Syrian Kurds are insisting on having their own delegation at next month's peace talks in Geneva. The Kurds say their demands must be heard, as they differ from the government’s and the opposition’s.
Driven by a strong fighting spirit and an urge for sovereignty, the Kurdish influence in the Middle East has been growing little by little. It’s in Syria where the Kurds face their toughest fight for independence, though.
Kurds are caught up in the middle of a bloody civil war. Their
territories are being claimed by Al-Qaeda, their villages raided
and their people killed.
According to unconfirmed reports that emerged earlier this year,
some 450 Kurds, including 120 children, were allegedly
slaughtered by al-Qaeda-linked rebels fighting against the Syrian
government. Iranian TV channel Al-Alam reported in early August
that militants from the Jabhat al-Nusra Front attacked the town
of Tal Abyad, killing over a hundred children, 330 women and
elderly near the Turkish border. A Kurdish journalist, Barzan
Iso, told RT that al-Qaeda started attacking Kurdish villages in
late July, and that a number of Kurds had been kidnapped
afterwards.
Eleven civilians were killed when a Syrian warplane bombed a
Kurdish village in the oil-producing province of Hasaka in
northeastern Syria in April. According to Kurdish activists, the
raid also killed mostly women and children.
Residents of the Kurdish village of Basufane, some 45 kilometers
from Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, told RT that the ongoing
war only makes them tougher fighters, however.
In Syria, Kurds they make up about one-tenth of the population,
having suffered repression for decades.
In November, after weeks of fierce clashes, ethnic Syrian Kurds
declared an interim autonomous government in the northeast of the
country, formed by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (KDU).
"There will be a temporary administration to manage the affairs
of the region until the situation in Syria stabilizes and there
can be a democratic government and legitimate elections,"
Hussein Shawish of the KDU-aligned Movement for a Democratic
Society told DPA news agency last month, adding that the move was
"within the framework of Syrian unity, not outside
Syria."
The Kurdish National Council (KNC), which includes a range of
parties, has not joined the transitional authority, however.
Kurdish officials say they need to receive an approval from the
UN, the US and Russia to send a separate delegation to
Switzerland for the Geneva-2 peace conference.
Some say the Kurdish demand for separate representation could
hamper preparations for the highly-anticipated peace conference,
due to open on January 22.
"Russia is willing to accept a third bloc for the Kurds but
it is other powers, particularly America, which insist on a
two-party negotiation," KDU leader Abdelsalam Ahmed told
Reuters.
In August, Russia said that it understands the Syrian Kurds'
position, which "proves their willingness to live in a
united, sovereign, democratic country where there is no place for
a racial split or ethnic, religious, language discrimination,
rather than their separatist intentions."
"We believe that at the upcoming conference in Geneva, Syrian
Kurds should be represented in such a way that will allow them to
express their aspirations and stand by them on an equal basis
along with other influential and opposition groups," the
Russian Foreign Ministry told Kommersant daily.
Last week Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riad Haddad, said that
the Syrian delegation at Geneva-2 will feature representatives of
all ethnic and confessional layers of the Syrian society,
including Christians. "This said we mean a delegation which will
represent all Syrian people, without highlighting a certain
group, be it Christians or Kurds," he told RIA Novosti.
Riad said there would be "no separate delegation of
Christians and Kurds at Geneva-2, all [representatives] will be
part of one united delegation.”
Syria's Kurdish minority wants their language, once banned in
public, to become an official language. They also demand a
federalized system of governance that could give them greater
autonomy in regions where they constitute a majority.
"They're prepared to die to protect their land and their
people," Paula Slier reported for RT from Syria.
“Now every night they want to restart the clashes, but now we
are well prepared, because we made new bunkers so we have more
abilities than before. If they attack us, we are ready to defend
ourselves, but if they don’t we won't attack anybody,” a YPG
fighter, the Kurdish militia in Syria, Fidekar Xebat, told RT.
Syria has been gripped by a bitter civil war since March 2011.
According to the UN, over 100,000 people have been killed and 7.8
million of others displaced due to the war. The latest estimates
by the British defense consultant, IHS Jane's, reveal that some
100,000 militants are fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime, with
around 10,000 jihadists fighting for powerful factions linked to
al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, the Kurds have recently taken control of large parts
of northeast Syria. According to one Kurdish political analyst,
the civil war there has played into their hands.
"The Kurds in Syria were emboldened by the fact that the Arab
Spring came about and the regional powers are busy with the
eternal strife with the instability of their own government,
while the Sunni Arabs and the Shia and different factions in
Syria are fighting each other, and the government is weakened.
The Kurds have found an opportunity to run their own affairs and
to grab whatever they can in terms of territory," Shwan
Zulal said.
Across the border, in Turkey, as much as 20 percent of the
population is Kurdish.
Their fight for independence has long been a thorn in Ankara's
side. In the past three decades Turkey has suppressed Kurdish
human rights, waging war with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, the
PKK, an organization which has fought against the Turkish state
for an autonomous Kurdistan.
“Abdullah Ocalan [the imprisoned PKK leader, one of the founding
members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party] always called for Kurd
fighters to have more weapons. And they will never give them up
easily,” Dr Kamiran Berwari, a former PKK fighter, told RT.
Turkey has begun building a wall on the border with Syria, in
what many see as an attempt to divide the Kurdish majority on
both sides of the fence.
"Turkey is not very happy because of what Turkey sees. If the
Kurds in Syria get emboldened and have some sort of autonomy,
Turkey fears that this will translate into some sort or
encourages its own Kurdish population to demand the same rights
or similar rights," Zulal said.
Khalid Issa, of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party,
believes Ankara's actions are likely to backfire.
"I think that if Turkey's government keeps supporting
militants and Jihadists and facilitates their entrance into the
Kurdish regions and to the central areas of Syria then the Kurds
that live in Turkey won't stay silent. Also if the Jihadists
attack the Alawite-dominated regions, Turkish Alawites will also
take action. Turkey's cooperation with terrorists will have
consequences. If you play with fire, you get burned. Turkey is
interested in stability in the region and supporting terrorists
is not in the interest of Turkey, nor is it in the interest of
the Kurdish and Arabic people in the region."
For thousands of years the majority of Kurds have lived in the
so-called Kurdistan Region, an area along the border of four
Middle Eastern countries – Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran – where
the total population of Kurds is about 40 million.
Recently things have slowly started to change for one of the
world's largest ethnic groups without their own state.
“Iraq now practically is not run by a powerful state in
Baghdad. And I strongly believe that we are moving toward a fully
independent Kurdish state in the north of Iraq,” Rabun
Maroof, a member of the Change Movement, told RT.