Does Washington have a policy toward Syria’s Kurds?
The view from Washington about US policy toward Syria may be more confusing than it looks from Turkey.
A recent Financial Times blog ended by saying, “Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.”
I spent the last week in Washington, which coincided with the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and every day I reread those lines: “Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.”
I was in Washington with Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), and the party’s parliament member from Van, Nazmi Gur, to participate as a panelist at the first such gathering the BDP had organized. It was titled “New Middle East and the Kurdish Role.’’ Saleh Muslim, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), was scheduled to address the opening session of the daylong panel held at the National Press Club and attended by US experts from the government and think-tank community as well as by 200 Kurds [from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran] living in all parts of the US.
I knew a visa application for Muslim had been made at the US Embassy in Stockholm. The US Embassy in Ankara was also informed of Muslim’s plan to go to Washington.
