Syria's Kurds mistrust government and opposition: activists
(Reuters) - Syrian Kurds, the country's largest ethnic minority, do not trust President Bashar al-Assad, nor the opposition, so for now have largely kept out of the uprising against the government, exiled Kurdish opposition representatives said.
The Kurds are also wary of
Turkey's growing influence on the Arab groups trying to overthrow Assad,
fearing that if they succeed, they will crush Kurdish hopes for
autonomy in Syria, due to Ankara's opposition to home-rule for its own Kurds.
"There
is no trust between the Kurds and the Arab opposition that's why there
are not huge protests in the Kurdish cities," said Majed Youssif Dawi, a
Kurdish member of the Syrian National Council main opposition umbrella
group.
"We don't have any
agreements with the Arab opposition in terms of Kurdish rights," he told
Reuters in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil. "We don't have any
agreement on how to change the system ... also the statements of the
heads of the Arab opposition do not give us any reason to trust them."
While mainly Sunni Arab cities in Syria
have seen 10 months of large, almost daily demonstrations against
Assad, the mainly Kurdish towns and cities in northeast Syria, after
initial protests, have remained much more calm.
"The
Kurds don't support the regime. We Kurds have been against the Syrian
regime for more than 20 years and the Kurds were the one of first who
came out onto the streets," said Dr. Sarbast Nabi, a Syrian Kurdish
politics professor at Salahaddin University in northern Iraq's
autonomous region of Kurdistan.
Syrian
Kurds clashed with security forces for days, leaving several dead,
after an incident at a football stadium in the main Syrian Kurdish city
of Qamishli in 2004.
"At that time I
was in Damascus," said Nabi. "I don't want to mention any names, but
those who are now the heads of the opposition stood against the demands
for Kurdish rights ... They still support the ideology Arab-isation and
political Islam."
As well as the
lack of trust between the Kurds and the main opposition groups, the
Syrian Kurds have deep divisions among themselves and are backed by
different regional players, some by the Iraqi Kurds, and another by the
Turkish Kurd rebels, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), independent
analysts said.
The Syrian
government has increased its support for the PKK as a counterweight to
Turkey's backing of the Syrian opposition, the analysts said, and
therefore the PKK's proxies inside Syria had not joined in the struggle
to overthrow Assad.
KURDS WARY OF TURKEY'S ROLE
Mahmoud
Mohammad Bave Sabir, a leading member of the Democratic Union Kurdish
Party of Syria, one of the oldest Kurdish opposition groups, said Assad
was playing on Arab fears of Kurdish separatism and Kurdish fears of
Arab nationalism.
Any Kurdish
protests, he said, had not been met with the same level of forces as
elsewhere, where security forces have used live ammunition and killed
hundreds of demonstrators.
That,
he said, was because Assad feared the reaction of the many thousands of
Kurds living in the capital Damascus, and the commercial hub Aleppo,
which have until now remained much quieter than outlying smaller towns
and cities.
But Kurdish activists
inside Syria are still mobilizing the youths who took to the streets
regardless of the Kurdish opposition parties, said Dawi, a student
activist imprisoned for two months in Syria before feeling to Iraqi
Kurdistan.
He is now in daily
contact with fellow activists in the Kurdish towns and cities inside
Syria as well as lobbying for greater recognition of Kurdish rights from
within the main opposition umbrella group based in the Turkish city of
Istanbul.
The support for the
opposition by Turkey's government, which evolved from a series of banned
Islamist parties, has led to Sunni Arab Islamist groups coming to the
fore of the protests, the Syrian Kurdish representatives said.
If
those groups came to power, the Syrian Kurds said, they would likely
still pursue the Arab nationalist policies of the Assad government and
stand in the way of Kurdish demands for self-rule, similar to that of
Iraq's Kurdish autonomous zone.
"I
think the revolution in Syria has not remained in the hands of the
Syrian people, but has become a conflict between the regional powers,"
said student activist Dawi. "We should not trust those big countries
because they are putting their own interests first."
"We are afraid of any Turkish role inside Syria," said Professor Nabi. "I am sure Turkey will face strong Kurdish resistance in Syria."
For
now, he said, Syria's Kurds were keeping their powder dry, awaiting the
outcome of the uprising, but were ready to fight to defend their rights
when needed.
"I don't believe they
will remain neutral because they are obliged to defend themselves,
either against the regime, or after it changes because then the struggle
will become multi sided."
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