Kurdish-led parties meeting in northern Syria on Wednesday are expected to declare a new federal system in areas under their control, two Kurdish officials said.
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The step, which would combine three Kurdish-led autonomous areas of northern Syria into a federal system, is sure to anger neighbouring Turkey, which fears growing Kurdish power in Syria is encouraging separatism among its own Kurdish minority.
The two-day forum featured more than 200 delegates, including Arab, Kurdish, Armenian, Turkmen, Chechen, Syriac and many other folks from Northern Syria, Rojava, Shehba region, Aleppo-Minbic areas, the Kurdish Firat News Agency reports.
The rebel statement said this was “exploitation” of the Syrian uprising that began five years ago and descended into civil war, and condemned what it said were attempts by “groups… which took control of parts of Syrian land to establish their racial, nationalist and sectarian entities”.
A federal region could be a first step toward creating an autonomous region similar to the one Kurds run across the border in Iraq, where their territory is virtually a separate country.
But when we talk about this, we talk about a system that fits with the situation in Syria, stemming from the circumstances in Syria, and that the Syrian people decide, said Manaa.
The United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, who is convening the peace talks in Geneva, suggested last week that a federal model for Syria could be discussed during negotiations.
It warned against any attempt to encroach upon the integrity of Syrian territories.
Top official says community left out of Geneva peace talks preparing to declare federal autonomous region of their own.
It is estimated that 10 to 15 percent of Syria’s prewar population of 17 million are Kurdish; most are in the north along the border with Turkey. “We remain committed to the unity and territorial integrity of Syria”, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday.
“The voices raised at the gathering emphasized that democratic federalism is the appropriate solution to Syria’s crisis”, he told Hawar.
A Turkish official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with protocol, did not comment about the buffer zone, but affirmed that Turkey was still in favor of a single, unified Syria and rejected any notion of a federation. There are important factions dividing Iraqi Kurdistan, and the Kurdish Workers’ Party has always played a somewhat independent role in the region.
The entry into the talks of the Moscow Group, along with the so-called Cairo and Istana groups, followed Russia’s surprise decision this week to withdraw most of its forces from Syria, where they had been fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad. “Any declaration to that effect would be without any legal value and void of any legal, political, social or economic effect as long as it does not reflect the will of the entire Syrian people”.
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Meanwhile, Mr Putin said Moscow’s partial withdrawal of Russian warplanes from Syria earlier this week should not be misinterpreted.
