Aleppo clashes expose hurdles in SDF’s integration into Syrian army

Tensions high as an end-of-year deadline to incorporate the Kurdish-led SDF into the Syrian armed forces approaches.

Clashes between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, did not come in a vacuum.

Tensions between the two sides have been high as an end-of-year deadline to incorporate the SDF into the Syrian armed forces approaches.

The fighting erupted on Monday afternoon during a visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan but had ended by that evening after the two sides agreed to halt firing.

Analysts told Al Jazeera that the SDF, led by military leader Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani) and the Syrian government, have seemingly reached an impasse on how to integrate the Kurdish fighters into the new state military structure and that a failure to find a serious deal could lead to renewed bouts of fighting or military confrontation between the two sides.

“The red lines of the [Kurdish] self-administration on one hand, and Turkiye/Damascus on the other, do present some striking incompatibility, and I do not see a way that the two can be reconciled,” Thomas McGee, the Max Weber Fellow specialising on Syria at the European University Institute in Florence, told Al Jazeera.