Barzani says Syrian Kurds must cut ties with PKK, strike deal with Assad

2020-01-17 00:00:00 - Source: Iraq News

Iraqi Kurdistan president Nechirvan Barzani, Erbil, November 2019. Photo: Kurdistan Presidency

HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— The Syrian Kurdish leadership must continue efforts to reach a solution with the Damascus regime that will guarantee Kurdish rights in the country, but they must also cut ties with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s President Nechirvan Barzani told Al-Monitor on Thursday.

“As a matter of principle we believe that the question of the Kurds in Syria should be resolved within the boundaries of Syria. And yes, of course I believe the regime in Damascus should be more forthcoming than it is now. The Kurds of Syria are part of Syria,” Barzani said in an interview with the media outlet.

“Our advice in the past, present and in the future is for the Syrian Kurds to find a way to reach an agreement with the regime,” Barzani added, criticizing the regime for its lack of willingness to make concessions. “Unfortunately, the Baath mentality is a block.”

The Iraqi Kurdistan’s ruling Barzani family has close ties with the Turkish government and opposes PKK. The Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP never recognized the Kurdish autonomous administration in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava). Instead they created a pro-Turkey-Barzani Syrian political party, the Kurdish National Council Syria’s (KNC-ENKS), that opposed the self-administration in Syrian Kurdistan which was created by Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD, Arabs, Christians and other minorities. The Barzanis with support from Turkey established so called Syrian “Rojava peshmerga” militant units based in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Nechirvan’s uncle, the KDP party head Massoud Barzani said in March 2016 any support to the Syrian Kurdish PYD party means support for the PKK. “They are exactly one and the same thing,”

The worldwide-respected Autonomous Administration in Syrian Kurdistan has a secular decentralized self-rule, where equality between men and women, direct democracy, and environmental responsibility are emphasized.

In October 2019 and after U.S. withdrew its troops from northern Syria and gave Turkey a green light to invade Syrian Kurdistan, the Barzanis did not condemn neighbouring Turkey for the assault that has sent thousands of Kurds fleeing. Iraqi Kurdistan relies on Turkish pipelines to export oil and the countries have close political ties.

Syrian Kurds, who earned global praise for their key role in the war against the Islamic State (ISIS), have been pushed into a weak position after being abandoned by their American allies in the face of a Turkish invasion.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) lost two critical border Kurdish towns of Girê Spî (Tel Abyad) and Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain), and Turkey and its Syrian Islamist proxies pushed 30 kilometers-deep into Syrian Kurdish territory.

The Kurds asked the Syrian government to help defend their land against the Turkish incursion, inviting regime forces back to the northeast for the first time since Damascus pulled out of the Kurdish areas early in the nearly nine-year long civil war.

Ceasefire deals brokered by the United States and Russia put the Turkish invasion on hold, but the situation is still unstable.

Political talks between the Kurdish-led administration and Damascus have hit an impasse. The Kurds want the fragile autonomy they have carved out for themselves to be preserved and their SDF granted special status within the Syrian Army, but the Syrian Regime, in a position of strength after military wins on the ground, has refused to budge.

“There should be constitutional protection of their rights all within the framework of a united Syria. They should be equal citizens and to express themselves freely as Kurds,” said Barzani of the Kurdish population across the border.

Turkey justified its invasion of Syrian Kurdistan as a counter-terrorism operation, claiming that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), who are respected and appreciated all over the world and which forms the backbone of SDF, is affiliated with the PKK, a Kurdish guerilla organization fighting for greater Kurdish political and cultural rights in Turkey Kurdistan (Bakur)..

The YPG has denied it is the Syrian affiliate of the PKK.

“I also told them [Syrian Kurds] repeatedly to cut their ties with the PKK in Qandil,” Nechirvan Barzani said. “I always said they did everything to provoke Turkey. Putting up PKK flags and huge portraits of [imprisoned PKK leader] Abdullah Ocalan immediately on the Turkish border.”

He said the SDF “was probably too late” when it made concessions to Turkey’s objections, dismantling defensive fortifications along the border and allowing US-Turkey military patrols in strategic areas. “We had been telling them for years to disassociate themselves from the PKK and try to understand Turkey’s concerns so as to avert this result we have today,” said Barzani.

This has to be done, otherwise there is “little chance of the situation getting any better,” he argued.

Despite his opposition to the PKK, Barzani asserted that the only solution to the decades-long conflict between Kurds and the Turkish state is for Ankara to resume its peace process with the PKK, including re-opening discussions with Ocalan.

The ruling Barzani clan have been routinely accused by critics of corruption, nepotism and amassing huge wealth from oil business for the family instead of serving the population. KDP party leader and ex-president Massoud Barzani remains the most powerful leader in the shadow according to analysts. Massoud’s son Masrour is the Kurdistan region’s prime minister and his nephew Nechirvan Barzani is president of Kurdistan.

The Turkish military routinely carries out airstrikes and artillery bombardments in Iraqi Kurdistan Region against suspected targets of the PKK.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.

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.

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.

Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of foreigners suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children, during the battle against IS in Syria and are being held in by Kurdish forces in Syrian Kurdistan.

Iraq News Now