Kurdish PYD leader: Turkey continues to support al-Nusra Front against Kurds Archives

Claudia Roth: ‘Germany must help the peace process to continue in Turkey.’

BERLIN, Germany – NATO must force Turkey to stop its undeclared support of the Islamic State (ISIS) and shift its policy toward the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the deputy speaker of the German parliament said.

Claudia Roth said in an interview with Rudaw that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is pursuing a “murky” policy in Syria because it wants the Kurds weakened and their fighters “annihilated.”

“What we have learned is that Mr Erdogan wouldn’t mind if Kurds were weakened and then annihilated,” said Roth, deputy speaker of the Bundestag and a Green Party MP.

Erdogan’s “dealings with the ISIS are unacceptable. I could not believe that Turkey harbors an ISIS militant camp in Istanbul,” Roth said. “Turkey has also allowed weapons to be transported into Syria through its borders. Also that the ISIS has been able to sell its oil via Turkey is extraordinary,” she added.

Turkey categorically denies any dealings with ISIS. But there are many reported accounts of foreign jihadi fighters crossing from Turkey to Syria, wounded militants treated in Turkish hospitals and Ankara turning a blind eye to ISIS selling smuggled oil.

Turkey has invited criticism for its Syria policy. Ankara has remained idle while in Kobane Kurdish fighters of the PKK-affiliated People’s Protection Units (YPG) are making a last stand to keep ISIS from overrunning the Syrian town just across the border.

“I really don’t understand either why would Mr Erdogan and his ministers regard the PKK the same way they view the Islamic State,” Roth said. “Yes, it’s true the PKK does not have a democratic foundation, but it is no ISIS and one should not regard it as such,” she added.

“Germany must put pressure on Turkey to change course and reevaluate its policies. It should also ask NATO members to do the same. Germany must help the peace process to continue in Turkey.”

Regarding German help for Syrian Kurds, she said “Germany could have done so much more than just sending humanitarian help.”

She added that the world should also have helped the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, where the autonomous government has taken in some 1.6 million refugees from Syria and other parts of Iraq.

“Why has the international community not helped Kurdistan and the refugees the way it should have?” Roth questioned. She said she had seen refugees first hand in Kurdistan and the Turkish Syrian border of Suruc.

“It was devastating to see how an entire population is being eradicated before our eyes in Kobane,” she said.

“There is a refugee crisis even there where people have been sheltered in temporary places and on the streets. I want to underline that the international community must act very fast and aid the refugees. I have also asked the German government to increase its humanitarian help,” she added.

She said that the peace process between the PKK and the Turkish government, which has largely lagged since it was initiated in March 2012, would succeed only if Ankara changed its treatment of the outlawed PKK.

If Turkey continues to regard the PKK as a terrorist organization like ISIS it “will destroy this process and boost extremism among Kurds,” she warned. “In actual fact Kurds are victims of the rotten Turkish policies. No country should accept this.”

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, said recently that the fall of Kobane could kill the Kurdish peace process in Turkey.

Roth blamed regional powers and selfish interests for Kurdish suffering. “Unfortunately some regional powers think only about their interests without thinking about the suffering of the Kurds,” she said. “There is no coordinated action or will against the ISIS in the region, for instance between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I hope the UN will put pressure on them to take a clearer stand.”

She made a call for ISIS to be “annihilated” and targeted economically as well as militarily.

“Lightly arming Kurds won’t solve the problem. There should be extensive and radical efforts,” she said, fearing that Kobane would fall to ISIS but calling on Kurds not to despair.

“They should know that they have many friends who support them in their battle against the Islamic State.”

Turkey continues to provide support for al-Qaeda-linked groups fighting Kurds in Syria’s north despite statements by Turkish officials that such groups are a threat to Turkey’s security as well, the leader of the most powerful Syrian Kurdish group has said.

Saleh Muslim, who heads the Democratic Union Party (PYD), said in remarks published on Sunday that witnesses on both sides of the border have confirmed that there was a transfer of weapons and ammunition from Turkey to Syria through the Karkamış border gate in the southeastern province of Gaziantep on the night of Aug. 2. He said the weapons were then transported to Arab villages near the Kurdish-populated town of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab in Arabic) apparently in preparation for attacks on Kobani.

“Kobani is next. It is impossible to understand how Turkey lets this happen. If the al-Nusra Front is the enemy, then this should be prevented,” Muslim told Taraf daily in an interview. The al-Nusra Front is one of the al-Qaeda-linked groups involved in clashes with the Syrian Kurds in Kurdish-populated towns near the Turkish border. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), another al-Qaeda affiliate, is also fighting the Kurds.

Muslim paid a surprise visit to Turkey late last month and had talks with officials from the Foreign Ministry and the Turkish Intelligence Agency (MİT). He said Turkish officials promised measures to prevent the passage of al-Qaeda militants into Syrian territory through Turkey as well as to pressure the anti-regime Free Syrian Army (FSA) to isolate al-Qaeda-linked groups.

Asked if these promises were broken, Muslim said he keeps his faith that the Turkish government is well intentioned and raised the possibility of the ongoing support could be the work of some “deep forces” acting without the government’s consent. “I don’t know [if this is the work of forces other than the Turkish government]. But it is certain that al-Nusra continues to get weapons via the Turkish border,” he said.

A group of about 70 commanders of the FSA met in Gaziantep as Muslim was visiting Turkey for talks. Col. Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi, head of the FSA military council in Aleppo who was among the participants of the meeting, accused the PYD of fighting alongside the regime forces. “They [the PYD] are the Shabiha of the regime. Hopefully, we will triumph over them,” the colonel said in remarks to the media during the meeting. The Shabiha is known as a shadowy militia group used by the Syrian regime against opposition forces.

“When I was meeting with officials in İstanbul, FSA and al-Nusra members were meeting at a hotel in Gaziantep and making plans to destroy Kurds. Is it possible that the state did not know about it?” he asked.

Muslim also complained about randomly fired bullets by the Turkish army which he said landed in civilian settlements in the Kurdish towns on the Syrian side of the border.

The Turkish military regularly returns fire from Syria. Four Turkish nationals have been killed by stray bullets fired from Syria during the recent clashes between the PYD and al-Qaeda-linked groups on the Syrian side of the border. Usually there is no report on possible casualties as a result of these retaliatory attacks.

“This is a strange situation,” Muslim said of the retaliatory fire from Turkey. He said the Turkish army fired back randomly and that residential areas were hit. He added that the army was not deliberately targeting civilians. “Thank God, there are no casualties,” he said.

Muslim also rejected categorization by some Turkish officials of his talks in İstanbul as a “warning” to the PYD, saying the talks were friendly and based on mutual respect.

The PYD presence in northern Syria is a source of concern in Turkey because of the group’s links with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Muslim said in the interview that he has never joined the PKK, although he has been a sympathizer and called PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan “a visionary who could lead all peoples of the Middle East.”