ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The controversial municipal elections in northeast Syria (Rojava) are the “legitimate right” of the people and must be held despite staunch opposition from neighboring Turkey and the Syrian regime in Damascus, a Rojava official said on Wednesday.
Rojava is set to hold municipal elections in August. The planned vote has been heavily criticized by Turkey, who has threatened to carry out another military operation against Kurdish forces if the elections are held. The United States has also called on Rojava authorities to not proceed with the vote, citing a lack of fair and free conditions.
The vote was previously scheduled for June 11, but the Kurdish-led administration in Rojava postponed the vote on Thursday.
“In response to the demands of the political parties and alliances participating in the electoral process, and in order to implement the electoral process in a democratic manner, the High Election Commission decided to postpone the date of the elections,” said a statement from the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES).
The administration explained that the delay was due to demands by political parties to provide them additional time to campaign. It said that the delay will also “give a sufficient period of time to address international organizations” to monitor the electoral process.
“The elections are a legitimate right of the people of Rojava and other areas under the control of the [Kurdish-led] Autonomous Administration. The Turkish state and the regime are against the elections, which is an oppression of the people of this region and the communities in the region,” Salih Gado, secretary-general of the Kurdish Democratic Left Party in Syria, told Rudaw’s Dilbixwin Dara in a debate.
He criticized the “weak position of Kurdish-friendly countries such as the US, France, and several European countries,” saying that the Kurdish-led administration in Rojava and the electoral commission will convene to discuss if they will proceed with the vote.
Adnan Bozan, a member of the central committee of the Kurdistan Union Party who is boycotting the elections, criticized the vote and slammed Rojava’s ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) for refusing to recognize other political entities in the region to pave the way for fair and free elections.
“There is also no political agreement regarding the mechanism of the elections. What exists is what the PYD forcefully imposed on the people,” Bozan stressed.
“Why does it matter whether elections are held or not? Who should the people vote for? Should they vote for those who are starving them now,” he asked. “The elections have no political legitimacy.”
The lack of regional support for the polls, as well as no political agreement, greatly jeopardizes the legitimacy of the elections, according to Bozan.
Gado rejected Bozan’s criticism, stressing that Kurdish forces in Rojava “gave 15,000 martyrs and 20,000 wounded” to liberate the region from Islamic State (ISIS) brutality and that 27 political parties are participating in the vote, representing all of Rojava’s components.
Mahmoud Mohammed, a PYD representative, defended the polls and said that the municipalities are “an important place to serve the people in a council without interference” and that his party was fully on board with the elections until a Washington statement complicated the process.
“We decided to participate in the elections, but now there has been a change. At first, the Turkish and Syrian governments made threats, but we said they were normal because both regimes had made threats since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, but now there has been a change with the statement of the US State Department spokesperson,” he said.
On Friday, the US called on Kurdish authorities in Rojava not to proceed with the planned elections, with State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel saying “we do not think that the conditions for such elections are in place in northeast Syria at the present time.”
The US embassy in Syria later confirmed that they had urged the Kurdish-led administration in Rojava not to carry out the vote.
Mohammed lamented that Washington’s statement gives a “green light” to Ankara to continue carrying out military strikes against Rojava.
“We see this as a green light for [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan to shell our areas again and resume his drone attacks on election day,” he stressed.
The PYD is the political wing of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) - the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who territorially defeated ISIS in Syria in 2019 after five years of fierce fighting.
It is seen by Turkey as the Syrian front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish group that has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state for decades in the struggle for greater Kurdish rights and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara.
Last week, Erdogan said that Ankara “is closely following the aggressive actions by the terrorist organization against the territorial integrity of our country and of Syria under the pretext of an election.”
“Turkey will never allow the separatist organization to establish (a terror state) just beyond its southern borders in the north of Syria and Iraq,” he added.
A member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Syria (PDK-S), part of the Kurdish National Council (ENKS/KNC), said that the elections would have had much greater legitimacy if a political agreement had been reached in previous years between the PYD and the ENKS.
The ENKS is a member of the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition and takes part in most of the international meetings on the future of Syria. It does not recognize the Kurdish administration and has accused it of targeting its offices and members. At least ten ENKS offices have come under attack in Rojava since March, and the assaults have been condemned by Washington.
Rojava authorities and PYD officials accuse the ENKS of betrayal due to its close ties with Ankara.
“PYD has been tested since 2012. We as the Kurdistan Democratic Party–Syria are never afraid of transparent elections, but we will boycott these elections because they have not been decided on a legal basis. Our people and the ENKS are not involved in it and they [PYD] do not want to cooperate,” said Mohammed Ali, a member of the PDK-S central committee.
Ali stressed that they do not want to participate in the elections and give legitimacy to the Rojava administration “while several of our members are in prison.”
Meanwhile, Gado addressed rumors that Rojava citizens had been threatened with having their basic goods cut if they decided not to participate in the vote.
“This is propaganda,” he stressed.
“It is shameful to talk about this and it has no basis. These statements do not serve unity in any way,” Gado said about the rumors.
About three million people are eligible to vote in the municipal elections scheduled for August in Rojava and other areas under the control of the Autonomous Administration, including Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor provinces.
A total of 27 parties and 5,336 candidates are contesting the elections, while the electoral commission has opened nearly 2,000 polling stations across the region.
