Kurdish Fighters Accused Of 'Ethnic Cleansing' In Syria
The multi-sided Syrian civil war has been fought across fragile and often confusing alliances involving government forces, rebels, and interested external parties.
Last week, the Turkish military has been pounding areas purportedly under the control of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD) through its armed wing the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria's North- a Syrian Kurdish rebel outfit with links to Turkey's homegrown rebel group Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).
The complexity of the matter is that Turkey's enemies happen to be a US ally in an ongoing effort to militarily unseat Assad and fend off extremist elements that joined the fray.
"The PKK is carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Syria through its offshoot there, the PYD. The group has been doing this with the support of Russia. The PYD goes to territories where there is no or a small Kurdish population, and works to deport non-Kurdish ethnic population out of these areas," remarked Turkish MP Yasin Aktay in an interview with Al Jazeera.
The accusation came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized America's coddling of Turkey's Kurdish enemies in US-led effort in Syria. Recently, Russia announced its support for enlarging Kurdish participation in Syria negotiations, a move vehemently opposed by Ankara.
"At the end of the day, an ethnic group [the Kurds] which has a minor population in Syria is trying to take over a very large part of the country," Aktay added in a report by Newsweek.
Aktay also noted that if PYD will be allowed to have its way, the Kurdish rebel group would be able to create a "corridor along the Syria-Turkey border" which Turkey deems intolerable as it threatens to upset the latter's national security.
"If this humanitarian corridor was blocked, which PYD seeks to achieve, people cannot go on with their lives in Aleppo and they will try to take refuge in Turkey, fleeing ethnic cleansing. They are trying to create a corridor through the Syria-Turkey border. This creates an obvious security risk for our country," Aktay further explained as quoted by New Europe.
