Abstract
The instability of the Syrian Civil War has enabled Kurdish political and military actors to take control of parts of northern Syria, marking the emergence of the nascent political entity of Kurdistana Rojava (West Kurdistan).1 This de facto autonomous Kurdish zone has developed politically, administratively, and militarily to the point that in November 2013 the largest Kurdish party there felt able to declare a transitional administration. Western Kurdistan was previously a vague concept rarely used by most Kurds, and this new political structure is fragile and underdeveloped. Nevertheless, it has become an important feature of the Syrian and Middle Eastern geopolitical landscape, and its future, and that of the wider Kurdish population of Syria, is a key factor in the future of the war-torn country.
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Notes
For more detailed and excellent analyses of developments in Kurdish politics during the uprising and war, see Harriet Allsopp, “The Kurdish Autonomy Bid in Syria: Challenges and Reactions,” and Eva Savelsberg and Jordi Tejel, “The Syrian Kurds in ‘Transition to Somewhere,” both in Michael Gunter and Mohammed Ahmed (eds.) The Kurdish Spring: Geopolitical Changes and the Kurds (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2013);
and Michael Gunter, Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War (London: Hurst, 2013).
Saleh Muslim Mohamed, the co-president of the PYD, argues that the revolution began in 2004, not 2011. Interview with author, London, December 3, 2012. For analysis of the 2004 uprising, see Jordi Tejel, Syria’s Kurds: History, Politics and Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009);
Robert Lowe, “The Serhildan and the Kurdish National Story in Syria,” in Robert Lowe and Gareth Stansfield (eds.) The Kurdish Policy Imperative (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2010);
and Julie Gauthier, “Les événements de Qamichlo: Irruption de la Question kurde en Syrie?” Etudes kurdes 7 (2005), pp. 97–114.
There were approximately 20 parties at the time of writing: the number fluctuates regularly owing to splits and coalitions. For further analysis of the parties, see Who Is the Syrian-Kurdish Opposition? The Development of Kurdish Parties, 1956–2011 (Berlin: Kurdwatch, 2011) and Harriet Montgomery, The Kurds of Syria: An Existence Denied (Berlin: Europäisches Zentrum für Kurdische Studien, 2005).
Abdullah Öcalan, Democratic Confederalism (London: Transmedia, 2011)
and Joost Jongerden and Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya, “Democratic Confederalism as a Kurdish Spring: The PKK and the Quest for Radical Democracy,” in Michael Gunter and Mohammed Ahmed (eds.) The Kurdish Spring: Geopolitical Changes and the Kurds (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2013), pp. 163–185.
See Stefan Wolff, “The Relationships between States and Non-State Peoples: A Comparative View of the Kurds in Iraq,” in Robert Lowe and Gareth Stansfield (eds.) The Kurdish Policy Imperative (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2010).
The areas regarded as “Kurdish” have significant and long-established non-Kurdish communities. For example, Qamishli was predominantly Syriac Christian in the early twentieth century. Seda Altuğ, Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: Community, Land and Violence in the Memories of World War I and the French Mandate (1915–1939), PhD thesis, Utrecht University, 2011.
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© 2014 David Romano and Mehmet Gurses
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Lowe, R. (2014). The Emergence of Western Kurdistan and the Future of Syria. In: Romano, D., Gurses, M. (eds) Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137409997_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137409997_12
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