The wresting of the strategic border town of Ras al-Ain on July 19 by a Syrian Kurdish militia from jihadist groups has prompted worries in Turkey that the Kurds of Syria are following in the footsteps of their brethren in Northern Iraq and are heading toward self-rule. But the chairman of the group known as the Democratic Union Party (PYD) told Al-Monitor that Turkey has “nothing to fear.” Speaking via Skype, Salih Muslim asserted, “We have no intention of breaking away from Syria, nor of setting up a federal entity along the lines of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq.”
All that Syria’s Kurds want is to be able to freely express their long and brutally suppressed identity and to run their own affairs in a string of largely Kurdish-populated enclaves along the Turkish border. The PYD won control over these a year ago when President Bashar al-Assad re-deployed his forces to fight opposition rebels elsewhere in Syria.
