Damascus: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree on Friday making Kurdish a "national language" and granting the minority community national rights, as his army fights Kurdish forces in the north.
The decree makes Kurdish a national language that can be taught in public schools in areas where the minority community is heavily present.
Sharaa also made the Kurdish new year Nowruz, which falls on March 21, an official holiday.
The decree grants nationality to Kurds, as 20 percent of them had been stripped of it under a controversial 1962 census.
"Syrian Kurdish citizens are an essential and integral part of the Syrian people, and their cultural and linguistic identity is an inseparable part of the diverse and unified Syrian national identity," the decree said.
