The U.S. and the EU must recognize the YPG's organic ties with the PKK, which they have designated as a terrorist group It is impossible to unders
The U.S. and the EU must recognize the YPG’s organic ties with the PKK, which they have designated as a terrorist group
It is impossible to understand the reaction arising from the modern world to Turkey’s operation against terrorist elements in northern Syria.
We are not just talking about condemnations. Threats of embargoes have been arising from countries that have been our allies in NATO since World War II and our economic and political partners in the EU accession process.
Let us take a look at the reasons for these reactions.
First, the People’s Protection Units (YPG)/Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey is staging an operation against, is a terrorist organization. It is responsible for acts of terrorism against civilians in the region and in Turkey. They are the Syrian branch of the PKK, which has been operating in Turkey for 40 years and is recognized as a terrorist organization by many states, including the U.S. and Germany. The leadership, managers and human resources of the two structures are the same. The Damascus regime, which is legally the sovereign of Syrian territory, recently informed the U.N. that it recognizes the YPG as a terrorist organization. Let us look at what U.S. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who today opposes Turkey’s operation against the PKK-YPG, said about the aforementioned organic relationship at a congressional session in 2015:
“Is it as surprising to you that the Turks may be upset with us by arming the YPG in Syria since they’re so closely aligned with the PKK?… I just got back from Turkey. They are not okay with this. They think this is the dumbest idea in the world and I agree with them… If you’re wondering why Turkey’s a little upset we’re arming people inside of Syria aligned with the terrorist group that’s finding the Turkish government… Turkey could do more but I think this whole concept is quite frankly absurd.”
Meanwhile, as opposed to what is claimed, the PKK-YPG has no demographic representation in the areas it seized where Turkey is carrying out an operation now. The fact that 300,000 Kurds fleeing the Syrian civil war fled not to areas dominated by the PKK, but to Turkey, where millions of Kurds live as equal citizens, is the clearest indication of this. In other words, Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring is not against an ethnic group, but against a terrorist organization.
Turkey’s operation in northern Syria is a legitimate right granted to the country by NATO. In addition, some bilateral agreements, such as the Adana Accord signed between Turkey and Syria in 1998, give Ankara the right to cross-border operations to combat terrorism. It is not clear on what legal grounds dozens of Western countries, including the U.S. and France, which strongly oppose Turkey’s presence in the region, have troops in Syria today.
The claim that the YPG is a structure fighting Daesh is a myth. The YPG is a terrorist organization that is just a secular version of Daesh. The fact that they have now released Daesh terrorists they held in jails as a trump card over the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TSK) operation, as they did earlier in Raqqa, is evidence of this. In contrast, Turkey, which has lost hundreds of its citizens in acts of terrorism by Daesh, is the state staging the most effective fight against the organization in the region. Turkey has stopped nearly 8,000 Daesh terrorists trying to enter Syria from various parts of the world, especially Europe, as well as neutralizing thousands of them in military operations.
Should the U.S. and Europe not have at least one legal, logical or humanitarian justification to oppose the operation by their ally, Turkey, against the terrorist organization?