKS unilaterally accepted an invitation to Damascus to meet Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa. He stressed that while they accepted the invitation, they made clear to Washington and Paris that this is “just a meeting” and not negotiations over the Kurds’ future in Syria.

Context: The ENKS, which is backed by the KDP in the Kurdistan Region, announced that a high-level delegation of 15 officials is preparing to meet Al-Sharaa. This comes despite the fact that, following a US-brokered intra-Kurdish conference in April, the ENKS and its main rival, the PYD, had agreed to form a joint delegation to negotiate for a federal Kurdish region in Syria.

Analysis: The admission by the ENKS president is striking and sends a clear signal that, contrary to public statements by US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack, the US officially wants a unified Kurdish bloc that pushes for decentralization. Barrack has repeatedly insisted on record that Washington supports a centralized Syrian state under Damascus’s leadership. Those public statements, however, appear to have been aimed at appeasing Turkey, given that Barrack’s primary role is as US ambassador to Ankara, with the Syria envoy portfolio added only later.

By contrast, the ENKS invitation to Damascus seems to have been driven by Turkey itself. Just a week before Al-Sharaa’s official invitation, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan revealed that the ENKS had asked Ankara for help in reaching out to the Syrian government.

Such statements are often missed amid the headlines, but this is a clear signal of US intent in Syria, which appears closer to the Israeli position favoring a decentralized Syria, even if their objectives might be slightly different. This reveals at the micro-level the Turkish-US rivalry over shaping Syria’s new governing system.

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