Media union in northeastern Syria calls on media to support Kurdish Unity initiative

Qamishli – Abdulhalim Suleiman – North-Press Agency

On Saturday, the Free Media Union in North and East Syria called on media and journalists working in the region to be responsible and cautious in dealing with the efforts of the Kurdish Unity Initiative.

In a press statement made in al-Qiraa park in the city of Qamishli on Saturday, the union announced its support for the Kurdish Unity Initiative, calling on Kurdish journalists to "avoid using words and terms that deepen hatred between political parties and rely on common media concepts and terms."

In its statement, the Union urged the media and journalists not to publish information that negatively reflects on the initiative's efforts, especially those that are provided from anonymous sources, in addition to creating a positive and balanced atmosphere among the public.

The Free Media Union called on the political parties who are concerned with Kurdish unity to publicize the details of their dialogues clearly and beyond a reasonable doubt. The union also did not lose sight of the importance of using journalists, the public, and social media, and paying attention to selecting their words.

The statement stressed the need for the Kurdish unity to be a strategic choice for the media, and to bring together the groups of society that were separated by "narrow partisan politics."

The Kurdish National Council (ENKS) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) are engaged in talks that aimed "unify the Kurdish position" in Syria, after the Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces Mazloum Abdi set up the initiative late last year.
This comes against the background of the media publishing reports on the ninth of this month discussing an American request for the ENKS in Syria to withdraw from the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (SNC).

Within the framework of ongoing talks on reaching an agreement between the Kurdish political blocs in northeastern Syria, the ENKS denied the validity of the reports, stressing that no decision had been taken to withdraw from the coalition and that “its representatives in the coalition are participating in the meetings of the general committee of the coalition.”

The past few days have witnessed widespread controversy over reports and information leaked by the media from unidentified sources, including details of the discussions of the Kurdish National Council and the Democratic Union Party, while those parties have not officially confirmed the authenticity of that information.