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On December 26, several Syrian Kurdish parties welcomed the upcoming Syrian National Dialogue Conference in the Russian city of Sochi in an joint statement and stressed that its within their rights as a Syrian side to attend the conference.
“We support any conference that will end the tyranny and achieve peace … We affirm our right to attend the [Sochi] conference in order to represent our people, and to contribute to the solution of this crisis, which has become a tragedy,” the Syrian Kurdish parties said in the statement.
The Kurdish parties emphasized that it would only attend Sochi under the banned of the US-backed Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS) that’s led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and said that Turkey shouldn’t be allowed to manipulate the conference.
In the joint statement, the Kurdish parties also claimed that Geneva talks failed due to the Turkish rule and because the DFNS had been excluded from them hinting that Sochi will also fail if they were not invited.
Although of this statement, the PYD and all the parties of the DFNS, and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) will not be invited to the Sochi conference as the Russian presidential envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev confirmed on December 22.
The SDF and DFNS parties were excluded from Sochi conference due to pressure from Turkey, Damascus government and the Syrian opposition that even called the UN to recognize the PYD as a terrorist group on December 27.
However, many independent public and political Kurdish figures were invited to Sochi conference that’s expected to begin in on January 29. Different Syrian sides are expected to discuss the future presidential and parliamentary elections in Syria, as well as the country’s new constitution during the conference.
