Meeting is Turkey's attempt to undermine Kurdish unity in Syria: PYD

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – In a statement on Saturday, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) condemned a recent meeting between its rival, the Kurdish National Council (KNC), and Turkey’s foreign minister, suggesting it had been part of a plan by Ankara to destroy recent attempts at unifying Kurdish factions in Syria.

This comes after both parties have put various efforts into building up that unity, such as the KNC’s Feb. 2 decision to reopen its offices in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) as a sign of good faith in response to a Kurdish unity initiative by the Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mazloum Abdi. 

Read More: Facing ‘existential threat’ from Turkey, rival Syrian Kurdish groups meet: Source 

The two major factions among Syrian Kurdish parties have continued negotiations begun in early November to discuss the need for unity after Turkey’s attack on Kurds in northern Syria that began in October.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, however, tweeted on Saturday that he had met with the KNC in Turkey on Wednesday, referring to the party as the “legitimate representative of Syrian Kurdish people.”

He also claimed that the “biggest damage to the Kurdish people came from the YPG/PKK,” calling the groups “terrorist organization.”

Met w/delegation of Kurdish National Council of #Syria, legitimate representative of Syrian Kurdish people.Supporting their role w/in Syrian National Coalition&political process. Emphasized that biggest damage to Kurdish people comes from PKK/YPG terrorist organization. pic.twitter.com/PWNndbPGn3

— Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (@MevlutCavusoglu) February 19, 2020

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is a Kurdish rebel force currently engaged in a decades-long war with Ankara for broader Kurdish rights in Turkey.

Turkey considers the YPG to be the Syrian branch of the PKK, a claim the YPG denies. In turn, the YPG accuses Ankara of supporting extremist Jihadist groups such as the Islamic State and also Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which the United States, Turkey, and Russia have designated as a terrorist group.

The PYD charges that the meeting with the Turkish minister was scheduled to erode the Kurdish unity initiative launched by the SDF. 

“In this way, the Kurdish National Council will be in front of the reaction of the people, and we affirm that the Kurdish people have become conscious, and will not spare those who repeat the previous mistakes,” read the PYD statement.

“Today, we urgently need a unified and explicit position against the fascist Turkish occupation of some of our regions,” it continued, describing areas Turkey occupied in its October cross-border operations against the SDF, such as Afrin, Tal Abyad, and Ras al-Ain. 

The PYD said that it was part of a Turkish plan to “divide and rule the Kurds to achieve its goals in Rojava and Syria” and to “prevent the Kurds from gaining their democratic rights and implement demographic changes in areas under Turkish control.”

The KNC leadership in a public statement said that they had discussed an alleged deal with the Syrian opposition coalition to end human rights violations by Turkish-backed groups in towns like Serekaniye, Afrin, and Tal Abyad, to preserve the demography of Kurdish-majority areas in Syria, and allow the safe return of displaced people to their homes.

In late January, the neighboring Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced that the influx of refugees from northern Syria into the Kurdistan Region resulting from the Turkish attack numbered over 20,000 arrivals. 

Read More: Syrian Kurdish refugees arriving in Kurdistan Region surpass 20,000: KRG 

The KNC leadership said that, in the meeting with Cavusoglu, it had stressed the council’s “rejection of any demographic change” in northern Syria.

Tensions between the KNC and PYD have increased since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, with the latter playing a significant role in the establishment of the self-administration that has ruled northeastern Syria. 

The dominant Syrian Kurdish factions, the PYD and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-backed KNC, have not successfully cooperated as had been hoped, in part because agreements they reached in Duhok and Erbil between 2012 and 2014 were never effectively implemented.   

It remains to be seen if the KNC meeting with Turkey could, in fact, undermine further attempts by Kurdish parties of Syria to reach a unified position on their communities’ future role in the embattled nation.

Editing by John J. Catherine