Kurds issue new challenge with "federal region" plans
Kurdish group PYD outlines plans for its autonomous region in northern Syria, to fury in Ankara and Damascus
The leading Kurdish political party in Syria has laid down a challenge to both Turkey and to peace talks in Geneva by announcing it intends to push for a federal system of government.
Leaders of the PYD, the leftist party which is now the dominant power in north-east Syria and is allied to the Turkey-based guerrilla group the PKK, announced they were holding a summit in the town of Rumeilan.
They said they were planning to abandon the war-time division of territory under their control - known as Rojava, or West Kurdistan - and announce a single, autonomous, federal region.
“A conference will be held by the democratic self-administration cantons in Rojava to discuss their dismantlement," a Kurdish agency quoted a spokesman as saying. “In their place, a federal system for Western Kurdistan [Rojava] will be declared.”
Kurdish leaders immediately suggested the region would be a model for a future Syria, an outcome that would be seen by many as “splitting the country” along ethnic and sectarian lines.
The presence of an autonomous Kurdish region along its southern border is fiercely opposed by Turkey - particularly if the PYD and its armed wing, YPG, manage to join up the two currently divided parts of Rojava by seizing the territory that separates them - mostly held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
"Syria's national unity and territorial integrity is fundamental for us,” a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters. “Outside of this, unilateral decisions cannot have validity."
Turkey has made stopping the emergence of a single Kurdish autonomous region from Afrin in the west to Qamishli, near the Iraq border in the east, a centrepiece of its policy on Syria.
It is afraid that the zone would become a second base after northern Iraqi Kurdistan for PKK operations against south-east Turkey, where a long-running war has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The region enjoyed a three-year truce but violence exploded again, spilling over from the Syrian conflict.
But the Kurdish move, which is due to be formally declared in Rumeilan on Thursday, also appeared to be aimed at the current peace talks in Geneva.
The PYD were excluded from the talks, not least because no-one could agree where they would sit
They claim to be opposed to the Assad regime, but have co-operated with it at times. Their main enemies have been Isil and other jihadist groups, but they are also involved in a mini-war for territory with “moderate” rebels.
Their answer to exclusion from the talks seems to have been to do something that will be opposed by both sides - declare semi-independence.
"The Syrian Kurds are an important component of the Syrian people,” Bashar al-Jaafari, the chief regime negotiator at the talks said. “So betting on creating any kind of divisions among the Syrians will be a total failure."
The opposition delegation includes representatives of other Kurdish parties from Syria, opposed to the PKK/PYD’s separatist vision as well as to the regime.
They allege that the PYD is responsible for a campaign of intimidation of opponents, while Kurdish fighters have also been accused of driving Arab families out of villages recaptured from Isil as a form of ethnic cleansing.
The PYD insisted yesterday that its autonomous region would be both democratic and representative of other groups, including Arabs, Assyrians, and other Christian groups living in the area.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... plans.html
