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Who is the Syrian-Kurdish opposition? The
development of Kurdish parties, 1956-2011
1.1.2012
By KurdWatch - Report 8 |
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January 1, 2012
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the
current landscape of Kurdish political parties in
Syria, including their protagonists, their political
goals, their concrete political actions, and their
significance for society. Given the current
situation, a political analysis of the Kurdish
parties, which form a significant part of the Syrian
opposition, is of considerable importance. Since the
middle of March 2011, mass dissident demonstrations
have challenged the Bath regime. However, the
outcome of the Syrian revolution thus far remains
unforeseeable.
If President Bashar al‑Assad and the Ba'th regime
fall, the Kurdish parties will try to implement
their political visions of a »new Syria.« What do
these visions actually look like? Do they extend
beyond Kurd-specific demands? Who is leading the
Kurdish parties, and which supporters do they have
at their disposal? What roll have the Kurdish
parties thus far played in the revolution and within
the Syrian opposition as a whole?
The first section is concerned with the beginnings
of the Kurdish parties in Syria; in other words with
the history of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria
(Partiya Demokrat a Kurdî li Sûriyê), KDPS for
short,www.ekurd.net
from its formation in 1957 until its split into
three wings in 1970. The difficulties and internal
conflicts apparent in this early phase of the party
are interesting insofar as they remain relevant to
the present day.
The second section of the essay addresses the
current landscape of the Kurdish parties: fourteen
parties, of which eleven have arisen out of the KDPS.
The programmatic direction as well as the social and
political relevance of the parties will be
discussed. Among other things, our analysis will
make clear that the Syrian Kurdish movement
distinguishes itself from the Kurdish movements in
Turkey and Iraq in several significant ways. In
contrast, the differences in content between the
individual parties are generally marginal and only
responsible for a fraction of the conflicts and
divisions within the party spectrum.
From formation to division:
The history of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria
(KDPS) from 1957 to 1970
Until the second half of the 1950s, there was no
Kurdish party in Syria with a Kurdish-nationalist
agenda that focused specifically on Syria. The
nationalist Khoybun Committee (1927‒1944), which was
founded in Beirut and whose most important actors
lived in Syria, focused primarily on the fight
against Turkey. This was also the case for the
organization that followed Khoybun, the Kurdish
League (1945-1946), as well as for the brothers
Jaladat and Kamiran Badrkhan, who were initially
active in Khoybun and later acted independently.
Thus, for example, after the Second World War, the
Kurds gave up the opportunity to demand specific
rights for Syria’s Kurds from the Allies 1.
The situation of Syria’s Kurds and their position
with regards to the government in Damascus was only
of central concern to the Christian‑Kurdish autonomy
movement (1932-1939), which was led by Hajo Agha
among others 2.
Although both during the French mandate and into the
1950s, individual Kurdish figures from the
traditional tribal elite were elected to the Syrian
parliament—among them were Jamil and Akram Ibrahim
Pasha, Hasan and Akram Hajo, and Hasan’s son
Sulayman Hajo — there were no attempts to build a
Kurdish-nationalist party around them. Insofar as
politicized Kurds were engaged in party politics,
they were involved above all in the Syrian Communist
Party.It was not until 1956 that ʿUthman Sabri, a
former Khoybun activist and a member of the Society
of Pacific
Syrians (Civata Aştîxwazên Sûrî), a Communist party
group 3 the law student ʿAbdulhamid Hajji Darwish
and Hamzah Niweran, who came from Raʾs al‑ʿAyn (Serê
Kaniyê), began to think about forming a Kurdish
party under the name »Partiya Kurdên Demoqratên Sûrî
(P. K. D. S.)« (Syrian Democratic Kurd’s Party).
With the support of Nuruddin Zaza and Jalal
Talabani, who at this point was living as a student
in Syria, they composed a party program »Rêzname«
(»charter«).4
To read the complete report in PDF from
ekurd.net
-or from
Kurdwatch.org
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Kurdish Studies
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info@kurdwatch.org
© KurdWatch, December 2011
Copyright © 2012, respective author or news agency,
kurdwatch.org
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