 | |
| Turnout | 70%[1] |
|---|---|
 Regions of the DFNS where elections took place in red | |
The firstlocal elections in theDemocratic Federation of Northern Syria were held on 22 September 2017. Representatives of 3,700 communes in theregions of the Northern Syria Federation were selected in the election, involving 12,421 candidates.[4] The communal elections on 22 September were followed byelections of local councils in December and a federalparliamentary election of thePeople's Democratic Council, the region's highest governing body, in 2018. Some areas controlled by theSyrian Democratic Forces were not included in the election, including the city ofManbij.[5]
Between 27 and 28 July 2017, a conference of theSyrian Democratic Council was held in the town ofRmelan. During the conference,the three-canton system inRojava was changed to three federal regions, theJazira, theEuphrates, andAfrin Regions. Dates of elections were also decided at the meeting, with 22 September being the date for communal elections, 3 November formunicipal elections, and 19 January 2018 for the People's Assembly of Federal Regions and the People's Democratic Council, the highest governing body for the Federation of Northern Syria.[6] Officials who organized the elections includedHediya Yousef andÎlham Ehmed, two senior officials in the government of thede facto federal region.[7]
The election was mostly organized by the High Electoral Commission (Arabic:المفوضية العليا للانتخابات;Kurdish:Komseriya Bilind Ya Hilbijartinan;Classical Syriac:ܦܩܝܕܳܝܘܬ݂ܐ ܥܠܝܬܐ ܕܓܘܒܳܝ̈ܐ) of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria which launched a promotional campaign in order to encourage voting in the election which included online promotional advertisement on Facebook and Twitter and the release of a promotional song in Kurdish, Arabic and Syriac.[8][9]
al-Ghamar Arabs (lit. 'Arabs of the Flood'), who were settled by theSyrian regime in theHasakah Governorate in the 1960s and '70s on appropriated (mostly Kurdish-owned) land, were allowed to participate in the communal elections and subsequent regional elections to establish local services for them, but weren't allowed to participate in the third round in January 2018 to elect theSyrian Democratic Council. The cities ofManbij andRaqqa were excluded, as they had local councils independent from the Northern Syria Federation, and Raqqa was only fullycaptured by theSyrian Democratic Forces after the first local elections. Both men and women ran in the elections, with the SDC planning to have women hold 50% of positions.[10]
The elections officially began at 8 a.m. on 22 September,[11] with hundreds of thousands of people participating.[4][12][13]
Security during the elections was maintained by theAsayish police, theAnti-Terror Forces (HAT) and theSociety Protection Forces (HPC).[14] In cities and towns withAssyrian populations, such asQamishli, theSutoro police also provided security.[15]
The elections in theJazeera andEuphrates regions ended on 8 p.m. that day, while elections in theAfrin Region were extended by two hours.[11]
728,450 votes representing 70% of eligible voters were reported to have been cast in total, with 437,142 from theJazira Region, 135,611 from theEuphrates Region and 155,697 from theAfrin Region.[1]
On 6 August 2017,Faisal Mekdad, the deputyforeign minister of Syria, dismissed the elections as a "joke".[16]
The Raqqa Civil Council and leaders of 5 tribes in and around Raqqa announced their support for the elections.[17]
On 20 September, theKurdish National Council in Syria announced aboycott of the election and called it a "flagrant violation of the will of theKurdish people".[18]
| Presidential elections | |
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| Parliamentary elections | |
| Local elections | |
| Referendums | |
