ERBIL,— Prominent Syrian Kurdish political leader Salih Muslim died at the age of 75 on Wednesday in a hospital in Iraqi Kurdistan region after suffering from health problems, his party said.
Within the Kurdish community he was widely respected and played a major role in shaping Kurdish politics in Syria.
The PYD said in a statement that Muslim had spent his life working for the interests of his people and protecting what it described as their legitimate rights.
The party added that he died in a hospital in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, after what it described as a long battle with illness.
Friends, supporters and members of the party gathered outside the hospital after news of his death to say goodbye to the longtime Kurdish figure.
A party official said Muslim’s body would be transported on Thursday to Syrian Kurdistan, where he will be buried.
Muslim was born in 1951 in the Kurdish city of Kobane, a place that later became known as a symbol of Kurdish fighters’ victory against Islamic State group militants in Syria.
After finishing secondary school in Syria, Muslim began studying chemical engineering at Istanbul Technical University in 1970 and graduated in 1977.
Following a short period in London, he worked as an engineer in Saudi Arabia from 1978 until 1990. In 1993 he opened an engineering office in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
The veteran Kurdish leader Muslim joined the Democratic Union Party PYD in 2003 shortly after it was formed and later became a member of its executive council.
In March 2004 he wrote a letter to Syrian President Bashar al Assad reacting to the Qamishlo massacre. Authorities arrested him after the letter and he spent seven months in prison.
During the Syrian civil war in 2012, Muslim helped establish the semi autonomous Kurdish region in northeast Syria. Kurdish groups in recent years have made concessions to Syria’s new Islamist authorities.
Turkey considers the PYD and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, to be linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has carried out a long insurgency against the Turkish state.
On October 9, 2013, Muslim’s son Shervan, a fighter with the YPG, was killed west of Gre Spi (Tel Abyad) in clashes with Islamic State militants ISIS. He was buried in Kobane during a public funeral attended by thousands of people.
The Autonomous Administration runs the Rojava region under a system based on democratic confederalism.
The framework promotes direct public participation in governance, gender equality, secular values and protection of the environment. It has also gained recognition for increasing the role of women in political life and in local decision making.
(With files from AFP | Agencies)
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