KURDS, SYRIANS AND TURKS

KURDS, SYRIANS AND TURKS

By Josef Olmert

This is the first of two articles by Dr. Josef Olmert that discusses the current crisis in Syria after the U.S withdrew its troops from northeastern Syria. 

The Kurdish minority in Syria comprises nearly three million people, about 12% of the entire population [figures relating to the pre-civil war Syria]-by far the largest ethnic minority in the fragmented country. Yet, much of the literature relating to the Kurds of Syria referred to them as the ‘’silent minority’’, the ‘’newly discovered minority’’, “the forgotten people’’-terms which seemed to reflect the sense, that the Kurds did not play an important role in modern Syrian history, surely in comparison to other ethnic and religious minorities. The Kurds of Syria are mostly inhabiting the Jazeera region in Eastern Syria, separated from their brothers in Turkey and Iraq through the artificial demarcation of boundaries in the aftermath of WW1 and the demise of the Ottoman Empire. There is also a large Kurdish population which has resided for generations in the big cities, including Damascus and Aleppo, Homs, and Hamah. In fact, these people have integrated almost fully in the local population there, having Sunni Islam as a strong common denominator, and this is in contrast to the more nomadic and tribal character of the Kurds of the Jazeera. Members of this group played a significant role in the early history of the independent Syrian state. The first three military dictators of Syria, Husni Za’im, Sami Hinawi and Adib Shishakli were of Kurdish origin. The only Communist ever to be elected to the Syrian Parliament in free elections in 1954, was Khalid Bakhdash from the Kurdish neighborhood of Damascus. The Barazi family of Hamah also was a key player in Syrian politics, and both Husni and Muhsin al Barazi were Prime Ministers.

Like many other things changing in Syria after the accession of the Alawi-dominated Ba’th regime to power in 1963, also the attitude towards the Kurdish minority changed dramatically. The new regime tried to reign in on the mostly-nomadic Kurdish population of the Jazeera by initiating a policy of forced Arabization. This policy failed, in so far as it tried to suppress the Kurdish separatist sentiment, in fact it contributed to its gaining more momentum. [See the excellent article of H.Akim Unver, ‘’Schrodinger’s Kurds; Transnational Kurdish Geopolitics in the Age of Shifting Borders’’, Columbia/SIPA, Journal of International Affairs, 19 May 2016]. 

On various occasions, even when the Assad regimes [both Hafiz and Bashar] seemed stable, there were eruptions of Kurdish wrath against the oppression, such as in 1986 and 2004.It is highly significant though, that the Kurds, though being Sunni Muslims, did not join the Sunni revolt against the Hafiz Assad regime in 1976-1982, nor did the Arab Sunnis joined the Kurdish protests whenever they erupted. What can be understood from that, is that the Kurds mostly consider themselves an ethnic, national minority, with religion not being their prime source of collective solidarity. For that reason, there was not a joint Kurdish -Arab revolt against the Alawi-dominated Arab Ba’th regime. Things will change after 2011, though in any way contrary to the pattern described here. Kurds will rise against the Bashar Assad regime, at a time when Sunni Arabs were engaged in their revolt, but it is still not the case that we can look at the revolt as an overall Syrian revolt. They were and still are Sunni Arab and Kurdish revolts, coinciding but not identical in terms of goals. Within the Kurdish community itself, there was to be a political build-up in order to create a viable voice for Kurdish nationalism.

Harriet Allsop [in her, The Kurds of Syria; Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East [I.B.Tauris, London,2004] gives us a good picture of the process leading to the Kurdish revolt during the Syrian civil war. As Kurdish political activity in Syria was always illegal, it is not so simple to precisely track down the emergence and evolution of national Kurdish political activity. There were Nationalist Kurdish leaders acting already after WW1, such as the Badr Khan brothers [who were also in touch with the Zionist movement], but their influence was minor. According to Allsop, the first organized Kurdish political party was established as late as 1957, at a time when there was still a measure of political freedom in the country. This was the Partiya Democrat a Kurd Li Suriye , which is the party to which nearly all of today’s political parties trace their origin.[Ibid., p.73].As noted, the Ba’th regime established a few years later,  conducted a policy of Arabization  which came to a head with a systematic policy of deprive Kurds of citizenship. In the beginning of the civil war, about 300,000 Kurds were stateless. [Ibid., p.24].

The Kurds though, as has always been the case, were not completely unified behind the demand for autonomy, or even independence. One important leader who objected to Kurdish separatism, and wanted to merge with other opposition movements as part of an effort to create a democratic Syria, was Mashaal Tammo, born in 1958, an opposition activist who was released from jail By the regime in 2010, and made it clear, that he would not join other Kurdish opposition groups in any particular nationalist Kurdish demands. That did not save him from the long hand of the Assad regime, and he was murdered by the regime agents, something which sparked riots in the Kurdish region. The assassination occurred on 7 October 2011, and although there was no definitive evidence pinpointing to Assad responsibility, the Kurds thought otherwise, showing their built-in mistrust of the regime. The son of the murdered leader, said ‘’my father’s assassination is the screw in the coffin of the regime’’.[Faris Tammo, as quoted by A. Blomfield, “Thousands of Kurds could awaken against Syrian regime’’, The Telegraph, 9 October 2011].Tammo was a member of the National Council of Syria, an opposition umbrella group , formed in August 2011 and based  in Istanbul. His assassination just enhanced the separatist drive among the Kurds. The separatist sense was there all the time, a natural Kurdish reaction to years of Sunni -Arab indifference to their claims, and even the participation of some Kurds in the Syrian opposition conference in Antalya [Turkey], between 31-May-3June 2011 did not change that, but the overall expansion of the Syrian civil war and the gradual weakening of the Assad regime hold in many parts of the country speeded up Kurdish drive towards creation of a Kurdish territory in North-East Syria. The Kurds participating in the Antalya conference were not really representative of the vast majority of the Jazeera Kurds. These Kurds were represented by the National Movement of Kurdish parties in Syria, a coalition of 12 Kurdish parties, and they made no bones about their attitude towards Turkey and the Turkish-supported Syrian Sunni-Arab coalition with the token Kurds in it, claiming that “any such meeting in Turkey is a detriment to the Kurds in Syria, because Turkey is against the aspirations of the Kurds’’.[Y.Furuhashi, ‘’Syrian Kurdish parties boycott Syrian opposition, conference in Antalya, Turkey’’, Monthly Review, 13 November 2011.]

This was a far-reaching statement, both for reasons of timing and contents. It reflected the deep animosity of the Kurdish nationalists towards the historic enemy Turkey, even at a time when Turkey was not itself fully or even partly committed to engage in Syria. The Kurds simply read the map correctly. What Turkey has not yet done, it would later…

In the meantime, the Assad army, short of manpower and in urgent need in Central Syria and the Damascus area withdrew from North East Syria during 2011 and early part of 2012, and Kurdish forces of the People’s Defense Units [YPG] started to fill the vacuum, occupying on 19 July 2019 the town of Kobani and later Amuda, Efrin, Malikiyya [few miles from Turkish border]

and other towns. The closeness to the Turkish border clearly was understood as a threat in Ankara, while less so in Damascus, which, at least for a while, preferred Kurdish control along the Turkish border, rather than Turkish-Sunni Arab forces there. That also was a significant development-indication that Assad viewed Turkey as its main enemy, something which may have created an informal Kurdish-Syrian alliance against the common enemy. There is another point that needs to be discussed here, and this is the very existence of armed Kurdish military forces so close to the start of the civil war. The YPG origins are to be found in the aftermath of the 2004 Kurdish riots [mentioned above] which should receive now more attention. They erupted in Qamishli, a city of 185000 people, 680 kilometers North East of Damascus, near the Iraq and Turkey borders with a mixed population of Arabs, Kurds and Christians, among them a significant number of Armenians, Assyrians and Syrian Orthodox. In the years prior to 1947-8, there was also a significant Jewish population there, numbering 3000, which decreased dramatically when anti-Jewish riots occurred as a result of the First Arab -Israeli war and events later on. In 2004, the riots happened in a football match, with Arabs showing support to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, in the aftermath of the American 2003 invasion, and the Kurds displaying their love to George W Bush. 36 people , mostly Kurds were killed, and since then the Kurdish youth with support of their brothers on the Iraqi side started organizing in a militia , a clear indication of the weakening Assad regime hold there already before the start of the civil war. Altogether, the sectarian time bomb clock was ticking waiting to explode.

Inside the Kurdish areas there were internal upheavals, factional conflicts leading to political changes, though all without internal violence involved. In December 2015, the Syrian Democratic Council was established, being the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] in the Kurdish area which officially was called The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known popularly as ROJAVA, or Western Kurdistan. The SDF was a military force based on the YPG, but including also elements representing some smaller minority communities in the North East of Syria. The stated goal of the new Council was to create a ‘’secular, democratic and decentralized system for all of Syria’’. [Al Jazeera, 11 December 2015]. This statement deserves also attention. It is NOT separatist in the classic sense of the word, as it does not call for a creation of an independent Kurdish state, but the reference to federalism was a call for Kurdish autonomy/self-rule, first stage on the road for separation in the future, and at any rate was indicative of the shaky relationships with the Assad regime. The regime could not do much against it, so long as it has been tied up to fighting the Arab -Sunni rebels, and did not want to push the Kurds away, while the Turkish challenge was looming, but clearly federalism is not something that the regime could accept. First the Kurds, and then possibly the Druze, and the Sunni Arabs. Surely not the Syria which the Ba’th party had in mind, nor what the Alawite community   the main pillar of the regime, fought for.

It is also important to refer to the call for Secular Syria. Using the word Secular in the Arab world was always a problem, but the Kurds did not hesitate to use it, and this is for two reasons. First, the main Kurdish claim for self-determination was traditionally ethnic and nationalist being the distinction between them and Arabs, and not religious, as they are Sunni Muslims [except for marginal Shi’i minority]. Emphasizing religion, therefore, meant losing their own distinct national claim. Not always it was like that, for example, the first great anti Ataturk Kurdish revolt in Turkey, the Sheikh Sa’id revolt of February-March 1925 had clear religious connotation alongside the national Kurdish motif. Secondly, the Kurds were fighting Islamist factions existing also in North East Syria, mainly ISIS, but not only. They fought for their own survival, on their own ground, and had no choice, but the fighting created a common interest between them and the US, whose policy stated goal in Syria was to eradicate the Islamists. The fighting against ISIS was advantageous for both sides. The Kurds could solidify their hold over Rojava, enjoying American arms supplies, whereas the US did not have to use boots on the ground and could rely on a credible ally. The fighting against ISIS and the subsequent success were widely covered in the American press and enhanced the prestige of the Kurds as fierce fighters and trusted allies in an area known for its tumultuous politics and shifty alliances. Asia Rmazan Antar, a fearless 19 years-old Kurdish woman fighter who was killed in the fighting with ISIS became a symbol of the new generation of Kurds, winning the nickname of ‘’the Kurdish Angelina Jolie’’, due to her physical resemblance to the Hollywood megastar. Rojava as a region became associated with the idea, that there can be a secular, moderate, western-type alternative to Islamism, The role of women in public life in Rojava, and their active participation in the fighting added to this impression. The Western press did not dig too deeply into the particular circumstances of the Kurdish movement, but the overall impression of difference between Rojava and other regions in Syria, played well into the hands of the Kurds. They also benefited from the difference drawn between them and the Iraqi Kurds and their abysmal performance after the independence referendum in September 2017 and the quick defeat by the Iraqi army. In Iraq, the Talabani Kurdish faction betrayed the Barazanis, indicating the tribal/clannish character of Kurdish society despite decades of openness to the West, whereas in Rojava, it seemed to be the opposite. Kurdish unity despite factional and political rivalries. The Rojava region stretched over one quarter of Syria’s territory with over 2 million people living there. There was however a red light for the Kurds after the Iraqi fiasco. The US did not come to the help of the Kurds, allies for decades. There were various reasons for that, but one which seemed to be on top of all others-TURKEY.

The existence of Turkey and its interests is part of the overall complicated strategic situation in Northern Syria and one which was never ignored by the Kurds themselves, and clearly not by the US. It is setting the background to the Turkish invasion of October 2019 and American reaction. This will be discussed in chapter 6.

Dr. Josef Olmert is a Senior Fellow at the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research and an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina