REPRESENTATIVES of Kurdish groups in Syria called at the weekend for the country to become a democratic state that gives Kurds their ethnic rights following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Some 400 people representing Syria’s main Kurdish groups met in the north-eastern city of Qamishli on Saturday to unify their positions a month after Syria’s new rulers signed a breakthrough deal with Kurdish-led authorities in the north-east.

Kurds in Syria were marginalised during the 54-year rule of the Assad family, with many denied citizenship and wrongly categorised as Arabs.