Introduction

Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs Comments

The West’s Darling in Syria WP Seeking Support, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party Brandishes an Anti-Jihadist Image

Khaled Yacoub Oweis S

US bombings in 2015 repulsed Islamic State attacks on cities in mostly Kurdish self- rule regions called cantons in northern Syria. The three cantons, which border Turkey, are dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). The party is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a former client of the Syrian regime and considered a “terrorist” group by the United States, the European Union, and Turkey. At the risk of deepening an Arab Sunni backlash that has fanned radicalization, Washington is set ever more on the prospect of the PYD retaking mostly Arab territory captured by the Islamic State. In line with German reluctance to arm warring sides, Berlin has refrained from giving military aid to the PYD, which is accused of carrying out war crimes. Still, an international effort to rebuild the cantons tied to breaking the PYD’s monopoly on them could help stabilize the area – even more so if Turkey could be brought on board.

The Kurds have scored some of the biggest PYD is not calling for outright secession. Its territorial gains in Syria since the outbreak declaration of self-rule and accompanying of revolt against Assad family rule in 2011. “social contract” mix Marxist jargon and a Cooperation with the Assad regime and vague form of popular democracy. The docu- backing from the United States against the ments also emphasize rights for women so-called Islamic State have strengthened and minorities. Underneath the rhetoric, Kurdish militias affiliated with the PYD. power rests with the PYD/YPG and their Advancing into a multi-faceted ethnic and parent organization, the Kurdistan Workers’ tribal landscape, the so-called People’s Pro- Party, whose military command is based in tection Units (YPG) captured Kurdish-major- the Kandil Mountains of Iraq. Senior politi- ity regions near Turkey and Iraq but also cal figures linked to the PKK are also based areas with a significant Arab population. in Turkey. In defiance of Turkey, the PYD set up three In Syria, Kurds constitute around 10 per- self-ruled cantons in 2014 comprising cent of the population, compared with 15 around one-fifth of Syria under the um- percent in Iraq. Apart from Syria’s north, a brella name of “Rojava Self-Ruled Demo- large Kurdish concentration also exists in cratic Administration, Syria” (in Kurdish, Damascus, but many have left – mainly to Rojava means “Western Kurdistan”). The Turkey and Iraq – because of a worsening

Khaled Yacoub Oweis is a fellow in the project “The fragmentation of Syria” realized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) SWP Comments 47 and funded by the German Foreign Office. October 2015

1 economy since the revolt. Not many headed Barzani has thus been left as the main to the cantons. Bombings and incursions by outside player dominating Syria’s Kurdish jihadists into Kurdish areas, as well as forced players, along with the PKK. recruitment into the YPG, which drove thou- sands of youth to flee the cantons, have limited the region’s appeal. Divide and rule During Hafez al-Assad’s rule (1970–2000), the authorities moved thousands of Arab Kurdish politics in Syria tribespeople from Raqqa governorate into The fall of the Ottoman Empire and its a Kurdish-populated area north of Hasakah division by Western powers (1916–1920) city, the provincial capital. The tribesmen deepened ethnic and religious conflicts came from areas slotted to be submerged across the Middle East. Turkish repression in plans for a hydro-electric dam on the drove waves of mainly Christian and Kurd- Euphrates River. Known as the al-Ghamar ish refugees into Syria during and after the Arabs (the Arabs of the flood), they became First World War (1914–1918). The refugees among the staunchest supporters of Assad crossed mostly into Hasakah province, an family rule. The population transfer, which ethnically-mixed area in Syria where the occurred in the 1970s, was typical of the Khabour River, a tributary of the Euphrates, divide-and-rule tactics that have been key to provided water for agriculture. Oil was later keeping Syria in the Assad family’s grip. discovered, raising the economic signifi- A new wave of Kurdish refugees crossed cance of the region, which also borders into Syria to escape Turkish bombardment Iraq. Bowing to a rising current of Arab and the razing of their villages after the chauvinism, in 1962 the Syrian government PKK had launched guerilla warfare against conducted a census that denied citizenship Turkey in 1984. Within the Kurdish com- to 120,000 Kurds living in Hasakah and munity in Turkey, the PKK dealt brutally kept them and their descendents outside with dissent, for example killing teachers mainstream society. who taught Turkish-language curricula. Ending their disenfranchisement became In Syria, the regime allowed the refugees a main demand for Kurdish political par- in but extracted a price. Mohammad Man- ties, the first of which, the Kurdish Demo- soura, a security lieutenant of Assad, is cratic Party in Syria (KDPS), was set up in thought to have made fortunes in the 1980s the 1950s. Known as “Al-Party,” the KDPS and 1990s by running protection rackets was an affiliate of the Kurdish Democratic and taking bribes from Kurdish refugees for Party (KDP) of northern Iraq. The KDP was letting them in. Demographically, the new founded by Mustafa Barzani in 1946, and influx altered the composition of Syria’s later headed by his son Masoud. The Al-Par- northeast and contributed to thousands of ty spawned numerous Kurdish parties in Christian families in Hasakah, who were Syria that mostly deferred to the Barzani better off on average, migrating to the inte- clan or to Jalal Talabani, who became Iraq’s rior of Syria or abroad. Many were driven first president after the US-led invasion that away by what they regarded as pro-Kurdish toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. Talabani bias by the regime, which resulted in Kurd- founded his Patriotic Union of Iraq (PUK) ish seizure of their land and unfair com- party in the 1970s in Damascus and petition for resources. had good ties with Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, which helped keep the Kurdish political movement in Syria largely docile. Turkey, Syria, and the Kurds Talabani’s influence over Kurdish politics Assad, the father, whose government was lessened in the last decade because of his embroiled in water and territorial disputes ill health and defections from the PUK. with Ankara, supported the PKK in its war

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2 in Turkey. Similar to Hafez al-Assad’s Baath Muslim, was arrested briefly in 2010 and Party, the PKK revolved around the person- then left Syria for Kandil. But the Assad ality cult of its founder, Abdullah Öcalan, regime kept lines of communications open and dissent was met with violence. In the with the PYD, which Turkey did not mind, 1980s and 1990s, Öcalan lived in Syria and as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sought to improve used Syria and areas in Lebanon’s Bekaa ties with his own country’s Kurds. Valley under Syrian control as military and One unintended consequence of the im- propaganda bases. provement in Syrian-Turkish relations was Content that the PKK had fallen under related to Turkey scrapping visa require- the orbit of the Syrian regime, Hafez al-Assad ments for Syrian nationals. Kurds in Syria did little to improve the mass lot of Syria’s were able to travel and see their relatives Kurdish population. The elder Assad upheld in Turkey, often for the first time, which the 1962 census and pursued an “Arabiza- helped rekindle ties between Kurds in the tion” policy that deepened bans on Kurdish two countries. It also became easier for the language and culture, including celebrat- people in northern Syria to buy Turkish ing the Nowruz festival. mobile phone lines and escape the eaves- dropping of the Assad secret police. Un- monitored cell phones became instrumen- Political wind turns against PKK tal in organizing protests. Under the threat of a Turkish invasion in 1998, Hafez al-Assad expelled Öcalan and submitted to Turkish demands dictated to Kurdish uprising and aftermath Syrian officials at a meeting in the Turkish A crackdown on the Kurdish movement city of Adana to stop supporting the PKK. across the board followed a grassroots Kurd- The Adana agreement also forced the Syrian ish uprising in 2004, which was crushed government to designate the PKK as a ter- after Assad’s forces killed 30 civilians. Provo- rorist organization – the same official desig- cation by Assad loyalists of Kurdish spec- nation of the PKK in Turkey, Europe, and tators at a football match in Qamishli the United States. The PKK tried to deflect apparently triggered the riots. It brought pressure in the following years by establish- to the surface Kurdish frustration about dis- ing sister organizations in Iran, Turkey, and enfranchisement, poverty, and the regime’s Syria (the PYD). By then, Bashar al-Assad readiness to sacrifice the Kurds for better had inherited power. The younger Assad relations with Turkey. But the PYD and tra- tolerated the PYD when it was set up in ditional Kurdish parties coordinated with 2003, although Syrian authorities had the Assad regime to calm the Kurdish street started handing over former PKK guerrillas in return for promises to resolve the issue to Turkey as part of newly-found security of disenfranchisement arising from the cooperation with Ankara. 1962 census. Meanwhile, the Kurds’ lot worsened Assad kept ignoring the issue till 2011. from a water crisis. State corruption con- But the iron fist of the regime did not stem tributed to the destruction of the water the rise of a new generation of activists table from illegal wells in Hasakah and frustrated at the failure of the PYD and of eastern Syria. Migration of Arabs and Kurds the Syrian Kurdish establishment to capi- rose after 2004 into what became shanty talize on the uprising. Among them was towns around Damascus and Aleppo. Masoud Akko, a journalist who was instru- With Syrian-Turkish ties peaking be- mental in documenting the repression of tween 2007 and 2010, a closed security the Kurds during the uprising and after- court in Damascus sentenced dozens of ward. Akko and other young activists ad- PKK guerillas to long prison sentences on mired Mashaal Tammo, a Kurdish leader terrorism charges. The PYD head, Saleh who established the Kurdish Future Move-

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3 ment in Syria in 2005 as an alternative to failed to pacify Syria’s Arab Sunnis. The the traditional parties. Tammo cooperated Kurds received a different treatment. Assad with Arab dissidents and was a more open restored most Kurdish rights lost as a result Kurd in this regard. He also appealed to of the 1962 census. The regime also helped young people and paid little heed to power arm the PYD by leaving the group weapons centers in Iraqi Kurdistan. Among more in the northeast. On the broader ethnic religious Kurds, Mohammed Ma’shouq map, the PYD joined a de facto alliance of al-Khaznawi, an independent Soufi imam, armed minority groups that has been cru- built up a following through sermons criti- cial to strengthening Assad’s position in the cal of the authorities. But Khaznawi was civil war. The alliance – comprised of Kurd- assassinated in the city of Qamishli in 2005. ish, Alawite, Shi’ite, and Christian militias Riad Drar, a moderate Syrian Arab sheikh – also helped Assad repulse rebels in the and a respected scholar, was arrested for center of Syria and the Mediterranean coast, eulogizing Khaznawi at the funeral and as well as maintain control over pockets in showing solidarity with the Kurdish cause. outlying regions bordering areas in what Drar then spent five years in jail. became the Kurdish cantons. The regime also sentenced Tammo in Placating the Kurds started in April 2011 2009 to three and a half years in jail for with rescinding the 1962 census. As a result, “weakening national sentiment.” The audi- thousands of Kurdish former “non-persons” ence in a Damascus courtroom shouted received official papers. The restoration fos- “Tammo, Tammo” once the verdict was tered a line advocated by the PYD and most read. This was unheard of in Syria, where traditional Kurdish parties to keep the the only public chants were to exalt Assad demands of the protests in Kurdish areas or his father in choreographed rallies. modest while pursuing concessions for Kurds. This pitted the PYD and traditional parties against Tammo, who saw Kurdish The Kurds and the Syrian revolt demands as being inseparable from the Weeks after the outbreak of the Syrian demands for regime change of the wider revolt in 2011, the Assad regime moved to protest movement. strengthen its former PKK clients. The sup- Tammo was released from jail in June port for the PYD rekindled Turkish fears 2011, shortly before his sentence expired. of a Kurdish state, although it primarily Weeks later he joined Arab opposition fig- appeared to be meant to undermine the ures in preparing a meeting in the Qaboun nonviolent core of the revolt and build up district of Damascus to plan a political militia that could be allied to Assad from transition. The organizers included veteran the country’s minorities. By the middle of dissident Walid al-Bunni, a physician and 2011, dozens of former PKK operatives had former political prisoner from the town of been released from prison. The Assad regime Tel, near Damascus, and economist Aref also set free senior jihadists, many of whom Dalila, another former political prisoner had returned from Iraq and were then from Assad’s Alawite sect. But the dissi- jailed (for details, see Oweis, SWP Comments dents were forced to cancel the conference 39/2015). Despite misgivings about their two days before it was due to convene when jihadist ideology, many in the opposition Assad’s forces killed 14 demonstrators in came to regard the jihadists as the bulwark Qaboun. Despite warnings by the PYD to against perceived Kurdish expansionism stop aligning with the goals of the wider at the expense of Arab Sunnis battered by revolt, Tammo kept up his calls for the Assad’s carpet bombardment. Kurds not to isolate themselves and joined In the first year of the revolt, paper the Syrian National Council (SNC), the reforms – combined with a deepening largest grouping of the then peaceful oppo- crackdown on the pro-democracy protests – sition. But Tammo, who advocated non-

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4 violence, was no match for the PYD as secu- Kidnappings and deaths in detention by rity branches began letting in hundreds of the PYD have also been documented. In one PKK militia based in Kandil into Hasakah case in early 2015, Suhail al-Nisr, a German- beginning in April 2011. Saleh Muslim also educated Syrian-Arab surgeon from Aleppo, returned from Kandil the same month and was kidnapped in Afrin, despite the fact that became the public face of the group. On the he treats Kurdish patients in the region. military side, power remained with PKK Nisr was released after paying a US$50,000 commanders from Kandil, while the rank- ransom. He said he had spent his two-week and-file included many poor Kurds recruited captivity among YPG militiamen in a house over decades from northern Syria, trained adorned with PYD insignia. In total, the in northern Iraq, and sent to serve in the YPG are suspected of killing at least 30 YPG after the beginning of the revolt. Kurds opposed to the PYD since 2011.

PYD critics silenced Arab-Kurdish tensions The PKK militia’s new local recruits, in- Tammo’s assassination in October 2011 cluding women, helped the PYD act as dealt a fatal blow to the “third way” of enforcers for Assad. Gunmen suspected of Kurdish politics in Syria, throwing the links to the PYD began assaulting protest Future Movement into disarray and deepen- leaders, but Tammo was unperturbed, pre- ing splits between the Kurds and the SNC. dicting in October 2011 that the Assad The acrimony continued when the National regime would soon use its allies to assas- Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Oppo- sinate non-violent activists. Days later, sition Forces (the Coalition) was set up in Tammo was killed when gunmen stormed Qatar in November 2012 as a replacement a house he was at in Qamishli. An aide, of the SNC. The Coalition has seen heated Zahida Rashkilo, survived and was smuggled debates on the Kurdish issue. Kurdish mem- for treatment in Germany. Other figures bers, who number 17 out of 117, have been in the Future Movement also fled PYD per- frustrated. They point to what they regard secution to Germany. as the Coalition’s failure to shed the legacy Following Tammo’s assassination, a string of Arab nationalism and cultivate non- of activists who publicly opposed the PYD Arabs wary of Assad but fearful of a jihadist were beaten, killed, or disappeared, with alternative. the PYD always denying responsibility. For The Kurdish-Arab divide widened after example, Radeef Mustafa, a prominent the Islamic State killed at least 220 civilians human rights lawyer and an ally of Tammo, in an incursion into Kobanê in June 2015. was forced to flee his hometown of Kobanê International and Syrian human rights to Turkey after receiving PYD threats in organizations have documented what they 2011. His son was subsequently beaten in said were war crimes and ethnic cleansing the town. In January 2012, three brothers of Arabs by the YPG after it captured areas of the Badro family – a prominent clan that in the cantons. At the same time, YPG mili- had fallen afoul of the PYD – were killed tia had refused to let an investigation team in Qamishli after their father repulsed an from the Coalition cross into the Kobanê apparent YPG incursion into their home canton to see villages and neighborhoods and killed a YPG gunman. Also, dozens of from which the Arab population had fled activists were killed or disappeared in PYD- following the PYD’s capture of the border controlled territory in Hasakah and Afrin town of Tel al-Abyad. The ethnic tension between 2012 and 2015, such as Ahmad threatens to derail truces between Kurdish Farman Bunjuq, who was killed in a drive- and rebel neighborhoods in Aleppo, and by shooting in Qamishli, and Bahzed between the town of Atmeh on the border Dorsen, the KDPS head in Malikiya. with Turkey and the town of Jindairis in

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5 the Afrin district, where the YPG has been to most Kurds. On the ground, the PYD has building fortifications and sniper towers. pursued self-rule, helping set the stage for armed conflict with Arab tribes south of Hasakah, as opposed to the al-Ghamar Arabs PYD consolidates power and other tribes north of Hasakah who Days after Tammo was killed, Barzani super- stayed with the regime and became allied vised in the Iraqi city of Erbil the creation with the PYD. of the Kurdish National Council in Syria (KNC), a grouping of 11 traditional parties that joined the opposition Coalition in Turkish opposition to cantons 2013. On paper, the KNC formed with the As a result of a de facto territorial handover PYD a body called the Kurdish Supreme by the Assad regime, the PYD declared self- Council. But the Supreme Council did not rule in the cantons in January 2014. Of the become an effective coordination body, three cantons, the so-called Jazeera canton and Kurdish politics remained broadly split in the northeastern governorate of Hasakah between the PKK and its PYD offshoot on is the largest, containing Syria’s wheat res- one side, and Barzani and his protégés in ervoir and some of the country’s biggest oil the KNC on the other. On the military side, fields (Syria’s total oil production before the the Barzani camp has trained hundreds of revolt was 300,000–370,000 barrels per day). Syrian Kurds, raising the specter of inter- In the northwest, the Afrin canton near Kurdish divisions turning into an armed Aleppo is among Syria’s most fertile regions, conflagration. But the jihadist threat against whereas the Kobanê canton is situated Kurds in Syria and Iraq has helped keep a between the other two. In an apparent deal semblance of Kurdish unity. Still, in 2012, with the PYD, Assad’s security operatives eight Kurdish officers who had earlier have remained in Hasakah, accessing a defected from Assad’s army disappeared in large secret police compound in the center the PYD-controlled town of Malikiya near of the city through YPG roadblocks. About the Tigris River, which constitutes the 30 intelligence operatives also remained in border between Syria and Iraq. The officers Kobanê, until an attack on the town by the were traveling to Iraqi Kurdistan to meet Islamic State in 2014 forced them to flee. In KDP officials. Their families accused the Aleppo governorate, Afrin has served as a YPG of kidnapping them. A few months supply conduit to a pro-Assad Shi’ite militia before, the officers had formed a grouping base in the nearby towns of Nubbul and called the Kurdish Military Council as a Zahra. US intervention eventually allowed counterweight to the YPG, and sought to the PYD to join the two cantons of Hasakah cooperate with Free Syrian Army (FSA) bri- and Kobanê. The intervention started with gades in Aleppo. support for the Kurdish Peshmerga forces The PYD on the other hand had joined as well as the bombings by the United States the National Coordination Body for Demo- of Islamic State targets in Iraq in June 2014 cratic Change (NCB), a grouping allowed as the Islamic State declared a Caliphate in by the authorities to operate in Damascus. Iraq and Syria. Air raids were extended to Considered “patriotic opposition” by the jihadist targets in Syria in September 2014. Assad regime, the NCB does not call for the The YPG’s gains were curtailed in July removal of Assad. In a measure of the PYD’s 2015 when Ankara abandoned the peace flexibility, Saleh Muslim signed the found- process with the PKK and launched an ing charter of the NCB, which calls for a offensive against the PKK in Turkey and democratic solution to the Kurdish ques- northern Iraq following the killing of four tion in a way that does not contradict what Turkish police (for details, see Seufert, SWP the charter terms as the “inseparability of Comments 38/2015). By hitting the PKK, Tur- Syria from the Arab World” – an anathema key sent a strong signal to the PYD to stop

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6 expanding west of Kobanê. Taking heed Also, representatives of minorities such of the Turkish strikes, the PYD apparently as Sunni Arab and Christian figures have abandoned a drive to cross the Euphrates been installed in the cantons’ administra- and link the Kobanê canton to Afrin. The tion, as well as staunchly pro-Assad tribal expansion would have involved capturing figures such as Humeidi Daham al-Jarba a strip 95–105 km wide that separates Afrin from Hasakah. But tensions between Kurds and Kobanê. The strip, which is inhabited and Christians in Hasakah persist. In Sep- mainly by Arab and Turkmen, has been tember 2015, a self-declared legislative divided between Islamist-leaning FSA bri- council in Hasakah decreed a law putting gades allied with Turkey on the one side the property of absentee owners under the and the Islamic State on the other. jurisdiction of the administration of the In the course of 2015, Ankara talked canton in Hasakah, despite the objections with the United States about turning this of Christian members of the council. The strip into a safe zone and a potential base action, which had the declared aim of pro- for a provisional Syrian government. The tecting the properties, raised fears of an- Syrian Interim Government currently oper- other Kurdish grab of Christian property in ates from the Turkish city of Gaziantep and northeastern Syria. counts Germany among its biggest sup- porters. With the zone, Ankara aimed to contain the PYD and keep the Afrin canton Conclusions and recommendations partially isolated and dependent on Turkey. US support in the context of the fight But the safe-zone proposal quickly fizzled against the Islamic State has enabled the out, with Washington and Turkey failing to PYD to thumb its nose at Turkey and pursue reconcile their priorities in Syria. The Rus- territorial claims, as well as maintain its sian air campaign, which started in Septem- alliance with Assad. Washington is now ber 2015, has practically finished off the also counting on the PYD to retake the pro- safe-zone idea. vincial capital of Raqqa, a majority Arab city on the Euphrates that fell to the Islam- ic State in early 2014. But the PYD’s expan- Token democracy sion seems to have fueled Arab tribal sup- In the cantons, the PYD has advertised its port for jihadists. It has also complicated version of local government as a model. chances of finding a solution to the civil It has mandated equal representation for war, in which the main victims have been women in municipal councils and legis- Arab Sunnis bombarded by Assad’s forces. lative bodies, yet with little real political Germany has responded to PYD requests power. At the same time, the PYD has main- for help by initiating plans for the de-min- tained its cult-like ideology, which appears ing and rebuilding of Kobanê while main- to leave little room for any serious oppo- taining a policy of non-lethal aid. Yet, such sition. In September 2015, a branch of the support would involve significant supplies Yekiti (unity) Party, led by dissident Habib and logistics and therefore need the cooper- Ibrahim, broke ranks with the PYD’s politi- ation of Turkey. With an eye on its restive cal opponents and fielded candidates for Kurdish population, Ankara has been nerv- municipal elections in the Afrin canton. ous about an expansion of the PYD-run can- Pro-PYD candidates ended up being awarded tons in Syria. The Turkish government has all the seats. On the military side, the YPG also shown little interest in defusing ten- promoted women to more influential roles sions with the PKK ahead of general elec- as commanders, in line with a PKK tradi- tions in November 2015 after Erdoğan’s tion that has helped the group project a supporters failed to secure a majority in ear- “progressive” image and garner support, lier polls. The Kurdish issue, among other particularly among European leftists. geopolitical calculations, has prompted

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7 Turkish support for jihadist and other rebel relevant Syrian forces. The talks could be brigades in Syria. The support has been part- also a way to cajole the PYD into working ly meant to prevent the PYD from capturing with the rest of the Kurdish body politic, the proposed safe-zone area and thus link for example by achieving a unified Kurdish the three cantons. vision for the north and a transitional The Turkish offensive against the PKK administration in Damascus. has made Ankara more confident that the Despite PYD appeals aimed at drumming PYD will not risk Turkish military wrath up German support, it would be a mistake by expanding westwards to join the three for Berlin to toe the US line and support the cantons. Lessened Turkish fears about an PYD/YPG in the fight against the Islamic expansionist PYD could open the way to State beyond the Kurdish areas. The PYD bring Turkey into a reconstruction effort has not only silenced other Kurdish voices, that would give Ankara a say in shaping the it has also been accused of ethnic cleansing cantons and improve its relations with the in villages and towns inhabited mainly by

© Stiftung Wissenschaft und PYD. Leaving a political door open for such Arabs, and it maintains cooperation with Politik, 2015 a possibility, Ankara has distinguished the Assad regime. Too strong a support will All rights reserved between the PKK and the PYD, receiving also further antagonize Turkey as well as These Comments reflect PYD cadres and keeping more channels rebel formations. A sustainable solution to the author’s views. open with the PYD, partly in the hope of end the bloodletting can come about only SWP splitting the two groups. Another com- through internationally-backed compro- Stiftung Wissenschaft und plaint that Ankara has had about the PYD mise between all groups prepared to work Politik German Institute for has been the PYD’s cooperation with Assad, for a pluralist country. International and but this has lessened since Turkey softened Security Affairs its calls in September 2015 for Assad to Ludwigkirchplatz 3­4 leave power. Turkey thus could be drawn 10719 Berlin into an international effort to stabilize the Telephone +49 30 880 07-0 Fax +49 30 880 07-100 cantons through aid linked to progress on www.swp-berlin.org curbing brutality and lawlessness in the [email protected] cantons, as well as a more democratic self- ISSN 1861-1761 rule. In this context, Germany should ask for safe and free access for Kurdish dissi- dents and the wider opposition to the can- tons. Berlin should also recommend deploy- ing independent observers once elections in PYD territory comply with international norms, rather than being rubberstamp affairs. Turkish participation in a high-profile project to help the Kurds in Syria could also take away the sting of criticism that the West is ganging up on Syria’s Arab Sunnis and promoting the country’s minorities. Many in the mainstream Syrian opposition already regard Western pressure to agree to renewed UN efforts to solve the conflict as a ploy to keep Assad and his allies among Syria’s minorities in power. In the inter- national arena, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura plans to convene working groups in Geneva starting in October 2015 to bring together

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