Fréderike Geerdink
It looks like presidents Erdoğan and Assad are about to be on speaking terms again. For months now, there’s been diplomatic travel between Moscow, Baghdad, Damascus and Ankara, and reportedly not in vain. Kurdistan is disregarded of course, but Kurds do want a seat at the table.
It is not only the presidents involved who disregard Kurdistan, so do literally all the media that mention the rapprochement between Erdoğan and Assad. Most of them mention that for Turkey, the Kurds in Syria are an important driver of Erdogan’s willingness to kiss and make up with Assad. But the reports just mention that Turkey considers the Kurdish armed forces People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the multi-ethnic and multi-religious forces of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (which are led by the YPG) as extensions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and that it has bothered Turkey for many years that the SDF form part of the international coalition against ISIS’s boots on the ground.
Scary
No mention is usually made of the democratic system that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which is defended by the SDF, has been setting up since as early as 2012. Nor of how Kurds and other groups governing themselves on a local level is very scary for Turkey because this is what the Kurdish movement wants for Turkey as well; to undermine the very centrally governed state that Turkey is.
But there is a deeper level of neglect. They all mention the Kurds, but just as a factor, without dedicating even one sentence to what the Kurds’ perspective on the situation is. This is painful to see, and infuriating too, because it is a huge and important part of the story.
Erdoğan and Assad may have had a non-existent relationship since the Syrian war started, but they are still presidents cut from the same cloth. They call their opponents ‘terrorists’, they lock their opponents up (although Erdoğan’s prisons are not similar to Assad’s horror dungeons) and most of all, they want to govern their countries centrally, with no autonomy whatsoever for any group or region. Obey the state, or else.
Opposition
Their current willingness to talk and mend ties must be seen in this light (and within the current dynamics in the Middle-East as a whole, but you can read about that elsewhere). Assad wants the whole of Syria without opposition, Erdoğan wants the whole of Turkey without opposition (real opposition wanting radical change, I mean). They both want to get rid of terrorists – cynically enough neither one of them names the terrorists explicitly because that would make the rapprochement more difficult: Assad considers the groups Turkey backs to be terrorists, while Erdoğan thinks Assad isn’t dealing properly with the ones he considers to be terrorists. But let’s not make things too complicated now.
So what do the Kurds want? The Kurds of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) (the most important party within the autonomous administration) and the armed forces of the YPG and YPJ (the latter are the women’s forces) I mean, and the multi-ethnic SDF? They are not against talks between Turkey and Syria, but they are kindly requesting a seat at the table. This is also what the Kurdish party in Turkey, Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party, has said.
Table
This may surprise some people. If Ankara considers them terrorists and wants to annihilate them and Assad wants to take control of the northeast of Syria again, clearly against the interest of freedom-loving people, why would they want a seat at the table? There have been misunderstandings about this before, for example when the SDF said it could become part of the Syrian army. How could a Kurdish armed group become part of the army of Assad, a brutal dictator?
The explanation is that the Kurds really want to resolve the problems that have been destroying Syria since 2011. The core of the problem, they analyze ultra-logically, is a lack of democracy. They are convinced the war can only end when the people of Syria can take charge of their lives. All the people of Syria, freely and without fear. The brutal state would, in other words, be dismantled. The armed forces of Syria would then be transformed as well, and when armed forces serve the interest of the people, the SDF can be a part of it.
Power
That the PYD wants to have a seat at the table, doesn’t even make the news anywhere. It only makes the newswhen leaders of states want to sit down and talk, not when a non-state group demands a say. It’s also not considered relevant because the PYD and SDF won’t be part of the talks anyway.
True, they won’t be. Because they want to talk to liberate, while Erdoğan and Assad want to talk to continue suppressing the people but just in a slightly different power balance. But it is exactly because of this huge difference – liberation versus suppression – that attention to it is needed. Aren’t journalists supposed to hold power to account and report from the peoples’ perspective, and not from the perspective of those in power?
It’d be great if the Kurdish quest for liberation were more widely known. Then more people would advocate for it, and it would stand a better chance.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/fgeerdink or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan https://frederikegeerdink.com/expert-kurdistan/.
