"ICGER" Holds Seminar on “The Kurdish Question” … Dr Youssef: The Reengineering of the Middle East Will Begin in Syria
On July 25, 2025, the International Center for Geopolitical and Economic Research (ICGER) hosted a seminar titled “The Kurdish Question and the Changing Middle East: Challenges, Options, and Destiny.” The event featured Dr. Mohamed Walid Youssef, president of the center, and brought together political figures, academics, and members of the ICGER research team. Dr. Imad Ghannoum moderated the discussion.
In his keynote, Dr. Youssef provided a historical overview of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict and explored the Kurds’ relationship with other ethnic and political groups across the Middle East.
He argued that Kurdish–Turkish relations follow cyclical historical patterns, alternating between Kurdish and Turkish dominance, interspersed with brief periods of uneasy coexistence and relative peace.
Dr. Youssef asserted that the Kurdish issue, not the Palestinian one, is the central geopolitical question in the Middle East today. While the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders would not alter the century-old geopolitical configuration of the region, the emergence of an independent Kurdish state, he contended, would redraw borders, dismantle existing states, and give rise to new ones.
He further predicted that a reengineering of the Middle East would begin in the coming months, with Syria as the starting point. Turkey, he said, is heading toward territorial fragmentation.
Dr. Youssef maintained that a return to a centralized Syrian state is no longer viable. The only sustainable path forward, he argued, is a federal model that incorporates all of Syria’s diverse communities; otherwise, the country faces inevitable partition.
He concluded by stating that despite the billions of dollars being funneled into normalizing relations with the Damascus regime, geopolitical laws and material conditions outweigh the will of the regime’s international backers.
The session concluded with a constructive discussion, during which participants engaged Dr. Youssef with questions and comments that he addressed in turn.
