Sarbast Nabi
Although experiences confirm that a constitutional solution may not necessarily lead to a political solution and permanent stability, especially in issues with dense complexity such as Syria and Iraq, it eventually appears that this solution is the sine qua non for the establishment of political and legal legitimacy for the state.
Of course, the failure to implement the constitution and the suspension of its items was one of the aspects of the political authoritarianism that dominated the Syrian issue within more than half a century of monopolizing power. However, the indifference of the autocratic regimes to the Syrian constitution does not explain the nature, history, and behavior of all this authoritarianism. A careful reading of the biography of most constitutions, which Syria has known since its independence, proves that it lacks any recognition of political pluralism or true cultural and national diversity, and disregards them. It also justifies the dominance of a linguistic and national identity, and establishes its superiority at the expense of other identities.
Thus, the Syrian Kurds are looking forward to a political and constitutional situation that enables them to directly play their political role on an equal basis with others. This requires them to possess the legitimate constitutional and political capacity which would enable them to freely determine their own destiny without coercion. Hence, they seek realistic constitutional, political, and cultural guarantees that prevent the return of all forms of existing and inherited discrimination against them and against other marginalized national minorities.
First, it should be emphasized that the Kurdish presence in Rojava (Western Kurdistan) is a well-established historical and geographical fact. The legitimate rights of the Kurds resulting from this existence are not an ideological heresy or a political invention. This fact is much older than the existence of the Syrian state and is more legitimate from the historical point of view, despite the forms of cultural, social, and political distortion that have affected this existence for decades. Kurdish history is very ancient, and the Kurds do not hide behind the history of others nor their political legitimacy. Every talk about coexistence or real citizenship without acknowledging this principle is just idle rhetoric.
The legitimacy of the rights of the Kurds emanates from here in particular, and from this central principle, but not from any other source. That is, from the principle of their right to self-determination to be Syrians of their own free will. They are the ones who should freely decide to be Syrians, not forced and coerced by the guardianship and will of others.
The cultural and national diversity in Syria was not a temporary incident or an emergency state at any time, except in the period in which a central national tendency prevailed that led to the absolute denial and exile of the other. This gradually led to practices of systematic subjugation and taming at the political and constitutional level. Hence, the existing Syrian state failed to create a national, inclusive, common, and free identity for all Syrians.
Before and after independence, the Syrian constitutions in general repudiated this deep-rooted cultural diversity in the country, denied and canceled some identities, especially the Kurdish national identity, and eliminated some others, such as the Syriac. In return, they imposed a monistic and totalitarian identity based on linguistic, cultural, and ideological centralism, and forcibly reduced historical diversity and national plurality to a minimum. Likewise, this cultural and linguistic centralization is justified on the pretext that the ethnic/national or linguistic majority has the historical and ideological legitimacy to occupy a dominant and superior position over the cultures and linguistic groups that are less numerous, and therefore less important.
Perhaps the most important and moderate constitution for Syria was the first constitution, known as the King Faisal Constitution of 1920, which though it considered the Syrian state as an Arab kingdom and its only official language as Arabic, presented a vision for state-building based on local autonomy and internal decentralization, as close as possible to the federal state. It is also noted that the constitution did not mention any religious or sectarian identity for the state except the religion of its king, who must be Muslim, and in return the constitution guaranteed freedom of worship and belief.
With the first constitution known as the Constitution of Independence in 1950, Arab exclusionism took hold of the Syrian constitutions very clearly. In addition to the above, this constitution affirmed Islam as a religious identity and as a basic source of Syrian legislation for the first time. The Constitution of 1953 was more extremist in terms of defining the identity of the state on a national or religious reference, at the level of consecrating the superiority of one national and religious element over another. The identity of the Syrian state was reduced nationally to Arabism and religiously to Islam, and the entire Syrian people, regardless of their nationalities and religions, became part of the Arab/Islamic nation, and the Arabic language, the language of the Qur’an, became the only Semitic language that deserved to be the official state language.
In light of the nationalist governments with the most extremist Arab tendencies which came to power in Syria after this date, the name of the Syrian state was confiscated in the temporary constitutions for the first time, and the state was defined, described, and attributed to an ethnic element exclusively, especially after the Ba’athist coup on March 8, 1963.
Thus, the Arab exclusionary and ideological approach took over the work of the Syrian state and its institutions and acquired a methodological dimension coupled with bureaucratic practices according to the theory of the Ba’ath Party and nationalist ideology, especially after this party constitutionally established its political dominance over the lives of Syrians.
From this position, the authority looked at the Arab element in Syria as the elected element, the social carrier of the national utopia, its historical content and its mass that would embody the goals of the ruling national authority. Therefore, it must prevail and dominate the rest of the national communities in the Syrian society, and also its culture and language must prevail as the worthiest and most legal of them.
Then the constitution of Hafez Assad, which was an amended version of the 1969 constitution, was approved in 1973 by popular referendum. This constitution was based on the scale of the Ba’ath ideology, but more than that, it can be considered as a Ba’athist theory; that is, its articles can be viewed as mere footnotes on its ideological board. The constitution strengthened the supremacy of Arab nationalism and its sovereignty alone, and characterized the state’s identity with its own. The constitution neglected to refer to any community or national identity other than the Arab. At the same time, it reduced the concept of the Syrian citizenship to the demands of Arab ideology.
In 2012, Bashar Assad sought to contain the escalating protests that swept across Syria. He undertook some apparent reforms that did not affect the essence and nature of the existing regime and its legislation. From this standpoint, he announced a new constitution. However, he preserved most of the principles and articles of the previous constitution, and likewise, preserved the exclusionary national spirit in it without endorsing or recognizing any other cultural or linguistic identity in the country.
There is a set of constitutional values and principles related to the rights and interests of groups and individuals and their future which have an exceptional value in all constitutions and form the rules and values that are higher than the other rules of the constitution. Constitutions sometimes resort to being drafted so that they are directed at the functioning of the constitution and its texts in order to ensure that no inalienable rights of groups and individuals are violated, and to preserve the stability of the political regime. From this standpoint, the constitutional solution to the Kurdish issue in Syria requires a set of “supra-constitutional” guarantees that cannot be changed or amended except by resorting to a referendum on the will of the Kurds alone in the future.
From here the necessity to establish the principle of national equality on supra-constitutional values that guarantee pluralism, protect minority rights, and respect their legitimate aspirations emerges. Any potential political regime in the future of Syria that derives its legitimacy from the dominance of a national or religious/sectarian majority would pose a real threat to democracy and undermine every tendency towards equality among Syrians. The Kurds in Rojava, along with all the national minorities in Syria, are looking forward to a constitutional status that will enable them to directly exercise their political role on an equal basis with Arabs.
The first and most important principle on which the potential Syrian constitution should be based is that which leads to the recognition that the identity of the Syrian state as not only Arab, but pluralism. Any potential political regime must derive its legitimacy from Syrian society with its existing national, cultural, social, and historical diversity, not from an ideological example or any other political utopia. That is why it is absolutely fair that the next Syrian constitution clearly stipulates and defines that the Syrian state is multi-national, and that Arabs and Kurds are the main nationalities in addition to recognizing the rights of historical, cultural, and national identities such as the Syriac and others.
Secondly, any potential constitution for Syria must explicitly stipulate full equality between Arabs and Kurds in status and role, in rights and duties, as a just and prime entry point for resolving the national issue of the Kurds in Syria.
The effects and results of achieving this equality does not target its future only, but rather must turn towards the past and be embodied in the attitude towards the regime’s decisions and racist practices accumulated over more than half a century. The dilemma of the Kurds in Rojava is not only with the tyrannical national regime in Syria, but also the dilemma with the political and social legacy of the regime that it left over decades of enslavement, distortion, and Arabization of the Kurdish geography and identity.
It is important that the next constitution affirms and states that this desired equality is not only directed towards future demands, but it must also be achieved retroactively by removing the effects of national prejudice and persecution that accumulated during those long decades of Arabization and Ba’athist policies.
Third, the desired equality requires the empowerment of everyone in political participation without any concrete or symbolic obstacles that detract from the status or role of an identity in the right to sovereignty. Any future political regime that addresses change must prove on the ground, at the cultural and symbolic level, that Syria’s identity is as much Kurdish as it is Arab.
Based on the foregoing, in the spirit of overcoming cultural and linguistic inequality between groups, and for the state to be liberated from the hegemony of one language and the alienation of a single national culture, every national minority should enjoy the same cultural and symbolic rights enjoyed by the majority. In addition, it must be recognized that there is complete equality between the culture of the two main nationalities in the sovereign representation of the state. It is necessary in this case that the Syrian constitution explicitly recognizes complete equality among the Arab, Kurdish, and Syriac historical languages, and stipulates that Arabic and Kurdish are the official languages of the Syrian state.
Fourth, with the aim of eliminating the cultural and political disparity between individuals and groups within a single state, the importance of constitutionally affirming here is that the Syrian society, with its existing historical cultural diversity and national pluralism, should be the direct reference to the concept of Syrian citizenship, and thus to any comprehensive Syrian identity, instead of the concept of ethnic nationality brimming with racist ideological aspirations.
Fifthly, the inevitable solutions of the democratic regime and the achievement of equality between Syrians, and therefore between the Kurds and the Arabs, presupposes a political framework for the solution based on the federal system, which is the best buffer against any potential central tyranny and the remnants of inequality. It allows everyone to participate in free and equal political participation and enhances their ability to confront the tendency of power or the center towards authoritarianism.