Syria Interview: Kurdish Leader Abdulhakim Bashar "We Demand the Right to Self-Determination"

Last Friday's protest in Qamishli, in the largely-Kurdish area in northeast Syria

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Michael Weiss, writing for The Atlantic, interviews Dr Abdulhakim Bashar, the Secretary-General of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Syria and the Chairman of the Kurdish National Council (KNC), a newly- formed organisation representing 10 Syrian Kurdish parties.

Kurds are estimated to make up about 15-20% of the Syrian population:

What's your relationship like with the [opposition] Syrian National Council?

I've been in contact with [SNC Chairman Burhan] Ghalioun several times, there has been engagement. However, their proposal is still very vague, and doesn't meet our full demands for participation. For example, the SNC says it endorses lifting the "pressure" on the Kurdish people. What does that mean? We said in the KNC that we advocate lifting all the discriminatory policies that have been applied to the Kurdish people such as the Arabization policies in Syria, the Arabized name changes of existing towns and villages and demographic changes. These were all deliberate policies applied by the Ba'ath Party.

The SNC also offers a "democratic" solution without any clear meaning. What does "democratic" mean?  It might imply private schooling to learn the Kurdish language or opening satellite stations for the Kurds.

Such as Turkey has implemented.

Yes. However, we demand our cultural freedoms categorically.

Do you want to see Syria adopt the Iraq model, a federalist system based on power sharing, with broad autonomy granted to the predominantly Kurdish region? Kurds are more widely distributed throughout Syria than they are in Iraq, so that might be difficult to achieve. 

We demand the right to self-determination in a form that would be decided in a national Kurdish referendum, but also within the integrity and unity of the Syrian land. When Syria was formed, it was formed by the Sykes-Picot agreement, it wasn't our choice. But we want to keep the current borders. With a new social contract between ourselves and all the Syrian components.

Second, if we talk about federalism in the Kurdish areas, from the northeastern part of Syria, up to the border with Iraq until Afrin, near where Aleppo is --- the Kurds form about 75% of the population of that region. That land is the Kurdish land.

I've heard Yekiti and Azadi [Syrian Kurdish parties] have pulled out now or are threatening to do.

All Syrian Kurdish groups decided in Irbil in October to freeze any participation of Kurdish groups in the SNC. This applies to all Kurdish parties, from the Damascus Declaration on, and will continue until and unless the SNC listen to our demands. My party, the Kurdish Democratic Party, had an SNC member: we actually froze his membership before the conference in Syria that formed the KNC.

Of course, we cannot stop individual Kurds from participating in the SNC, although I suspect that as time goes on and nothing changes, they too will freeze their membership or quit altogether.

So what are the Kurdish National Council's preconditions for joining the SNC fully?

We have four main demands, and they're not necessarily all going to be fulfilled: First, political decentralization of the government. Syria is a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic country. If it keeps to the same governing style as now --- one central government --- there is a possibility of civil war. Second, a secular state. Third, constitutional recognition of the Kurdish issue, a constitutional assurance that the Kurdish people are on their historic land. And the lifting of all discriminatory policies that have been deliberately applied to the Kurdish people. Fourth, the right of self-determination within Syria's unity and integrity --- that's our condition to remain within Syria.

If the SNC fully recognizes the Kurdish Bill of Rights, we will join the SNC fully. Because we are very concerned that the SNC is so much influenced by Turkey now, they may postpone guaranteeing our rights until after the regime falls. Therefore we ask for a recognition of these rights in order to become a draft for a new constitution.

So you want a written guarantee from the SNC?

We want a guarantee written and published internationally. The important thing to realize is that if we get our full rights, Turkey will be obliged to grant full rights to Turkey's Kurdish population. If the Kurds were to get recognition in the Syrian constitution, Turkey will give similar if not more rights to the Kurds in Turkey. Syria is the key player.

Change in Syria means change in Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran. Iran will be isolated because Iran's connection with Hezbollah would not be so much facilitated as before [by the Assad regime]. The new Syrian government would not be an ally of Iran.