After government forces withdraw from most Kurdish areas in 2012, the PYD and its YPG militia consolidate control and declare autonomous cantons in Afrin, Kobani and Jazira from late 2013 — the origin of the self-administration later formalised as AANES.
Why it mattersA decade of de facto Kurdish autonomy began here — the political fact the January 2026 integration agreement now winds into the state, and the development Türkiye has treated as a PKK project from the outset.
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