The Turkish government continues to pressure and threaten North and East Syria. Now they keep bringing up the 10 March Agreement, saying “the SDF is not complying with it.” They are trying to extract a reason for attack and war from the signed agreement. They have no criticism of HTS. As if the Damascus government had fulfilled all the terms of the agreement and only the SDF had not! The reality is the opposite. The Damascus government has not implemented a single condition of the agreement.
Society must be alert to these distortions
Society and democratic forces must carefully follow developments and be alert to such distortions. Before the 10 March Agreement was signed, there had been another meeting. In that first meeting, Ahmad Shara and his team said, “Let the SDF join the army individually.” Meaning, whoever wanted could lay down their weapon and go home, and whoever wanted could join the army. But the SDF Command rejected this, saying, “We will join the army but we will not dissolve our forces; we will remain in our regions and join the army system in that way.”
Although many issues were agreed upon in that first meeting, no deal was signed. At the March 10 meeting, Ahmad Shara did not even mention the idea of the SDF joining individually. On the contrary, it was agreed that committees would be formed to discuss the method of unification and integration and to reach a conclusion.
The points of the 10 March Agreement are known. It guaranteed that Kurds, as a fundamental component, would have their rights secured in the constitution, and that a ceasefire would be established across Syria. But after it was signed, the government set up by HTS drafted and announced an interim constitution. This constitution did not include any of the constitutional rights and guarantees for Kurds promised in the agreement. It was entirely unilateral, prepared according to the mindset of HTS. A temporary government was then formed. In none of these decisions or practices were the SDF, the Autonomous Administration, or other political forces considered or involved.
A unitary and extremely centralized system does not fit Syria’s reality
From the beginning, including during the Ba’ath era, the Autonomous Administration and the SDF have always demanded a democratic Syria. Based on the Ba’ath experience, they argued that a unitary and overly centralized system does not fit the reality of Syria. They are repeating the same demand now. Portraying the Autonomous Administration as a force seeking to divide Syria is nothing but malicious propaganda.
Turkey does not leave Syria to its own affairs. Yet Syrian forces should be allowed to resolve their own issues through dialogue. The system in Syria should not be decided in Ankara. But Ankara threatens the Autonomous Administration every day and interferes in Syria’s internal affairs. In fact, Ankara could play a constructive role by establishing good dialogue with all sides, bringing them closer, and contributing to democracy and reconciliation. But what it does is the opposite. Ankara threatens the SDF far more than HTS, saying: “Either you surrender, abandon your rights and demands, dissolve your protection forces, or we will turn your region into a nightmare.”
Turkey is dragging all of Syria into a dark tunnel
The purpose of the March 10 Agreement was reconciliation and rebuild Syria together. But now they are trying to reverse that purpose and make it a justification for conflict and war. Turkey is leading this. HTS has no democratic understanding of consensus or shared governance; in mentality it is opposed to democracy. It seeks to build a regime even more authoritarian and submissive than the Ba’ath. This is the reality of HTS. Yet, in the current balance of forces, HTS does not have the strength to do this on its own. The force that empowers and mobilizes it is Turkey. Therefore, the harm Turkey is doing is not limited to the Kurds and the Autonomous Administration; it is harming all of Syria and dragging the country into a dark tunnel.
Rojava, North and East Syria, has now become one of Turkey’s main agendas. The AKP, MHP, National Security Council, and government constantly discuss it in their meetings and issue statements about it. Yet Turkey has so many serious problems of its own waiting to be solved. If they spent as much energy and sensitivity on those issues, Turkey would already have overcome its crises. Hostility toward Rojava is a derivative and continuation of the Kurdish question. If Turkey solves the Kurdish question, there will be no Rojava problem. They say, “We will ensure Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood.” If that is true, then Kurds in Syria are also their brothers. If Turkey is serious about this, would it hand over its brothers to structures like HTS?
Shouldn’t Kurds and Turks question this? Will they have anything to say to those on Turkish television channels who incite war and prepare scenarios of catastrophe? When Kurds are massacred, will the Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood come to life?