Kurds seek own region in Syria
U.S., Russian support likely, but move may antagonize Turkey
Syrian Kurdish parties are working on a plan to declare a federal region across much of northern Syria to formalize the semiautonomous zone they have established during five years of war.
BEIRUT — Syrian Kurdish parties are working on a plan to declare a federal region across much of northern Syria, several of their representatives said Wednesday, to formalize the semi-autonomous zone they have established during five years of war and to create a model for decentralized government throughout the country.
The move, still under discussion by Kurdish and other parties in the area, would fall well short of declaring independence, and it most likely would rile the Syrian government and the main Arab-led opposition group. They have both declared their opposition to federalism, seeing it as a step toward carving up Syria.
It also would be likely to intensify Turkish concerns over the growing areas of Syria along its border that are controlled by a Syrian-Kurdish militia. Turkey considers Kurdish groups its most dangerous enemy after years of conflict with its own Kurdish population.
But Russia has said it supports such a system. The United States has also pushed for decentraliza- tion, and it has presided over the establishment of an autonomous regional government in Iraq.
The Syrian Kurdish plans come as a new round of peace talks is underway in Geneva, talks that both Russia and the United States have pushed for in their efforts to broker a political solution to the Syrian civil war. Both of the global powers have backed Kurdish aspirations. Russia has lately been advocating Syrian Kurds to have a greater role in the talks.
Kurdish officials said that federalism, not just for their areas but for all of Syria, is the only way to keep the country from disintegrating. They emphasized that the entity would not be called a Kurdish region but rather a federal region of northern Syria, where Arabs and Turkmen would have equal rights.
“Federalism is going to save the unity of a whole Syria,” said Ibrahim Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, the leftist Syrian Kurdish party that plays a leading role in the Kurdish areas of Syria.
He cautioned that the details of the federal region were still being discussed and that there was no date for announcing it.
The zone would include all of the areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a group led by and largely made up of Kurdish militias, but also including Turkmen and Arab fighters, said Idris Nassan, a Kurdish politician in the Syrian town of Kobani, near the Turkish border.