Rena Netjes

From interviews with KNC leaders when asking them what the differences are between them and the Democratic Union party (PYD), the following eight arguments they share:

Firstly, we are political parties, whose struggle to defend the Kurdish people’s existence and rights in Syria began in 1957 and continues to this day. Our struggle focuses here. Secondly, we are against the blood shedding dictatorial regime in Syria. We stand by the Syrian National Opposition and we seek a political solution. Thirdly, we adopt the political and democratic method in dealing with the Syrian society, so we stay far away from weapons and repression. Our vision is clear and overt to everyone. Fourthly, the Kurdish movement and the Kurdish National Council have a clear position regarding the national opposition and their political struggle is clear within the cadres of the Kurdish community. Fifthly, the PYD is an emergency party which represents the PKK and has no agenda related to the rights of the Kurdish people. It was only established to provide logistical support to the PKK and to fulfill the Kurdish Workers Party’s agenda. Moreover, the PYD doesn’t abstain from any means to achieve this goal. Sixthly, together with the regime, the PYD arranged the oppression of the Kurdish movement and the claims of the Kurdish and Syrian people, and it supports the regime by protecting it and its economic foundations. Seventhly, the only means of the PYD are arms and repression. It neutralizes the other options and refuses to cooperate with anyone. The PYD hides its agenda from everyone, even from its comrades and executives. Lastly, they made use of murdering, kidnapping and threats to prevent the spread of the Kurdish movement. They were the regime accomplices and they all are the enemies of the Syrian people.

There are more grievances and obstacles that raise from the interviews, such as the KNC military wing (there are no exact statistics, but Syrian Kurdish sources estimate 3,000-4,000 men), the Rosh Peshmerga (the Kurdish FSA as one of the KNC politicians described), stay outside Northeast Syria; PYD/YPG don’t allow them to enter the area, so they’re still in Iraqi Kurdistan. Many KNC leaders have been expelled from the area and can’t return. The same goes for KNC activists, and Assyrian (Christian) and Arab opponents.

Several KNC politicians have asked the PYD and YPG to denounce their ties with the PKK in public, but this has never happened. Mazloum Abdi, Aldar Xelil and Salih Muslim are known PKK militants who spent years of combat training in Qandil. The PKK is labeled as a terrorist organization⁴ US Department of State, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Bureau Of Counterterrorısm, click for page in the US, EU and Turkey.

In interviews with PYD politicians, they say they follow the same ideology without being connected. They also have grievances: “The KNC and the other parties that are with them went out at Friday, the people went out at Friday from the mosque, and they say ‘Allah akbar, Allah akbar’. They finish. Until that time becomes one hour. And until the next week. The Revolution is not this, of course. Beyond this, the Revolution from the mosques and the use of religion, that is not a revolution. There should be an idea. PYD is an idea, we’re present on the ground, with a complete vision, and YPG is our protection force, our defense. And from the society itself, we have Arabs, Assyrians/Syriacs, Kurds; a gathering from this society. It does not have a relation with PYD. And, we know that this will end in a fight between Shia and Sunni.”

“We’re on the ground, they’re outside Syria,” PYD/Tevdem’s Aldar Xelil said on Syria TV.  KNC leader Ibrahim Biro, when answering the question why he is outside (Erbil): “They arrested and expelled me from Northeast Syria and threatened to kill me, in case I would return to Northeast Syria.”⁵ For those among you who understand Arabic, here’s the full TV broadcast covering this story: الجزيرة السورية والمصير المنتظر | الصالون السياسي, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqtRuUF-Ovs&feature=youtu.be

The SDF military leader Mazloum Abdi came with an initiative to unite the Syrian Kurdish ranks after the Turkish intervention in October 2019 in (YPG controlled, Arabic) Tel Abyad and Ra’s al-Ayn in Northeast Syria (YPG controlled mixed Arabic Kurdish and some Circassians, Syriacs and others). From the many previous attempts to unite the two rival blocs, insiders who helped facilitating previous talks told the author that YPG/PYD are not really willing to make concessions towards the KNC. A year ago, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized a fruitless conference with both parties. Other talks took place in other places, according to participants also in The Netherlands.

“There is pressure on them (SDF), Turkish pressure from the moment Turkey entered Ra’s al-Ayn and Tel Abyad. And international agreements, a Turkish-Russian agreement, and a Turkish-American agreement. Mazloum Kobani went thirty-two kilometers further, still near the border. And the Americans returned from Iraq to Qamishli, and a bit west from Qamishli via Pesh Khabour. In Amouda are the Russians. When Mazloum saw the situation was bad, he asked for a unification of the Kurdish position. The Americans pressurized us (KNC) even more. From a long time already until now. I told the Americans, we need to build trust, to open up the offices and allow political activities, and to discover where the missing persons are. They try to cover up; that is not building trust, if they were trustworthy, they’d say: ‘We killed them,’” A KNC politician told the author.

“They killed them, the eight that are missing?” “Yes, this is what we believe.” The Americans said that they know the file of the missing and some mistakes the PYD made, but “we need to find a way. We want a next step. Are you willing to start a dialogue or not?” And to be honest, America is an important country, we are not able to say: No. But we want to know to what extent the SDF are serious. To what extent can SDF pressure PYD and let the PYD accept the agreement? And in principal, maybe from next week, we can start a meeting. ”This was in February. “Where will you meet? In the area, or outside Northeast Syria”? “In the area, at the location where the American delegation stays and near the Hasaka dam, just outside, between Hasaka and the M4 road, there is junction Derbasiye – Hasaka, a location where we meet,” according to a KNC politician familiar with the matter.

But the differences between the PYD and the KNC have always been huge and –  in essence – unreconcilable, with perhaps the biggest problem that the KNC is anti-Assad and the PYD isn’t. In Qamishli and Hasaka, the regime has significant military footholds, and according to activists and politicians from all ethnic groups of the Hasaka province, the regime intelligence has never left the area: “They don’t operate from their headquarters, but from their homes,” as an Assyrian politician pointed out. A female Kurdish activist in Qamishli told the author she gets visits from the PYD and from the regime about her posts on Facebook. The PYD has suppressed anti-Assad demonstrations such as in Amouda. According to Syrian Kurdish journalists, seven protestors were killed here in June, 2013. “Among them were KDP-S and Yekitee members and supporters, says KNC politician Abdel Hakim al-Bashar from Amouda. Recently, the PYD apologized for this – well, at least they acknowledged – but no one was arrested or put on trial. They also handed over some KNC politicians and activists to the regime, according to KNC sources.

The differences between PYD and KNC haven’t diminished over the years; several KNC politicians and activists, like Mashaal Tammo, and Nasreddine Burheik have been killed or have gone missing by PYD or PKK. Nasreddine Burheik, a colleague and close friend of the current main negotiator of the KNC, Mohamed Ismail, was shot, and he told Ismail in the Qamishli hospital the perpetrators were PKK. Burheik did not survive the assassination attempt. Many KNC politicians have been jailed or expelled from the area. Ismail himself was jailed for six months in 2016 and 2017. And now he has to make a deal with his jailers. The KNC offices have been closed, some have been ransacked and put on fire. This is a reason why the KNC is afraid to re-open them, even if they were allowed to do so. Office owners are hesitating to rent them out to KNC parties again, etc. Still a number of KNC politicians and activists are missing. The KNC wants to know what happened to them, but the PYD denies holding them. The SDC spokesperson in Qamishli said that on that list was a regime officer. A KNC leader told the author: They are dead for sure.

In short, the KNC (and also Syrian Kurdish journalists and activists) believes the PYD is carrying out orders from Qandil, from non-Syrians, and that they have their own revolution.

The PYD advocates they have a third way, that they are neither with the regime, nor with the opposition, and they say they have a democratic project for the whole of Syria (Aldar Xelil on Syria TV). The KNC responds as follows: “The Syrian opposition has a democracy project for whole Syria already, we don’t need a new PYD plan. First of all, we are Syrians, being Kurds comes second.”⁶ Watch the news clip here: الجزيرة السورية والمصير المنتظر الصالون السياسي, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqtRuUF-Ovs&feature=youtu.be

The Syrian Kurds are the second biggest minority in Syria, after the Alawites, although hard statistics are impossible to obtain because the Syrian regime does not give them.  According to the CIA Factbook ⁷ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html , the Kurds are about ten percent of the population.

“In contrast to Iraq, Iran or Turkey, the Syrian Kurds don’t have one single geographically connected area that is mainly populated by Kurds. Various Syrian border areas in the north, formerly inhabited to a great extent by Kurds, have since the 1960s become more heavily populated by Arabs who have settled there as part of the Ba’thist policy to Arabize the northern Syrian border areas, the so-called ‘Arab belt’. During the Syrian War, the PYD has been active in ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Arab population in the north.”⁸ Nikolaos van Dam, Destroying a Nation, (2017), p. 62 and Nikolaos van Dam, Destroying a Nation (2017), p.116/7

Syrian Kurds live mainly in three areas: Afrin, Kobani and in the Jezira near the Turkish and Iraqi border, and in quarters in Aleppo and Damascus. In the Jezira there are also Arabs, Assyrians, Syriacs Circassians, Turkmens, Yazidis, some Armenians and some from others. Over the years, the regime made most Syrians flee by far, but it did not really attack the Kurdish areas. ISIS did attack Kobani and other towns in the North. More recently, the Turks took over Kurdish (Afrin, Ra’s al-Ayn), causing many Kurds to flee from those areas. Where forced conscription of YPG occurred, young Kurds fled the area as well. Currently, about 70% of the population under YPG led SDF control are Arabs: Deir al-Zour, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and other areas. The latter raises another question:  Why aren’t the Arabs involved in the talks? Mazloum Abdi is touring these Arab areas, but representatives from the biggest Arab tribe the Oqeidat, as well as from other tribes, told the author they would never accept to be ruled by YPG led SDF. Some tribes are divided on the issue, like the other big tribe, al-Baggara, or go with whom has the authority.

“At first, Turkey did not mind the PYD fighting against the regime or against IS, but when developments turned in favour of the PYD, once it succeeded in conquering bigger parts of Northern Syria, the PYD came to be seen in Ankara as an imminent security threat against Turkey”⁹ An interview with Mohamed İsmail

Let’s turn to Kurdish political activity and the KNC parties. The first Syrian Kurdish party, Partiya Demukrata Kurdistan – Suriya (PDK-S) was established in 1957. It’s still the biggest party¹⁰ The National Relations Office of the PDK-S issues an important circular on the situation of stranded people in Syrian Kurdistan, https://www.arknews.net/en/node/20392 within the Kurdish National Council, with the majority of offices.

The KNC was established on 27 October, 2011. The main negotiator in the intra-Syrian-Kurdish talks, Ismail, is this party’s political advisor. He is part of the KNC delegation that met Mazloum Abdi and the Americans just outside Hasaka. The first KNC chairman, Abdul Hakim al-Bashar, who, in 2011, was still in Qamishli, now lives in exile. Over time, other split-offs and parties appeared, quite often keeping the same name. Some more leaning to the regime, like Hazem Darwish, and others more radical like Yekitee, which means Union in Kurdish.¹¹ This is the second biggest party in the KNC. Ibrahim Biro, one of its leaders, was arrested and dropped at the border by PYD. “Yekitee broke up into two fractions a long time ago: Yekitee Sheikh Ali and another Yekitee. Now this later Yekitee also split up recently, in Yekitee Fuad Aliko, Ibrahim Biro, Suleyman Oso and on the other side Hasan Saleh and his group,” according to a Syrian Kurdish lawyer.

In a recent episode on Syria TV, Fuad Aliko said: “All these leaks about us leaving the Etilaf cut with the Syrian opposition are not true.¹² Etilaf is the main Syrian opposition group We cut relations with the Assad regime, with Iran. We’re part of the Syrian opposition, we’re part of the Syrian Revolution. And we want the Arabs, Turkmens, Syriacs and others to be part of the talks.”¹³ Rena Netjest’s tweet feed, click for tweet

Yekitee’s Ibrahim Biro explains here¹⁴ We talked with the US ambassador @fordrs58 and the French ambassador… https://twitter.com/RenaNetjes/status/1224311793268535297?s=09 how the American ambassador at the time, Robert Ford, and his French colleague asked him to invite the PYD to the Geneva talks in 2014, and how the PYD refused to be part of the opposition delegation.