The Kurdish Self-Rule Constitution in Syria

Abstract

1. On 21 July 2013, the Democratic Union Party (PYD, Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat) announced a new Kurdish Constitution of ninety-six articles based on a “social contract” proclaiming Kurdish Autonomous Regions composed of three cantons in a “decentralized federal” Syrian State. Its fundamental basis is the equality of groups and communities. The Rojava is “not a Kurdish State nor a Kurdish administration”, as observed by Evangelos Aretaios in The Rojava Revolution1 (hereinafter, Aretaios), but it is made up of all different ethnicities and religions that have a prominent role in the system of democracy. The people created institutions and organizations composing of obligatory equal quota of women and men of Kurds, Arabs, Christians, Yezidis, Armenians, and Chechens with the vision of a new different multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy. The fight for survival is in the front lines but the “ultimate fight for democracy is behind the front lines” (Aretaios, 118). 2. Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, people in Syrian Kurdistan have been fighting not only against Assad's regime forces but also other extremists. At the same time, they have been trying to establish a democratic government through the implementation of a model of hybrid political system; federalism and the “rejection of the nation-state structure” (ibid., 124). The denial of nation-state is a sign that the Kurds in Syria “don't want an independent State but an autonomy within a democratic Syria” (ibid., 104). This is a new regime in keeping with the principles advanced in modern international law and also was formed by the relevant people as a whole. The importance of the Rojava experiment is undeniable.