The years between 1936 and 1939 in French-Syria witnessed the expansion of public space accompanied by the flourishing of the debates around the constituents of proper Syrianness. The Franco-Syrian treaty (1936) which promised independence to the country within the next five years, in particular the controversy over the two fundamental articles of the treaty—the continuing protection of minorities in Syria, and the establishment of a united Syria- reveal instances of negotiation over proper Syrianness, through (non)violent confrontation of rivalling political groups. Anti-treaty political movements that usually emerged in the autonomously administered regions in French-Syria, and the colonial and Arab nationalist responses towards their respective political projects were formative in redefining the markers of Syrianness. The peculiar characteristics of the anti-treaty political movement in north-eastern Syria (whose inhabitants and the pioneers of the movement were Kurdish and Christian ex-refugees from Turkey) contributed greatly to the substantiation of the most fundamental notions in the Syrian-Arab nationalist ideology, namely minority–majority, religion–ethnicity, territory–region, and autochthony–refugee-ness, all of which were inherited in the post-colonial period with unwanted memories. This presentation will, firstly, introduce the contentious political debates around Syrianness and the tripartite power struggle between the pro-treaty France, Arab nationalists, and the Francophile Syrians supported by the local French officers between 1936 and 1939. It will, then demonstrate the ways in which the contest over the constituents of a proper Syrian citizen in the 1930s have fashioned the terms of belonging and sense of being of north-eastern Syrians from different ethnic religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds in the post-colonial period.