Federalization of Syria

The federalization of Syria has been controversially proposed as a possible solution to end the Syrian Civil War. In the broadest sense, it means turning the centralized Syrian Arab Republic into a federal republic with autonomous subdivisions. Many powers and actors involved in the Syrian Civil War have entertained the idea of "federal division", not least among them Russia, United Nations representatives, the United States and Israel. Bashar al-Assad has publicly rejected the idea of federalism, asserting that the Arab majority in Syria is opposed to such proposals. Most of the neighbouring countries in the region have also dismissed the proposal, including the members of the Arab League and Turkey.

Due to the fact that federalization would more or less follow ethnic and possibly also religious-sectarian lines, it has been dismissed as "division of the country" and "Balkanization" by its opponents. Most factions of the Syrian opposition, such as the Syrian National Council and the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, have consistently rejected the idea of federalization. On the other hand, Kurdish opposition parties have strongly promoted the idea. The Egypt-based opposition party Syria's Tomorrow Movement takes an intermediate position.

Timeline during the Syrian Civil War
On 17 March 2016, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria was unilaterally declared a federation of autonomous cantons modelled after the cantons of Switzerland; Afrin Canton, Jazira Canton and Kobanî Canton, as well as the Shahba region. The federation is considered by its protagonists to be a model for Syria as a whole. The move was dismissed by the Syrian government and disapproved of by Turkey and the United States.

In September 2016, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, came out in an interview as one of the first regional politicians taking a public stand for the federalization of Syria. He said that the establishment of a federal system in Syria would "guarantee to preserve the institutions and unity" and that a federal system would be "the most appropriate solution and will protect the country from destruction."

In October 2016, a Russian initiative for federalization with a focus on northern Syria was reported, which at its core called for the existing institutions of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria to be recognised by the Syrian government, which rejected the call.

After multilateral peace talks in Astana in January 2017, Russia offered a draft for a future constitution of Syria, which would inter alia turn the "Syrian Arab Republic" into the "Republic of Syria", introduce decentralized authorities as well as elements of federalism like "association areas", strengthen the parliament at the cost of the presidency, and realize secularism by abolishing Islamic jurisprudence as a source of legislation. The same month, United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that "implementation of a Dayton style accord in Syria and introduction of some form of a federal solution in Syria (...) may indeed be the right way forward or the only way forward in the end of all this."

Historical antecedents
During the French mandate, Syria was subdivided into various autonomous entities, most of which bore the designation "state" (in French État; in Arabic Dawlat):
 * the State of the Alawites
 * the Province of Jazira
 * the Jabal Druze State (originally called the State of Souaida)
 * the State of Aleppo
 * the State of Damascus
 * the State of Greater Lebanon
 * the State of Hatay (originally called the Sanjak of Alexandretta)
 * the State of Syria

These autonomous entities did not correspond to the administrative division of Ottoman Syria. France ceded Hatay to Turkey in 1939, and Lebanon became an independent state (separate from the rest of Syria) in 1945.