Alwaght- Turkey has recently summoned both the US and Russian ambassadors in Ankara to articulate its concerns over military support for the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD) , which it has labeled as the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the government has put its opposition over any kind of cooperation with the PYDS into words.
“Turkey cannot accept cooperation with terrorist organizations that have waged war against it," Davutoğlu said.
The prime minister's remarks were a response to a question over news that the US had dropped 50 tons of weapons and ammunition to PYD fighters, known as the People's Protection Units (YPG), who have- in self-defense- picked up arms against terrorist groups such as ISIS in northern Syria. He claimed that these weapons were prone to be being seized by the PKK which would turn them against Turkey.
“Turkey is determined to fight against all organizations linked to the PKK, in the same way the US and other allies fought against al-Qaeda affiliates while fighting al-Qaeda itself. Just like ally countries cannot tolerate arms transfers to groups linked to al-Qaeda, Turkey also cannot tolerate arms transfers to groups linked to the PKK,” Davutoğlu argued.
However, Turkey must be aware that hardly any of the military cargo the US drops in Syria goes to the Kurds. Instead, it is widely known that the United States' air drops end up in the hand of ISIS.
"Since 2012, the US, primarily through the CIA, has been providing weapons and training to terrorists in Syria under the guise of arming “moderates”. Many of these allegedly moderate groups have in recent months been documented as having either disbanded or defected to ISIS, including the little publicized mass defections of former Free Syrian Army fighters. "However it has happened, a vast arsenal of US-supplied weapons and other military hardware are now counted among the ISIS arsenal," wrote New-York based geopolitical analyst Eric Draister in analysis article on RT.
Following Russia's military involvement in Syria, Turkey broke out in a cold sweat. It has expressed worries that Moscow will also support the YPG as part of its ongoing efforts to eliminate ISIS from the war-ravaged country.
“We will not allow weapons stockpiled in Syria to find their way into Turkey. This stance has been conveyed to the US and Russia,” declared Turkish prime minister.
All of this falls under Turkey's political crackdown against the Kurds. First, Ankara has been backing extremist groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad as well as Kurdish minority groups in Syria. Along Syria's northern border with Turkey, authorities have allowed foreign-terrorists to infiltrate its violence-stricken neighbor. Observers believe the main drive for this stance is to attempt to weaken any Kurdish force rising near its border that may one day serve as reinforcement for its own Kurdish fighters who have been battling the state since 1984.
Syrian Kurds have accused Turkey of backing the al-Nusra-led attack on the predominantly Kurdish town of Ras al-Ayn in 2012. During clashes between the two sides, reports confirmed that extremist militants crossed the Turkey-Syria border to fight against the YPG in Kobani as well. Kurdish resentment toward Turkey has seen been accumulating and even cultivated accusations of Turkish support for ISIS in a bid to prevent Kurdish autonomy in Syria, fearing it would spread to its own territories.
It even went as far as targeting Kurdish fighters instead of ISIS. Shortly after it was announced that Turkey would join the US-led coalition in carrying out air strikes against ISIS in Syria it did so meekly while rushing to hit Kurdish militants in Iraq.
Analysts speculate that Turkey's response could be a card the ruling Justice and Development Party is preparing to flash in the upcoming election on November 1st. The AK party saw a defeat in this year's parliamentary elections when it resulted in a hung parliament. Now as the domestic Turkish mind-set toward the Kurdish issue is at a hotspot, Ankara is trying to connect the dots of Turkey's recent insecurities to the Kurds' plight as part of efforts to prevent them from taking part in any future vote.
In July 2014, a ceasefire between the Turkish government and the PKK fell apart. This followed a bombing in the town of Suruc which killed 32 people, mostly Kurdish activists. Hundreds were killed in the ensuing fighting in the restive Kurdish-majority city of Cizre. The crackdown on the Kurds who have been dreaming of a Kurdish autonomous region within Turkey similar to the one in Iraq has been interweaved with foreign-backed plots to legitimize Ankara's actions.
Turkey's latest move, that is, summoning and warning the US and Russian ambassadors against aiding Kurds in Syria, indicates that the Turks are taking their battle against the Kurds to the next level.
