HDP lambastes Erdogan's attempts at rapprochement with Assad against Kurds
The pro-Kurdish party's Co-leader said the Turkish President was ready to sit down with Assad whom he in the past called a "murderer."
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) slammed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent remarks signaling the possibility of reestablishing ties with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad’s regime in order to crush Kurdish aspirations for autonomy in Syria.
“You consider sitting down with Assad whom you were calling a murderer until yesterday. You are preparing to call him ‘my brother.’ But, why would you not talk to the Kurdish people?” HDP’s Co-leader Serpil Kemalbay asked Erdogan.
Returning from Russia where he met with the Iranian and Russian Presidents in a summit this week, Erdogan said the doors were not closed to the Assad regime when asked about a likely cooperation against the Democratic Union Party-led (PYD) self-declared Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria.
“There is a chance for the Syrian peoples to reach peace. There is a political solution on the table. But, [Erdogan’s] palace does all it can to prevent the Kurds from having a seat at the table,” Kemalbay told a public rally in the eastern Kurdish city of Van on Saturday.
“Instead of visiting Russia three times a month, talk to the Kurdish People,” she urged him, Kurdistan 24’s bureau in Van reported.
“Turkey’s issue is not with Kurds, but with terrorist organizations. What may happen tomorrow is tied to the circumstances then. It is not right to rule out anything on this issue,” Erdogan said about repairing relations with the Damascus regime whose downfall he expected and supported since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Speaking at the same rally, HPD lawmaker Feleknas Uca said Kurdish people throughout the Middle East were passing through a critical phase in history.
“There is a concept of a new and heavy war against the Kurds, in all four parts of Kurdistan, that aims to annihilate all the gains Kurdish people have made in recent years,” she said.
Uca was alluding to the Iranian-backed Iraqi offensive on the Kurdistan Region in the aftermath of the latter’s September referendum on independence.
For most of the Syrian conflict, Ankara supported rebel factions dominated by Islamists who sought to topple Assad.
Last year, Erdogan said his army’s goal with an incursion into a pocket of land west of the Euphrates River in northern Syria was to end the “rule of the tyrant Assad” whom he accused of state terrorism.
The incursion dubbed as the Euphrates Shield successfully denied the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) further territorial expansion against the Islamic State (IS).
It also denied the Kurdish forces a chance to unite the isolated Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northwestern Syria with the rest of the autonomous region known as Rojava or Syrian Kurdistan.
The shift to rapprochement with Damascus happened as YPG forces came to prominence during the war on IS in Syria, making military and territorial gains as they allied with the US-led coalition.
In the last several weeks, Erdogan and members of his administration have escalated threats against Rojava, and particularly the Afrin region, which he claimed was 50 percent Arab.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany