JD

I think we should make the distinction between socialism from below and popular-class organizations. Obviously, the long-term absence of the latter was a weakness in the Syrian uprising.

But there was collective organization from below — the Local Coordination Committees, and subsequently, the Local Councils were able to challenge state domination. In summer 2012, they were at the doors of Damascus, with large areas of the country outside of regime control. In terms of the Syrian revolution, they were radical. It meant the state had disappeared from a certain area, so you had a kind of attempt at dual power.

The vast majority promoted a democratic, nonsectarian discourse. Some also conveyed a socioeconomic appeal. Because of the socio-geographic makeup of the uprising, socioeconomic issues were raised, as was corruption, even if it was not at the center of things.

When it comes to the Kurdish issue, unfortunately, there is a long tradition among various sections of the Syrian opposition — and even some leftists — refusing Kurdish self-determination. Ten to 15 percent of the population is Kurdish, mostly in the northeast. But even there, they are a narrow majority, and over half the Kurds were in Aleppo and in Damascus. So they were not interested in separating off as an independent state, but rather a federal system, decentralization, more recognition of Kurdish national rights, the removal of “Arab” in the “Syrian Arab Republic,” etc. — something, incidentally, that was refused by the wider opposition, at the first conference in the summer of 2011, and which showed the limitations of the traditional political opposition.

From the beginning of 2012, Kurdish coordination committees increasingly raised their own demands, but from the outset they were completely rejected by the official opposition. Anyone raising Kurdish national demands was accused of separatism.

But to say it was definitely going to happen this way . . . I think there were possibilities, especially from the collective organizations from below, and there were experiences of co-organization in Aleppo, in mixed cities, and also in Qamishli, where you had Assyrian, Kurdish, and Arab coordination committees working together, raising their common demands in each of the languages.

It was really the opposition in exile, with its historical Arab-nationalist approach, that refused Kurdish national rights. This refusal was supported by foreign actors, especially Turkey, which saw the PYD presence at its borders as the biggest threat, which is why it opened the doors to Islamic fundamentalist organizations to attack the Kurds.