Fahrettin Altun, director of communications for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 2019. Photo: iletisim.gov.tr
ANKARA,— Turkey criticised the United States on Thursday for treating the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as a “legitimate political figure”, underlining continued tensions with Washington despite the end of its offensive in Syrian Kurdistan, the Kurdish region in northern Syria.
Republican and Democratic U.S. senators urged the State Department on Wednesday to quickly provide a visa to the commander, General Mazloum Abdi Kobani, so that he can visit the United States to discuss the situation in Syria.
Turkey, which still denies the constitutional existence of it own Kurds who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population, views Mazloum as a “terrorist” closely linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur), the Kurdish region in southeast Turkey.
“We are deeply concerned about the treatment (of Mazloum)…. This individual is a senior leader of the PKK, which the United States and others consider a terrorist organization, and a fugitive from justice,” said Fahrettin Altun, director of communications for President Tayyip Erdogan.
“He is the subject of an outstanding Interpol red notice. He is wanted for multiple terror attacks targeting the Turkish security forces, a NATO army, as well as civilians,” Altun told Reuters.
Turkey and its Syrian proxies on October 9, 2019 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan, after an announced US military pullout.
The Kurdish SDF, the de facto army of the autonomous Kurdish region, have been a key ally of the United States in the battle against Islamic State group in Syria.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
The US pullout has largely been seen as a betrayal of Syria’s Kurds.
Syria’s Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the country’s eight-year war.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
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