SUMMARY
Rojava is the Kurdish name for the northern region of Syria. In 2011 the Arab Spring spread to Syria, this event also affected the Kurdish group in Syria. As the regime was forced to leave Kurdish areas to concentrate on their conflict against Syrian Insurgents, PYD seized these areas and set up a parallel administration. PYD officially announced its regional autonomy on 9 January 2014. The government of Syria has launched aerial bombartment over areas controlled by PYD and PYD has attacked the Syrian government in retaliation. PYD and the armed forces of Syria has also clashed over areas in Aleppo and al-Hasakah. In 2015 negotiations were held between the two sides to find ways in which they could cooperate against their common enemy IS. On 10 October 2015 PYD formed the SDF alliance together with Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian and Turkmen militias with the purpose to build democratic and federal governance in northern Syria, as well as protect the people of Rojava. After this date the conflict Syria: Rojava Kurdistan was terminated and this new conflict Syria: Rojava Kurdistan/Government starts. Though the Syrian government denied the legitimacy of SDF and the two parties disagreed on several crucial issues, they retained a relatively calm relationship throughout the Syrian civil war.
IN DEPTH
Conflict over Rojava, Kurdistan
Rojava is the Kurdish name for the northern region of Syria. In 2011 the Arab Spring spread to Syria, this event also affected the Kurdish group in Syria. The Syrian Kurds had been suppressed, and took part in smaller protests during the uprising, but in 2011 Assad granted all Kurds citizenship to please the group. In the aftermath of the Anti-Assad demonstrations an armed conflict over government erupted in Syria (see conflict description Syria: Government. PYD was an outsider to this conflict criticising both the Assad government and the opposition, as the opposition denied to support Kurdish autonomy. Therefore the government and the PYD were seen as being on the same side in the Syria: government](#/conflict/299) conflict. As the regime was forced to leave Kurdish areas to concentrate on their conflict against Syrian Insurgents, PYD seized these areas and set up a parallel administration. The government did not agree to this development but in most areas they withdrew their troops peacefully. However scattered clashes and aerial bombardment over PYD controlled areas were reported and in some cities PYD gave the Syrian troops an ultimatum either to leave the territory or to be attacked. These events were however insignificant compared to the other events taking place across Syria and at other times PYD shared the control over some cities with the government i.e. Qamishli and al-Hasakah. On 10 October 2015 PYD joined the SDF alliance after this date the Syria: Goverment/Rojava conflict started. Clashes with the government continued to be restricted to Qamishli and al-Hasakah.
Territorial Control
By the summer of 2012, the PYD had asserted control over three pockets of territory with majority Kurdish populations in the north of Syria: Jazira, Kobane and Afrin. PYD organized these as cantons of local administration under the collective name Rojava (‘West’) to represent Western Kurdistan. This area is situated in the northern part of Syria comprising most of al-Hasakah Governorate, northern parts of Al-Raqqah Governorate and northern parts of Aleppo Governorate.
PYD set up an entire political system in the area they controlled with a separate constitution “Charter of the Social Contract” ratified on 9 January 2014. The group has tried to implement the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan presented in his book "Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan" from 2005. Therefore Rojava is formed as a confederation of local citizens' assemblies with gender and ethnic diversity at each level.
Local elections were held in Rojava in March 2015 and in March 2016 Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen, Assyrian, Chechen and Armenian communities connected to the SDF alliance declared the Federal region of Rojava-North Syria.
