MED - Middle East Diplomatic

“Democracy without Kurds in Syria is impossible”

By Lorin Sarkisian and Roni Alasor

Brussels, 6 December 2012 - Ararat News (ANP) - “The Kurdish Democratic Autonomy in West Kurdistan (Syria) can be example for peaceful coexistence for the whole Syria and for the Middle East in general. It is a model how we can live peacefully together and even long standing conflicts as the war between Israel and Palestine could be solved, if people try to share and take decisions together”, said Saleh Muslim, Co-President of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Speaking at the 9th International Conference on “The European Union, Turkey and the Kurds” in the European Parliament in Brussels, Saleh Muslim, who is also Deputy General Coordinator of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria (NCB), presented the current situation in West Kurdistan.

“Kurds are the most dispossessed and tortured people in Syria since many decades. It should be clear that democracy without Kurds in Syria is impossible. Nobody should even think about it! Our region is most peaceful, neighbouring countries have to stop to organise terror against our people” warned Saleh Muslim.

Saleh Muslim said that since the very beginning of the crisis in Syria, Kurds and Arabs agreed that each community will organise and defend themselves in their respective parts of Syria.

“In West Kurdistan in Syria Kurds and all the other inhabitants are organised in councils or civil organisations (women, youths, professional organisations), which are interdependent with each other in a collective self-administration. People are decision-makers for everything, which concern their common life and they practice actual democracy”, explained Saleh Muslim.

“In mixed regions, like Qamishlo, where Kurds – Yezidi, Alevi and Muslims, Assyrians and Armenians, live together, all the communities are included in the self-ruling councils and take the decisions together”, pointed out the Co-President of PYD.

“Therefore, in the Kurdish areas in Syria there are no killed people, like in the rest of the country”, underlined Saleh Muslim.

Regarding the security in West Kurdistan, the Deputy General Coordinator of the NCB précised that Kurds have also their own security forces called People Defence Units (YPG), which protect the region and the inhabitants: “YPG has more than 10 000 members, which are under the control of the Kurdish Supreme Committee, composed by Kurdish People’s Council and Kurdish National Council. There are also other Special Forces for different tasks, but we don’t know so much about that”.

Analyzing the security situation in Syria and in West Kurdistan, Saleh Muslim pointed out that: “The Kurdish society doesn’t support extreme religious ideas. Our fight is not a religious war, but a fight for fundamental human rights. The fanatics attacking civilians in the Kurdistan Region in Syria are active on the border with Turkey. Our security forces caught more than ten of them who were mostly Chechens, Afghans, Yemenis and people from other Arabic countries, who receive support from Turkey”.