Turkish government risks isolating Kurds, facing IS alone
Turkey's strategic missteps in handling the Kurdish fight against the Islamic State in Kobani may lead to future domestic violence.
In their fight against the Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian border town of Kobani, the Kurds expected Turkey to allow the opening of a corridor to the town, as well as to side definitively with the People's Protection Units and the Kurdistan Workers Party militants who are fighting against IS there. Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP), expressed his dismay Oct. 9 with the Turkish government.
“The common allegation is that Turkey sent more than 2,000 trucks full of weapons. Some of these weapons fell to the hands of the gangs like [Jabhat] al-Nusra and al-Qaeda. Some even debated the possibility whether the Islamic State is fighting with those weapons sent from Turkey. This created a fracture in the public,” Demirtas said. “We, on the other hand, had to engage in dozens of meetings just to send a truck full of humanitarian aid to Kobani. We just want the same legal norms to be adopted for Kobani as those legal norms applied sending aid trucks to the Free Syrian Army. Turkey did not put out a clear position for the last year when al-Nusra gangs started attacking Rojava. People watched this all step by step.”
Turkish government spokesman Besir Atalay challenged Demirtas by highlighting the Kurds’ silence when Turkmen villages in Syria came under attack and many could not escape a fatal ending. “They only care about the fate of the PYD [Democratic Union Party, whose armed wing is the People's Protection Units]. I also hope that our Kurdish citizens with conscience see this, too. The PYD is only thinking about the area it likes to take under its control,” Atalay said Oct. 10. Atalay added: “There is no one left in Kobani besides the PYD militants. They have all already come to Turkey.” Turkey received about 200,000 Kurds from Kobani in less than a week.
Demirtas insisted otherwise. “At the time, when the HDP’s extraordinary central executive board meeting was in process, we received an urgent call from Kobani and we were told that IS was about to capture the Mursitpinar border gate. What does that mean? That means the news of massacres, rapes, decapitations will start coming in any moment. We acted just like any honorable party would do. We called our people to protest. We urged them to stand by Kobani,” Demirtas said. “We did not call people to violence. We did not ask them to take up arms.”
