Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria declared a federal system on on March 17, a move further complicated ongoing peace talks aimed at ending more than five years of war.
Kurds, after being excluded from the talks in Geneva, appeared to be taking matters into their own hands by drawing up plans to combine three Kurdish-led areas of northern Syrian into a federal arrangement.
The three areas already have de facto autonomy and while it was unclear what the new system would entail, there was no indication it would involve a separation from Syria.
The new arrangement, which a conference in the Kurdish-controlled town of Rmeilan agreed, has alarmed neighbouring Turkey, which fears growing Kurdish sway in Syria is fuelling separatism among its own minority Kurds.
“Syria’s national unity and territorial integrity is fundamental for us. Outside of this, unilateral decisions cannot have validity,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official said.
The US said it opposed Syrian Kurds forming an autonomous region in northern Syria, but could accept such an arrangement if the Syrians collectively agreed on it.
The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia have been an important ally in the US-led military campaign against Dae’sh in Syria, and this has been a point of friction between the US and its Nato ally Turkey.
However, Bashar Ja’afari, head of the Syrian delegation in Geneva, rejected any talk of a federal model for Syria.
The Geneva talks are part of a diplomatic push launched with U.S. and Russian support to end a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis, and allowed for the rise of Dae’sh.
The moves in Rmeilan, which was discussing a “Democratic Federal System for Rojava - Northern Syria”, further complicated hopes of progress in Geneva. Rojava is the Kurdish name for northern Syria.
Syrian Kurds effectively control an uninterrupted stretch of 400km along the Syrian-Turkish border from the Euphrates River to the frontier with Iraq, where Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed autonomy since the early 1990s. They also hold a separate section of the northwestern border in the Afrin area.