Democratic Union Party (PYD) declared an autonomous provincial government in the country’s northern territory on Tuesday, according to reports. The move comes ahead of the Geneva 2 peace talks, where they will not have direct representation.
A municipal council will run the territory’s affairs
from one of three administrative districts. The body will have its own
president and ministers of foreign affairs, defense, justice, and education,
Reuters reports citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The British -based monitoring group said that elections will be held in four months.
Kurds have used the confusion and chaos of the Syrian
civil war as an opportunity to assert more control over the northeastern area
of the country.
The announcement came following a meeting of the
Legislative Assembly of the Democratic Autonomous Government of Western
Kurdistan, “attended by all members of the Assembly which is made up of 52
parties, civil society organizations, youth and women’s movements and 15
independent individuals,” Firat news agency reported.
The formulation of an autonomous governmental body follows
requests - which were ultimately denied - for a Kurdish delegation at the
Geneva 2 peace talks in Switzerland, separate from the Syrian regime and
opposition.
PYD blamed regional powers like Saudi Arabia and
Turkey, as well as the United States, for blocking its attempts to take part in
the convention, which seeks to smooth tensions between warring factions
fighting in the country.
In Syria, Kurds make up around one-tenth of the
population, and have suffered repression for decades. Since the outbreak of
civil war in 2011, Kurds have largely had to fight on their own, as Bashar al-Assad’s regime has focused on fighting against Islamist groups.
Some Kurdish parties will attend the Geneva talks as
entities of the Western-backed National Coalition, though the PYD rejected
adhering to any resolutions that are reached in Switzerland.
The talks, set to begin Wednesday, have been preceded by acrimony following a rescinded United Nations invitation to Iran and evidence that appears to implicate the Syrian government in the torture and killing of thousands of detainees.
The PYD is allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK), which has criticized the peace talks for being a choice between two
evils for Kurds. The PKK has fought Turkey for over three decades, leading to
the deaths of 40,000 people.
"At a time when all sides are being invited to
the conference, the Kurds' demand for participation has been overlooked,"
the PKK said in a recent statement.
The Syrian opposition's “attitude is no different from
that of the (President Assad’s) Baath regime. They don't take seriously the
demands of the Kurdish people, just like Turkey's attitude."
The PKK likened the Geneva 2 conference to the Treaty
of Lausanne in 1923, which is responsible for the modern Iran, Turkey, Iraq and
Syria borders, leaving Kurds’ ethnic homeland splintered among the four
countries. Agencies
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