Patrick Markey | Reuters ARABNEWS
IN the northeast corner of Syria a power struggle is developing over the promise of oil riches in the remote Kurdish region, threatening to drag Kurdish rivals, Syrian fighters and Turkey into a messy new front in an already complex civil war.
In Syria’s 19-month popular revolt against President Bashar Assad, the Kurdish minority is grabbing the chance to secure self-rule and the rights denied them for decades.
With Syrian forces and Syrian fighters entangled in fighting to their west, a Syrian Kurdish party tied to Turkish Kurd separatists has exploited a vacuum to start Kurdish schools, cultural centers, police stations and armed militias.
But the growing influence of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is concerning not only Turkey, which is worried that border areas will become a foothold for Turkish Kurd PKK rebels, but also Syrian fighters who see the Kurdish militias as a threat.
At the PYD’s office in the Syrian Kurdish town of Derik, where walls bear a portrait of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan and pictures of members the party says were killed by the Assad regime, the mood is defiant.
“We have our rights, we have our land. We are not refugees here and we will protect ourselves,” said PYD activist Mohammed Said. “We cannot accept any force from outside coming here.”
Along Syria’s border with Iraq, Kurdish militants in jeans and armed with Kalashnikov rifles now guard a frontier post where Assad’s army once patrolled the sparse hillsides dotted with now lifeless oil pumps.
In a classroom in nearby Derik, teenage girls practice reading their own Kurdish language, banned in schools until a few months ago, and Syrian Kurdish leaders express ideological loyalty to Ocalan who is jailed in Turkey.
Under Assad’s rule and his father’s before him, Syrian Kurds were forbidden to learn their language or even to hold Syrian identity and often forced from their land, while their activists were targeted by Syrian intelligence agents.
http://www.arabnews.com/power-struggle-looms-syria%E2%80%99s-kurds
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Syria, Turkey
I really do not understand why in Syria (and Turkey) the Government could not permit the Kurds to teach and learn and speak their own language.
In Switzerland we have four official languages.
German spoken by 64%, French by 20%, Italian by 6.5% and Romansh spoken by 0.5% (remaining percentage represent many different languages spoken by immigrants).
Even the 0.5% Romansh population is given the right of representing an ‘official language’. Any of the 3 langues can be spoken in Parliament and will be translated. (Romansh is excluded simply for practical reasons).
I hope Syria and Turkey will find a solution to their Kurdish population ‘challenge’. If they are properly respected there would not necessarily be a need for their independence. Just my personal view…