Kurds in Syria

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Kurds in Syria (Syria)
Qamishli
Qamishli
Al-Hasakah
Al-Hasakah
Ain al-Arab
Ain al-Arab
Afrin
Afrin
Damascus (capital)
Damascus (capital)
Aleppo
Aleppo
Some Syrian cities with Kurdish populations

The Kurds in Syria are the country's largest ethnic minority . Their exact share in the population is unclear and is stated differently depending on the source (8 to 15%). Almost all Syrian Kurds profess Sunni Islam , and some also belong to the Yazidis or other religious communities.

With the 1962 census in al-Hasakah , over 100,000 Kurds lost their Syrian citizenship . In Syria, a distinction is made between "Ajanib" ( Arabic أجانب ajanib ), registered foreigners, and "Maktumin", which are not officially recorded. With Presidential Decree No. 49 of April 7, 2011, the Ajanib had been made easier to acquire Syrian citizenship. According to the Syrian Ministry of the Interior, 51,000 re-naturalizations had been carried out by the end of September 2011. But almost 200,000 Kurds from Syria are still stateless .

Demographics

Syria's Kurds live mainly along the border with Turkey in northeast Syria, this region extends over the greater part of the al-Hasakah governorate . The largest cities in the region are Qamishli and al-Hasakah . Another region with a significant Kurdish population is Ain al-Arab ( Kobanî ) in northern Syria near the city of Jarabulus and Kurd Dagh in the northwest, around the city of Afrin in Aleppo governorate . The Kurd Dagh region extends to the Turkish districts of İslahiye and Kırıkhan . Many Kurds also live in major cities such as Aleppo and Damascus . The Kurdish northern and northeastern parts of Syria are called "Kurdistana Binxetê" (Kurdistan under the border) or "Rojava" (Western Kurdistan) in Kurdish.

The US State Department assumes a Kurdish share of 9% of the population, the CIA of 10%, the Society for Threatened Peoples of 12% and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter of 10 to 15%.

history

The history of the Syrian Kurds begins with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after 1918 and the establishment of Syria, which was initially a French mandate and became independent in 1946. In 1957, Osman Sabri and other Kurdish politicians founded the Kurdistan-Syria Democratic Party, the first Kurdish party in Syria. The goals of the DPKS were the promotion of Kurdish cultural rights, economic progress and democratic change. The DPKS was never legally recognized by the state and remained an underground organization. After a raid in 1960, the two leaders Osman Sabri and Nur al-Din Zaza were arrested, charged with separatism and imprisoned. The party then split into one movement each under Sabri and Zaza.

1962 census

After the failure of the union with Egypt in 1961, Syria declared itself an Arab Republic according to the constitution. On August 23, 1962, the government conducted an extraordinary census in the Jazira . As a result, 120,000 Kurds (approx. 20% of the Kurdish population in Syria) were declared foreigners in the Jazira. They could not choose, buy property, or take official jobs. The census took place on the basis of "Decree No. 93" in the then province of al-Hasakah. The driving force behind the decision was its governor Saʿid as-Saiyid. In fact, the residents had Syrian IDs and were asked to hand them over so that they could become Syrian citizens again. Those who did that didn't get it back. There was a media campaign against the Kurds with slogans like Save Arabs in the Jazira! and fight the Kurdish threat! started. This policy coincided with the Mustafa Barzani uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan and the discovery of oil reserves in the Kurdish areas of Syria. In June 1963, Syria took part in a military action by the Iraqis against the Kurds and provided aircraft, armored vehicles and 6,000 men. Syrian troops crossed the Iraqi border and moved towards Zaxo to pursue Barzani's fighters.

Reason

The Syrian government justified the extraordinary census by saying that Kurds from neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, had illegally crossed the border. She also claimed that these Kurds settled there and gradually made up the majority in cities like Amude and Qamishli. She also said that many managed to illegally enroll in the Syrian population registers. The government also speculated that Kurds were planning to settle and acquire property, especially after the agricultural law reforms, in order to benefit from the reallocation of the land.

Because of this growing illegal immigration, the government conducted the census on October 5, 1962 with the aim of clearing the registers and identifying the illegal immigrants. In the end, more than 120,000 Kurds were identified as foreigners and entered in special registers. The remaining citizens checked were transferred to new civil registers. The number of stateless Kurds in Syria has now risen to more than 200,000.

The stateless Kurds are divided into two groups, the ajanib ( Arabic : "foreigners") and maktumin (Arabic: "hidden"). Ajanib receive civil identity documents, maktumin only in exceptional cases identity certificates from their responsible mayor ( muhtar ). Maktumin are subject to government restrictions to a greater extent than ajanib , so they do not receive any school leaving certificates and are not allowed to study at university.

Abdullah Öcalan later legitimized Syria's attitude towards the Kurds. In 1996, Öcalan publicly stated that there was no original Kurdish population in Syria. The Kurds there are refugees from Turkey who would be happy to return.

criticism

According to some statements by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the extraordinary census is said to have been carried out arbitrarily. The members of the same family were classified differently. Some members of the same family have been declared citizens while others have been declared foreigners, suggesting the inaccuracy of the process; HRW also claims that some Kurds who did military service lost their citizenship, while others who bribed the officials were allowed to keep them. According to Human Rights Watch, the Syrian government is said to have declared many originally Kurdish residents to be foreigners and consequently violated their human rights when they withdrew their Syrian citizenship. Stateless Kurds cannot legally emigrate to another country because they have no papers. In Syria, they are not allowed to be employed in government agencies and companies, and they are not legally allowed to marry a Syrian citizen. Kurds with the status of foreigners do not have the right to vote or stand for election.

Arabic belt

In 1965 the Syrian government decided to build an “ Arab Belt ” (al-hizām al-ʿarabi) in the Jazira along the Turkish border. The belt was 350 km long and 10-15 km wide and stretched from the Iraqi border in the east to Ras al-Ain in the west. The implementation of the plan began in 1973 and Bedouin Arabs were settled in the Kurdish areas. All place names in the area were Arabicized. Kurdish was banned first in schools, then in the workplace, and the Kurdish media was also banned. Furthermore, the Kurds were no longer mentioned in the history books. According to the original plan, around 140,000 Kurds were to be deported to the southern desert near Al-Raad . Although the Kurdish farmers were expropriated, they refused to move away and give up their houses. Among these peasants, those who were declared foreigners were not allowed to own property, repair houses, or build new houses. A decree from 1992 forbade the registration of children with a Kurdish first name. Kurdish cultural centers and bookshops were also banned.

Kurdish riots in Syria

The 1986 demonstrations

Kurdish funeral in Afrin

In March 1986, thousands of Kurds in traditional clothing gathered in the Kurdish quarter of Damascus to celebrate the Nouruz spring festival. The police warned them that it was forbidden to wear Kurdish costumes and fired into the crowd; one person died in the process. Around 40,000 Kurds attended the funeral in Qamishli. In Afrin, too, three Kurds were killed during the Newroz demonstrations.

In suppressing unrest, the Baathist regime was nevertheless able to fall back on the help of Kurdish special forces. The special forces subordinate to the president's brother, Rifaat al-Assad , included separately organized Kurdish units in addition to Alawi . They helped suppress the uprisings in Aleppo in 1980 and in Hama in 1982, and soldiers spared Kurdish speakers during the Hama massacre .

Riots in March 2004

After an incident at a football stadium in Qamishli, 30 people died and 160 were injured in the riot that began on March 12. Kurdish sources indicated that Syrian security forces used live ammunition against civilians after clashes during a football match between local Kurdish fans of the home team and Arab fans of the team from the city of Deir ez-Zor . The international press reported nine deaths on March 12th. According to Amnesty International, hundreds of people, mostly Kurds, were arrested after the unrest. Kurdish prisoners reported torture and mistreatment. Some Kurdish students have been expelled from their universities for participating in peaceful protests.

civil war in Syria

In the course of the Arab Spring 2011 , demonstrations and riots also broke out in Syria from March 2011, which culminated in a Syrian civil war , which is fueled by foreign countries with arms deliveries. The Kurdish areas in the north initially remained calm and the Kurds did not take part in the actions on a large scale. The Kurds are politically fragmented, which is exacerbated by the presence of the PKK , which is fighting against Turkey. The PKK has a sister party in Syria with the Partiya Yekitîya Demokrat . Some of the Kurds are close to the Iraqi Democratic Party of Kurdistan Masud Barzanis . The Kurdistan-Syria Democratic Party and its successor parties are only dominant around Qamishli. The future movement of Maschaal Tammo , which is the only Kurdish party to be a member of the Syrian National Council (SNR), is also important. There is no agreement between the remaining parties and the SNR, so the Kurds founded the Kurdish National Council (KNR). The Future Movement and the Partiya Yekitîya Democrat (PYD) were not founding members of the KNR.

At the beginning of the uprisings, the Syrian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs announced on March 7, 2011 that Kurds who do not have Syrian citizenship would now have the right to work. On the second weekend in April 2011 it was announced that those Kurds within Syria who do not have any citizenship should receive Syrian ones. This only affects registered stateless persons ( ajanib ). Unregistered stateless persons ( maktumin ) will not be considered and will continue to be deprived of their Syrian citizenship.

Larger demonstrations did not take place until October 2011 after the murder of the Kurdish politician Maschaal Tammo in Qamishli. The PYD has taken control of the western Syrian cities of Afrin and Ain al-Arab, which the Syrian government tolerates. Because of this tolerance, the PYD is accused by the other Kurds of working with the government, which the PYD vehemently denies. The PYD denies the Syrian government any legitimacy and accuses it of plunging the country into civil war. On March 12, the anniversary of the 2004 riots, and the celebration of Newroz on March 21, hundreds of thousands of Kurds took to the streets in several cities and demonstrated against the regime.

In order to reduce the growing tensions between the KNR and PYD and to find a common line, representatives of Syrian-Kurdish parties met in July 2012 under the patronage of Masud Barzani in Erbil, northern Iraq. At the end of the meeting, the sides agreed not to act against each other and to found the High Kurdish Committee to determine the further strategy of the Kurdish organizations. Due to the relocation of the Syrian army inland, the Kurds were able to take control of some cities. The Kurds are now (as of December 2012) the cities of Ain al-Arab , Amude, Afrin, al-Qahtaniya, Raʾs al-ʿAin, al-Darbasiya, al-Jawadiya, Maʿbada, Rumailan, Tall Tamr and al-Malikiye (Dêrik ) check.

On November 12, 2013, the PYD, together with other groups in northern Syria, decided to set up an interim administration in order to counter the maladministration and supply of the population caused by the war. At the beginning of 2014 autonomy was proclaimed in three predominantly Kurdish cantons, which merged under the name Rojava (Kurd. For "sunset". A term for West Kurdistan) to form a de facto independent state. For tactical reasons, the Assad regime allowed the PYD to maintain its own checkpoints, schools and health centers even before the declaration of autonomy.

Several battles then followed against the Islamic State (IS), which had appropriated large parts of eastern and central Syria as a result of the war and opened a new front in the civil war. In mid-2014, IS had almost completely conquered the central canton of Kobanê. The defenders only held a few districts of Kobanês , but were able to recapture the city and the canton with Allied support from the anti-IS coalition. Since the beginning of 2015, the Kurds have gradually enlarged their territory at the expense of IS and in some cases other rebel groups. So now (as of August 2016) Rojava, which is now also called the Federation of Northern Syria - Rojava , extends almost along the entire Syrian-Turkish border . Only a small strip between Afrin and Kobanê is missing. As part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurds have become the Allied forces ' most effective armed forces against IS.

Turkish military offensive in northern Syria 2019

In the course of the Turkish military offensive in northern Syria in 2019 , the Kurds in Syria are coming under pressure and many civilians are fleeing from the border with Turkey into the interior of the Euphrates .

Human rights situation

Amnesty International reports that Kurdish human rights activists were ill-treated and convicted under the Assad regime before the outbreak of civil war. Furthermore, according to Human Rights Watch, the Kurds in Syria were not allowed to use the Kurdish language until the outbreak of civil war in 2011, they were not allowed to give their children Kurdish names, to open any businesses under non-Arabic names, to establish private Kurdish schools, and not to use Kurdish books or other writings publish.

Well-known Kurds

Well-known Syrian Kurds, some of whom were born at the time of the Ottoman Empire, are:

literature

  • Dr. Bawar Bammarny: The Legal Status of the Kurds in Iraq and Syria . In: Constitutionalism, Human Rights, and Islam After the Arab Spring. Oxford University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0190627645 , pp. 475-495.
  • Thomas Schmidinger: War and Revolution in Syrian Kurdistan. Analyzes and voices from Rojava (criticism & utopia). Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-85476-636-0 .
  • Îsmet Şerîf Wanlî : The Kurds in Syria and Lebanon . In: Philip Gerrit Kreyenbroek and Stefan Sperl (eds.): The Kurds. A Contemporary Overview (SOAS politics and culture in the Middle East Series). Routledge, London 2005, ISBN 0-415-07265-4 , pp. 143-170 (EA London 1992).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurdwatch, September 16, 2011
  2. ↑ Robert Gloy: From Syria to Switzerland - without citizenship UNHCR Switzerland, May 7, 2018
  3. ^ A b CIA World Factbook: Syria. Retrieved March 31, 2011 .
  4. ↑ US Department of State: Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs: Background Note: Syria. March 18, 2011, accessed March 31, 2011 .
  5. ↑ gfbv.de ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  6. ↑ Olivier De Schutter: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter - Mission to the Syrian Arab Republic. (PDF; 153 kB) January 27, 2011, accessed on March 31, 2011 (English).
  7. ^ Anne Sophie Schott: The Kurds of Syria. SS 7 , accessed on August 29, 2018 (English).
  8. ^ A b Michael M. Gunter: The Kurds Ascending . The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey. Palgrave Macmillan US, New York / Basingstoke 2008, ISBN 978-0-230-11287-2 , pp. 135 , doi : 10.1057 / 9780230338944 .
  9. ↑ a b Stateless Kurds in Syria, report by Kurdwatch, March 2010, pp. 6–7 and 15 ff. ( Memento from September 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 559 kB)
  10. ↑ Îsmet Şerîf Wanlî: pp. 151–152
  11. ↑ a b c d e Syria: The silenced kurds report by HRW from October 2006
  12. ↑ Syria's Kurds Struggle for Rights article by voanews.com of September 2, 2005
  13. ^ Refugees International, Buried Alive, Stateless Kurds in Syria, January 2006, p. 3.4
  14. ↑ Jordi Tejel: Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society, Routledge New York 2009, p. 78
  15. ^ David McDowell: A Modern History of The Kurds. 3rd revised edition. New York 2004, 479
  16. ^ A b Anne Sophie Schott: The Kurds of Syria. Royal Danish Defense College, SS 10 , accessed August 29, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Îsmet Şerîf Wanlî: pp. 157, 158 and 161
  18. ↑ Îsmet Şerîf Wanlî pp. 163–164
  19. ↑ Îsmet Şerîf Wanlî , Kurdistan and the Kurds, Volume 3, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 3-922197-23-X , p. 15 f.
  20. ↑ Syria: Address Grievances Underlying Kurdish Unrest , Human Rights Watch (HRW) report of March 19, 2004.
  21. ↑ http://www.frankfurter-hefte.de/upload/Archiv/2016/Heft_01-02/PDF/2016-01-02_engin.pdf
  22. ↑ Leukefeld, Karin: "Again Dead in Daraa" Neues Deutschland online, accessed: April 11, 2011, 8:03 am
  23. ↑ KURDWATCH, April 8th, 2011
  24. ↑ Kurds declare an interim administration in Syria , report on www.reuters.com from November 12, 2013
  25. ↑ Sad winners. Die Zeit, March 22, 2014. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  26. ↑ Syria: End persecution of human rights defenders and human rights activists ( Memento of March 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Article of December 7, 2004 from amnestyusa.org
  27. ↑ World Report 2005 Syria report by HRW from 2005