Syria
A member of Syria's local committees casts her vote in the country's selection process to designate an interim parliament, in Damascus on October 5, 2025. Photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syria’s electoral authority on Wednesday named ten individuals from the Kurdish city of Qamishli in northeast Syria (Rojava) to the country’s electoral college and moved to form legal committees in the enclave’s electoral districts. The move aims to address the delayed legislative elections in the Kurdish-administered areas, which have been pending since October.
The Higher Committee for Syria’s People’s Council Elections said in a statement that it added “ten individuals to the final lists of electoral college members for Qamishli” and announced a push to “form legal oversight committees in the [Kurdish-majority] electoral districts of Hasaka city, Malkiyah, and Qamishli in Hasaka province, and the Ain al-Arab [Kobane] electoral district.”
The interim Syrian government held legislative elections in October, excluding Rojava due to rising tensions at the time with the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), which governs the enclave, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which serves as Rojava’s de facto military force.
After weeks of fierce clashes that erupted in late December, Damascus and the SDF signed a landmark agreement on January 29 to integrate all of Rojava’s civilian and military institutions under Syrian state control.
The agreement has also helped move efforts forward on Kurdish representation in the country’s 210-member legislature, 70 of whose lawmakers are appointed by the interim president.
Damascus had introduced an indirect electoral system in which committees appoint subcommittees that then select an electoral college made up of experts and community leaders.
Local sub-district committees selected a 6,000-member electoral college, which in October elections chose 121 of the 140 members of the assembly from around 1,500 candidates. These candidates were nominated through the committees and approved by the electoral authority.
The remaining 19 seats were allocated to Hasaka and Raqqa provinces in the northeast and the Druze-majority Suwayda province in the south.
Of note, 24 Kurdish parties in Rojava released a statement on Tuesday criticizing what they said were a “meager number of seats” allocated to the Kurdish community, which is an “integral and historical component” of Syria, according to the SDF-affiliated Hawar News Agency.
They claimed that only four seats were allocated to them in the Syrian legislature.
“We insist on our right to genuine parliamentary representation with no fewer than 40 seats,” the statement added, noting that they “categorically reject" the current distribution mechanism as "a continuation of racist marginalization policies aimed at erasing the Kurdish issue.”
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