Kurdish National Council
The Kurdish National Council (Kurdish Encûmena Niştimanî ya Kurdî li Surİyeye, abbreviation ENKS, Arabic المجلس الوطني الكردي, English Kurdish National Council, abbreviation KNC ) is a coalition of 14 opposition Kurdish parties in Syria. The largest member party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria. The establishment of the Kurdish National Council, still consisting initially of eleven Kurdish parties, goes back to an agreement in Arbil on 26 October 2011 under the mediation Masud Barzani, thus following the short preceded creation of the Syrian National Council (SNC ).
Goals and relations with the Arab opposition
The KNC is committed to a politically decentralized form of government in the existing borders of Syria, the constitutional recognition of the Kurdish minority, the removal of discriminatory laws against the Kurds and their past effects.
Ongoing differences with the SNC on the Rights of the Kurds in a possible post- Assad era led in 2012 to extract the Kurdish fraction from the SNC. Finally, it came in July 2012 at a conference of the Syrian opposition in Cairo to physical confrontations between the two camps. Kurdish parties accused Turkey also put pressure on the SNC to marginalize the Kurdish question in Syria. With regard to these differences, four other Kurdish parties have joined the KNC and the total number of currently 14 (as of January 2013). In November 2013, the Kurdish National Council, joined with eleven members of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and opposition forces in Istanbul.
The Presidency rotates at regular intervals between the chairmen of the various parties. Currently Tahir Sefûk is Chairman of the KNC (February 2013).
Together with the Democratic Union Party ( PYD), the Kurdish National Council, representing the Kurdish opposition in Syria. In a contract, again under the auspices of Masud Barzani, the KNC his intra- Kurdish differences with the PYD tried to settle. This signed in July 2012 Treaty of Arbil is to regulate the joint self-administration of the Kurdish regions in northern Syria by the High Kurdish Committee.