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Riled by a meeting between a US official and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which controls the Syrian town of Kobane, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told Washington to choose between Turkey and, as he put it, the “terrorists.”

A delegation featuring Brett McGurk, the United States’ envoy to the coalition it leads against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), met the YPG over the last weekend in January. The YPG took full control of Kobane late last June, in what was a powerful symbol of Kurdish resistance.

“He [Brett McGurk] visits Kobane at the time of the Geneva talks and is awarded a plaque by a so-called YPG general?” Erdogan told reporters on his plane while returning from a trip to Latin America and Senegal, the Beser Haber newspaper reported.

“How can we trust [you]?” Erdogan said.

“Is it me who is your partner, or the terrorists in Kobane?” the Turkish president said, adding that both the PYD and the YPG are “terrorist organizations.” Ankara considers them to be part of the PKK, banned in Turkey as a terrorist group.

According to US officials, the trip appeared to be the first of its kind to northern Syria since 2013. It took place after the YPG’s political wing, Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), was excluded from new peace talks in Geneva. Ankara had threatened to boycott the talks if the PYD were invited.

The conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish insurgent groups demanding greater autonomy for the large ethnic group has been continuing for decades. With several failed ceasefires between the sides, Ankara has been blamed by a number of human rights groups for putting civilian lives at risk in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

In August, Ankara launched a ground operation to crack down on Kurdish fighters linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The violence ended a two-year truce with Kurdish militants fighting a guerrilla war for independence.

“Turks have a phobia of Kurds because they are scared of their Turkish Kurds, some 20 million of them living in Turkey,” Abd Salam Ali, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s representative to Russia, told RIA Novosti, adding that “Kurds have interfered with Erdogan’s plans in Turkey.”

“Islamic State has military bases in Turkey, and is using it as a corridor. Turkey currently plays a role similar to the one Pakistan played in the 1980s. When the Soviet forces were stationed in Afghanistan, jihadists arrived there through Pakistan, along with the money and arms,” Abd Salam Ali noted.

“Now Turkey is exactly the same corridor [for militants in Syria], and it plays its own game. But Kurds appeared to stand in [Ankara’s] way. They have forced IS away from Rojava [also known as Syrian Kurdistan]. There’s only one piece left, a 90km-long territory between the Kurdish towns. If we force IS out of there and reconnect the Kurdish cantons, Turkey won’t be able to influence [the situation in Syria].”

Late last month, President Erdogan once again refused to search for a peaceful solution to the conflict, which began back in 1984 and has taken at least 40,000 lives, mainly Kurds. He pledged that “those with guns in their hands and those who support them will pay the price of treason,” referring to the Kurdish militants, deemed terrorists by the government.
According to Turkey’s General Staff, the number of PKK members killed during military operations in the southeastern districts of Cizre and Sur reached 733 on Sunday. But according to Amnesty International estimates, at least 150 civilians, among them children, have been killed during the Turkish operation, with more than 200,000 lives put at risk.

Turkey’s security operations in the mainly Kurdish southeast resemble a “collective punishment,” the human rights watchdog said last month. Amnesty slammed the international community for choosing to turn a blind eye to what Ankara has been doing to the Kurds.

“While the Turkish authorities appear determined to silence internal criticism, they have faced very little from the international community. Strategic considerations relating to the conflict in Syria and determined efforts to enlist Turkey’s help in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe must not overshadow allegations of gross human rights violations. The international community must not look the other way,” John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Program Director, pointed out.

Up to 21 academics were detained by Turkish authorities in mid-January for signing a petition demanding that Ankara abandon its military crackdown on Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country. The petition denouncing Turkey’s military operation against Kurds was signed by as many as 1,200 academics. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they all sided with the Kurdish militants, who are considered terrorists by the government. “Unfortunately these so-called academics claim that the state is carrying out a massacre. You, the so-called intellectuals! You are dark people. You are not intellectuals,” he stated.

Kurdish People’s Protection Units fighters gather at the eastern entrances of the town of Tel Abyad,
(Photo: Reuters)

Rattled by new flux of refugees fleeing the raging war between the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the northern Syrian city of Tel Abyad near the border, Turkey’s leader expressed concern over the YPG takeover of the town, implying that he would rather prefer ISIL control over the strategic border city.

The ISIL and YPG, the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), are vying for control over Tel Abyad in an episode in the long struggle for supremacy in northern Syria. Backed by air forces from the global anti-ISIL coalition, the YPG recently made swift gains and pushed back radical militants after a withering months-long siege of the Kurdish city of Kobani, which proved to be a turn in the tide against ISIL. Turkey had to absorb more than 150,000 civilians during ferocious battles in and around Kobani in late 2014. Report Zaman

A similar fierce showdown is in the air, this time in Tel Abyad, a key border town just opposite of Akçakale, a Turkish border town in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa. Barbed fences and a wall divide the two towns.

The YPG advance toward Tel Abyad prompted a new mass exodus of refugees, sparking a humanitarian crisis across the border. The town is of strategic importance to the militant group, which regards as its only gateway and supply line through the border with Turkey.

Losing Tel Abyad, some 80 kilometers north of the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa, would deprive the group of a direct route to bring in new foreign militants or supplies. The Kurdish advance, coming under the cover of intense US-led coalition airstrikes in the area, also would link their two fronts and put even more pressure on Raqqa as Iraqi forces struggle to contain the group in their country. Reports on Monday suggested that the YPG totally encircled the town.

A Today’s Zaman reporter in Akçakale said the ISIL militants began to withdraw to Raqqa to prepare for the next round of the battle, which will probably take place in or around Raqqa, the provincial capital of ISIL. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict, said there were only around 150 Islamic State fighters in Tel Abyad.

Already battered by endless waves of refugees, Turkey allowed more than 3,000 refugees who were fleeing the fighting in Tel Abyad to enter the country, reversing its earlier decision of closing its borders to new refugees.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a reflection of the widely-held opinion of Justice and Development Party (AK Party) senior figures, views the looming battle from a different angle. Ankara sees the YPG as the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed militia that has fought a 30-year insurgency against the Turkish state to establish regional autonomy in southeast Turkey. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Turkey and EU.

Erdoğan spoke to reporters from pro-government media outlets during his return from Azerbaijan and addressed the steep challenges Turkey faces across the Turkish-Syrian border.

Offering a bleak assessment of the security situation in northern Syria, the president, however, appeared uneasy about the ascendant YPG, which has systematically rooted out ISIL groups from towns and villages as part of a steady campaign since January when it defeated the militant group in Kobani.

Erdoğan portrayed the YPG’s ascendancy on the battleground as a threat to Turkish national interests, accusing the Kurdish militia of deliberately targeting the indigenous Arab and Turkmen population in northern Syria.

The Turkish president said the US-led coalition fighting ISIL militants in Syria was bombing Arabs and Turkmens near Turkey’s border.

“On our border, in Tel Abyad, the West, which is conducting aerial bombings against Arabs and Turkmens, is unfortunately putting terrorist members of the PYD and PKK in their place,” Erdogan said.

Last week, he accused the West of backing “Kurdish terrorists” in northern Syria. The YPG has emerged as the main military partner for the US-led campaign against ISIL in Syria. Erdoğan’s views reflect a concern over the revival of probable separatist sentiment among Turkey’s Kurdish community, which closely follows YPG movements in Syria.

Erdoğan’s refusal to help the besieged Kurds in Kobani fight ISIL touched off nationwide protests in Turkey on Oct. 6-7, 2014, leading to the death of more than 40 people in street clashes. The AK Party government, sources close to the party say, does not want to see a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria that could control Turkey’s border and thus transport routes to Arab Syria.

The president’s comments came at a time when the Cumhuriyet and the Birgün newspapers ran news stories involving video and photo footage that appeared to be evidence of the AK Party government’s links to ISIL in northern Syria. In one incident, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), transported ISIL militants on buses through the Akçakale border gate as reinforcements in the fight against Kurdish forces.

Rebels accuse Kurds of deliberately displacing Arabs

More than a dozen Syrian rebel groups on Monday accused the country’s main Kurdish militia of deliberately displacing thousands of Arabs and Turkmens as it pushes deeper into ISIL strongholds in northern Syria.

The Kurdish advance has caused the displacement of 18,000 people who fled to Turkey in the past two weeks. On Monday, up to 3,000 more refugees arrived at the Akçakale border crossing, according to the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). An Associated Press photographer saw large numbers of people at the border and thick smoke billowing across as US-led coalition aircraft targeted ISIL militants in Tel Abyad.

The accusation, which was not backed by evidence of ethnic- or sectarian-related killings, threatened to escalate tensions between ethnic Arabs and Kurds as the Kurdish fighters conquer more territory in northern Syria.

Since the beginning of the year, the YPG have wrested back more than 500 mostly Kurdish and Christian towns in northeastern Syria, as well as strategic mountains seized earlier by ISIL. They have recently pushed into Raqqa province, an ISIL stronghold where Tel Abyad is located.

“YPG forces … have implemented a new sectarian and ethnic cleansing campaign against Sunni Arabs and Turkmen under the cover of coalition airstrikes which have included bombardment, terrorizing civilians and forcing them to flee their villages,” the statement issued by rebel and militant groups said. The YPG, however, denies these claims.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the people who had fled into Turkey were escaping fighting and there was no systematic effort to force people out.

He said also said there were no Turkmen in the area, stating, “There are violations [referring to acts of abuse] by individuals from the YPG, but not in a systematic way.”