Why is the Syrian opposition taking steps towards unification?

Seven rounds of United Nations-sponsored Geneva talks were not able to bring an end to the more than six years of suffering and violence in Syria, as the parties involved couldn’t agree on a political transition period.

The talks have brought together the main international and internal parties of the conflict, and have been a platform for opposition groups under the High Negotiation Committee (HNC), the main umbrella opposition bloc serving as the rebels’ diplomatic representative since 2015.

However, a bloc for the opposition doesn't mean that they all speak with a unified voice. Different opposition groups and figures have been invited by the United Nations over the course of five years of Geneva talks, but the way the Syrian opposition is represented in Geneva has changed. 

Ahead of the eighth round of talks, around 140 members from different opposition platforms gathered in the Saudi capital Riyadh on November 22 at a meeting aimed at “unifying” various opposition groups, except the PKK’s Syrian branch the PYD/YPG, which controls much of northern Syria. 

The group has been the US’ major fighting tool in Syria since October 2014, and Turkey has strongly objected to its presence, because Ankara lists the PKK as a terrorist organisation along with the US and the EU. Turkey has long called on the US for co-operation with the Syrian opposition fighting faction, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), in its fight against Daesh in Syria, instead of the YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The US never responded to the call. 

Opposition unified during the two-days meeting

The Riyadh meeting came as the head of HNC Riyad Hijab resigned after almost two years as leader. Nasr Hariri was named as the new head of the bloc.

"After close to two years of hard work to preserve the glorious principles of the Syrian revolution [...] I find myself forced to announce my resignation from the HNC, wishing it good luck, and wishing peace and security to my beloved country Syria," Hijab said in a statement.

On the second day of the Riyadh meeting, the opposition decided to send 36 representatives to the Geneva talks for their unified High Negotiations Committee.

The Vice President of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Abdurrahman Mustafa, told TRT World that the SNC now has eight representatives in Geneva, including one Kurdish and one Turkmen. 

Eight independent representatives, including women, and seven generals from armed opposition groups will attend the meeting.

In the first major meeting led by the new head Hariri, the opposition groups decided to unite dissident groups—the Cairo Platform, the Moscow Platform, and the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC)—under the HNC. 

However, their stance is still not completely in agreement with the Turkey-based leading opposition group, the SNC. 

Both the Cairo and Moscow platforms are widely seen as regime-tolerated opposition groups. While “bone-hard secularist” in the Cairo platform are linked to armed groups in the south of the country, and the Moscow platform is backed by Russia, which has supported the Assad regime since the beginning of the war, targeting opposition fighters with air strikes in Syria over the past two years. Both the Cairo and Moscow platforms have four representatives in Geneva.

Even in the HNC’s latest statement that came as a common declaration by all the recently unified groups, the Moscow Platform stated its unease with the statement, the "opposition still thinks there is no place for the regime leader Bashar al Assad in the interim period under any UN-sponsored peace deal."

That sentence was put in the statement but after pressure from the Moscow platform and the NCC, it is no longer a condition for starting talks.

Attending the talks with five representatives, the Damascus-based NCC, on the other hand, is an opposition group recognised by the Assad regime. Its members include some ex-regime insiders who had poor relations with the main opposition.

Protecting the rights of different ethnic groups

All the opposition parties in Riyadh have underlined the necessity of recognising the rights of different ethnic groups to be in the new constitution for the first time, specifically mentioning four of them, while protecting Syria’s territorial integrity. 

"The attendees maintained their commitment to the protection of national unity, and the governance of the desired state of all of the Syrian land, without dividing or abandoning any part of it. They also maintained their commitment to the idea of Syria as a country consisting of many ethnicities and cultures, and its constitution should protect all its citizens, whether they are Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen, Assyrian, and other groups, and all their cultures and languages as part of the national identity and its history...” the joint statement said. 

A united opposition opens the door to holding direct talks about a political transition in Syria.

“It no longer has the pretext that the opposition is fragmented. We are one. We are ready to negotiate directly with the other side,” said Yahya Aridi, spokesman of Syrian National Coalition (SNC), the opposition’s leading group backed by the Free Syrian Army (FSA). 

However, the regime has said that it would attend the meeting a day later, on condition of not having “any discussion” of ousting Assad from power.

“We didn’t change our stance against Assad. The Moscow platform has a certain stance on Assad to stay in power, but eventually we had a joint declaration where we wrote our request on Assad to leave power. Nevertheless, we accept to sit on the table without a pre-condition,” Vice President of SNR, Abdurrahman Mustafa told TRT World. 

“Different opposition groups having different representatives in the meetings was an excuse for Assad to not to sit on the table to negotiate. Now he doesn’t have that excuse. We’re going there as a united opposition,” he said.