Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is right in saying that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and People’s Protection Units (YPG) are one and the same, according to an analysis by British publication The Times.
“President Erdogan, rightly, says there is no real difference between the PKK and the YPG - and that the U.S. is effectively aiding an organization it has itself proscribed as terrorists,” says Middle East Correspondent Richard Spencer.
The U.S has supplied the PYD terror organization and its armed wing, the YPG, with more than 5,000 truckloads of weapons to allegedly use in the fight against Daesh, despite Ankara’s warnings that the fact they are the Syrian offshoots of the PKK terror organization.
Spencer went on to slam the YPG as a guerrilla group whose “ideology veers between old-school Marxism and the cult of an obscure anarchist philosopher called Murray Bookchin.”
The analysis further stated that the U.S. only used one enemy to fight another, as Erdoğan has frequently stated that Washington was using one terror group to finish off another, namely Daesh.
“It was a case of the enemy of my bigger enemy — Isis — becoming my friend; in this case, however, infuriating an older friend, Turkey.”
Trump said last month he was bringing home the some 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, saying they had succeeded in their mission to defeat Daesh and that Turkey would take over the final stages of the military campaign.
U.S. troops in Syria have been cooperating with the YPG/PKK to fight Daesh, but Erdoğan on Tuesday stated that the YPG’s fight with Daesh in Syria was "a huge lie."
“Mr Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria implicitly abandons the YPG, and its leaders promptly went to Damascus to seek a deal to protect its new fiefdom from Turkish assault,” the Times concluded.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. The YPG and PYD are its Syrian extensions.
