Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria are expected to declare a federal system on Wednesday, a Syrian Kurdish official said, taking matters into their own hands after being excluded so far from political talks to resolve the Syrian war.
A conference underway in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria on Wednesday aims to approve a "Federal Democratic" system of government for the area and envisions the failure of UN-led peace talks in Geneva, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The step that will combine three Kurdish-led autonomous areas of northern Syrian into a federal system will be sure to alarm neighbouring Turkey, which fears growing Kurdish sway in Syria is fueling separatism among its own Kurdish minority.
Turkey supports Syria's national unity and unilateral moves such as declaring a federation cannot be valid, a foreign ministry official told Reuters.
The Turkish official said the form of government and administrative structure of Syria will be decided by all sections of the Syrian people with a new constitution.
The announcement would mean "widening the framework of self-administration which the Kurds and others have formed," said Idris Nassan, an official in the foreign affairs directorate of Kobani, one of three autonomous areas set up by Kurdish groups two years ago.
He told Reuters the areas would be named the Federation of northern Syria, and represent all ethnic groups living there.
The system envisions "areas of democratic self-administration" that will manage their own economic, security and defense affairs, according to the document drafted by a committee in preparation for the meeting.
Aldar Khalil, a Syrian Kurdish official and one of the organizers of the conference in the town of Rmeilan, said he expected the meeting to approve a new political system, and that "democratic federalism" was the best one.
Speaking to Reuters, he added that the details of the system would be worked out later on. The document calls for the establishment of "The Federal Democratic System of Rojava-North Syria". Rojava is the Kurdish name for northern Syria.
The Syrian Kurdish PYD party has been left out of peace talks underway in Geneva, in line with the wishes of Turkey, which sees it as an extension of the PKK group that is waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
The powerful Syrian Kurdish YPG militia has captured large areas of northeastern Syria from Islamic State, and has been the most effective partner on the ground for a U.S.-led air campaign against the jihadists.
Syrian Kurds effectively control an uninterrupted stretch of 400 km (250 miles) along the Syrian-Turkish border from the frontier with Iraq to the Euphrates river. They also control a separate section of the northwestern border in the Afrin area.
Syria's government in Damascus on Saturday ruled out the idea of a federal model for the country. Damascus ally Russia has said federalism could be a possible model for Syria.
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