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YASA Releases Syrian Kurdistan Map
'Western Kurdistan': First stage
1.1.2013
By Jomaa Okash, Al Arabiya |
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After many months of work and cooperation with many
Kurds both inside and outside Syria, YASA, the
Kurdish Center for Legal Studies & Consultancy, has
created a map of Western Kurdistan. The first phase
of the project is completed, and we are currently
working on the second phase. People and experts who
want to join us or have any comments or suggestions
can contact us using the following e-mail address:
info@yasa-online.org.
To see the map, please click here
http://bit.ly/U8yooJ
YASA e.V. - Kurdish Centre for Legal Studies &
Consultancy
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See Related Articles
January 1, 2013
The Kurdish Centre for Legal Studies and
Consultancy, also known as YASA, released a
map of
what it described as “Syrian Kurdistan” which marks
the borders of the Kurdish territories inside Syria.
According to the map, Syrian Kurdistan, also labeled
Western Kurdistan by the Bonn-based center, starts
from the village of Ain Diwar in the governorate of
Hasakah in the northeast and extends across the
Turkish borders till the far northwest near the city
of Iskenderun.
The map features major cities in the northern Syria
like Dêrik, Rmêlan, Tirbespiyê, Kobanî, and Afrin
and the percentage of Kurds, Arabs, and Christians
in each of them.
The map does not, however, specify the exact area of
Syrian Kurdistan, which, according to the center, is
not possible at the moment for security reasons. A
second study is to offer more accurate figures.
Based on YASA statistics, the number of Kurds in
Syria is estimated at three million, mostly living
in the north together with Arab and Christian
minorities.
Jian Badrakhan, a YASA senior official, said that
although the map may not be in line with the
administrative divisions of the Syrian state, it is
congruent with the Kurdish presence in the region.
“Kurds have been there for centuries,” he told the
Kurdish news website al-Kurdiya News.
“There are very few Arabs and most of them were
brought from central Syria by the regime while those
belonging to tribes are indigenous. Christians are
the also original inhabitants of the region. Some
villages west of the Euphrates are inhabited by
Turkmen.”
Kurds in Syria, Badrakhan explained, are basically
demanding political non-centralism in the areas in
which they constitute a majority.
“They will be charge of governing this area together
with other minorities, but they will remain part of
the state of Syria provided that their rights are
recognized on both the local and the international
levels.”
Badrakhan said that the Syrian opposition
acknowledges the rights of Kurds, but the two
parties have not yet reached an understanding as to
the system of governance in the pre-dominantly
Kurdish areas.
Badrakhan denied that the map exaggerated in linking
areas that are interrupted by non-Kurdish presence
for as much 40 kilometers like linking the city of
Qamishlo,www.ekurd.net
named the capital of Western Kurdistan, and the city
of Serê Kaniyê in al-Hasakah governorate with the
city Afrin in Aleppo governorate and the city of
Kobanî in Raqqah governorate.
“We did not link those cities together, but rather
traced the natural extension of Kurdish presence and
which has resisted all attempts by the regime to
change the demographics of the area whether through
forcing Kurds out or bringing Arabs in as well as
stripping Kurds of the Syrian citizenship.”
According to historical studies, Kurds played an
important role in the independence of Syria during
the Ottoman era and the French occupation.
Syrian Kurds were granted the right to create their
state in the regions they inhabit through the Treaty
of Sèvres between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire
in 1920. However, the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in
1923, dashed Kurdish hopes after the Allies
overlooked their rights in response to Turkish
demands.
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