Syria didn’t have the problem with Kurds before Arab Spring.
Kurds were Turkish and Iraqi problem. Turkey has historically oppressed them. In Iraq they were OK until tried to exploit weakening the government during Iran war. Kind of like a pattern of seditious behavior.
Did you hear about Kurdish oppression in Syria before Arab Spring?
Before 2013, most Syrian officials put the population of Kurds in Syria at 1.5 to 2 million....bumping to an overall population of 20 million in 2010. They were never more than 7-to-10 percent of the population.
If you looked at Kurd density, it was always the extreme NE of Syria where they held significant numbers, and two or three towns along the Syrian-Turkish border.
If you bring up Kurds to an average Syrian guy...they point out that they aren’t true-blue Syrian...that they came into Syria over the past hundred years because of events in Turkey and Iraq. If discrimination occurred, Syrians would suggest that Kurds deserved it, and should return to their homeland.
Because of events after WW I...the French to ‘control’ the region led to tribal units thinking that they’d finally get a homeland, so pressure was applied to all Kurds....remain within the tribal ‘game’ and just wait this out. You get to the mid-30s, and the Kurd tribes have decided to go anti-Christian within the civil war that occurs in that period. You could suggest that they burned a few bridges along the way.
All throughout the 80s and 90s...Kurdish tribes staged violent episodes and were inviting massive retaliation by the Syrian government.
All of this leads to 2011, with a top level Kurd ‘boss’ (Tammo) being murdered by masked men in his apartment. The Kurd belief is that Assad’s people shot him. Zero proof exists for this, and you could speculate that elements of the Kurd underworld felt that Tammo would be a great martyr. It is odd how Arab Spring (then going on in several countries) occurs right at this time period.
I would go and argue that Tammo’s killing and Arab Spring were scripted out. You get the Kurds all riled up, throw in support to ISIS thugs, and you got yourself a 5-star civil war. Assad’s people were just standing there in disbelief...all this money funneling in for ISIS...the Kurds on some martyr deal, and nothing making sense.