Shafaq News/ Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani is expected to visit Damascus soon to mediate talks between Syrian Kurds and the new Syrian administration, according to a report by Iran’s Mehr News Agency on Monday.

The report said Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), is spearheading efforts to bring Syrian Kurds and the Syrian government under President Ahmad al-Sharaa to the negotiation table. The initiative aims to facilitate discussions and agreements between the two sides as soon as possible.

Neither the Kurdish Presidency nor the office of Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani has commented on the Iranian report.

The Kurdistan Region has long sought to preserve the demographic and political presence of Kurds in Syria, viewing them as a crucial cultural, political, and security ally. Efforts to unify the political demands of Syrian Kurds and mitigate internal divisions have been ongoing for years.

Political parties and institutions in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region have intensified their diplomatic activities to shield Syrian Kurds from further armed conflict. Syrian Kurds, who form the second-largest ethnic group in the country after Arabs, are estimated to number around three million in a nation of over 23 million. Precise figures are unavailable due to the lack of official census data.

Iraq is currently hosting around 280,000 Syrian refugees, with the majority living in the Kurdistan region. An estimated 122,000 refugees reside in Erbil Governorate, including both the city and nearby camps.

With over 100 kilometers of shared borders, the region fears another wave of mass displacement similar to 2013, when hundreds of thousands of Syrian Kurds fled to Iraqi Kurdistan.