Salih Muslim, the head of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) — the main Kurdish group in Syria — will soon meet with US officials in Washington, D.C., Today’s Zaman has learned.
Muslim’s high-level meetings in the US capital will disturb Ankara because Turkey considers the PYD to be an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
That Muslim will meet with top US officials is another visible sign of the deepening fault lines between Turkey and the US. The US airdropped weapons, ammunition and other aid in late October to support the PYD, which had been putting up a strong fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Syrian town of Kobani. Turkey expressed its displeasure about the airdropped assistance; the PYD maintains links with the PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European Union.
The US has been pushing Turkey to contribute more to the coalition against the terrorist threat of ISIL. With the Kurdish PYD forces in Kobani proving themselves to be one of the groups showing the strongest resistance against the ISIL advance over the past few months, the US has pushed Turkey to help armed Kurdish groups in Syria — but to no avail.