Turkish officials are riled out by a ceremony in the former ISIS capital of Raqqa, newly captured by the Kurdish YPG, in which Kurdish celebrants raised a banner of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan is jailed in Turkey as a terrorist.
Turkish PM Binali Yildirim says the banner proves that the YPG are a “terrorist organization” and that the US is backing terrorists in Syria. He warned the banner did very serious damage to US-Turkey relations.
Turkey has long complained about US backing Kurdish factions abroad, but particularly the YPG, as Turkey considers the group and its political wing to be effectively part of Turkey’s own banned PKK party.
The factions are close, but both PKK and YPG officials insist they are distinct organizations. Both deny being terrorists, though in Turkey, being Kurdish nationalists is tantamount to terrorism at any rate.
The banner of a Turkish Kurd flying over a captured Syrian Arab city is potentially a risky situation at any rate, adding to the perception that the Kurds are occupying Arab lands as part of an ambition for a Greater Kurdistan.
The so called SDF was always just the PKK with a temporary name change.
Are you absolutely sure what your comment states is totally factual??
Or is it you think the names they give themselves are utter bullshit and they are all being funded by U.S. taxpayers as I believe.
The names they give themselves are utter bullshit. This goes for all of these gangs. So called SDF unfurls an Ocalan banner – Ocalan being a Turkish Kurd of the PKK – in Raqqa, and it still wants to pretend to be Syrian?!?
Absolutelly correct. With the exception if few symbolic Arabs it always was and is — YPG.
Being an empire is such fun. We get to actually kill reall people & … uh ..get killed by local folks for killing their menfolk, womanfolk, girls and boys… And with all unprosecuted & fiendish torture we have admittedly done to hapless locals…. one can only womder what fate awaits those who wander into their clutches.. The dreaded pirates of yore at least tried to get along. And big hat tip to King Rodney
“though in Turkey, being Kurdish nationalists is tantamount to terrorism at any rate” egregious pile of bullshit. But OK, that’s just sooo antiwar :-)))
“sooo antiwar” How so…????? Can you please explain how it’s antiwar….?????
I did, but it didn’t passed censorship 🙂
It is important to bear in mind that the Euphrates Valley Governorates of Deir az-Zor and ar-Raqqa are 100% Sunni Arab. Probably won’t be long before the Kurds of the SDF are attacked by the locals as an alien, occupying force. Meanwhile in northern Syria and Iraq the Kurds are being crushed by Turkish and Iraqi armies. Does it make sense for the SDF to serve as proxies for Uncle Sam in his losing battle against the Gov’t of Syria or do the Kurds have more important business elsewhere?
So sad that the Kurd leadership threw it’s lot in with Washington. Makes me wonder of what kind of stuff they are made
Agree. Fighting ISIS and the SAA for Uncle Sam while the Kurdish heartland is being invaded. Crazy.
Do not defend Kurds in Turkey. Had Kurds focuused first on their autonomy, politically, they wiuld have achieved many of their ibjectives by now. But they disd not. Money and weapons, plus political symphaties and support — ALL from the west, created terrorism. The word is used do ridiculously, that we forget its most basic meaning. And it aplies to Kurdish leaders in Turkey in a most classic way. Kurds routinelly attack unsuspecting police stations, military
facilities and cause “collateral” damage in process. YPG is — no question about it — a Syrian branch of PKK. In Iraq, US supported PKK political branch, not Barzani Peshmerga. This is why ii is now in a bind — must be against referendum led by Barzani, but this is telling US darlings, PKK iin Iraq, that they are just pawns.
In Syria, YPG took power by force, making other parties’ leaders flee for their luves.
And as of today, we the US people are supporting ISIS as well. One of the largest oul fields in Deir Azzor was under ISIS control, and about to be liberated by Syrian Army, when ISIS in the area DEFECTED TO SDF. So now, Syria and Russia cannot attack them. And gues what — they have been renamed LOCAL ARAB TRIBES! What a sickening game! Nobody is asking local Arabs anywhere about their opinion. They are just being handed off by ISIS to Kurds and US. Kurds are shamelessly raising flags, abd dictating school curricula to Arab towns and villages. Raqqa has been leveled so Arabs cannot return. Not a peep in our media of the refugees produced by Kurds. But this is a new one — to get oil fields without damaging them, we just rebrand ISIS “local Arab tribes”, as if Syria is Afghanistan with tribal configuration.