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Ankara’s PYD headache

There is little Turkey can do at this stage to prevent Kurdish advances in northern Syria as they receive munitions to battle the Islamic State.
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Turkey’s failed Syria policy has forged a double-edged problem for Ankara — with the United States on one edge and Russia on the other — that it is finding hard to overcome. At the heart of the matter lies the military assistance the United States is providing to the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the umbrella organization of the Syrian Kurds, to fight the Islamic State (IS).

Deepening Ankara's exasperation are reports that the PYD is successfully cozying up to Moscow and getting munitions from there. These developments come as the Turkish military is involved in an all-out war against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey and northern Iraq.

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