Turkey backtracking on 'red lines' for Syria's Kurds
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reportedly agreed to accept Kurdish participation at the Syria congress in Sochi, as long as those Kurds do not belong to the Democratic Union Party.
Since the outbreak of war in Syria, Turkey’s predicaments have forced it to turn a number of its red lines to yellow lines. Now, Turkey seems to be taking a step back on the Kurdish issue.
A sensitive topic these days is whether the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) — the prime mover behind the push for “democratic autonomy” in northern Syria — will be invited to the Syrian National Dialogue Congress that Russia is organizing in Sochi. In return for cooperating with Moscow and Tehran in the Astana process, Ankara wants to get dividends on the Kurdish issue. Ankara's two critical demands are known: a green light for a military move on Afrin to uproot affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and the PYD’s exclusion from the Sochi congress.
