En intressant artikel i Al-Monitor om Turkiets förhandlingar med PKK/PYD:
Turkey’s Syrian Kurdish Gamble: A Double Edged Sword
By: Amberin Zaman for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on August 11.
Salih Muslim, the leader of the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) which is often referred to as the Syrian “franchise” of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish rebel group that has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey since 1984, is expected to come to Ankara at the start of this week for a second round of talks with Turkish diplomats and security officials aimed at normalizing relations.
The first round held in Istanbul on July 25 stirred much excitement as it marked the first time that the government had, after a clutch of secret assignations with the man, extended an official invitation to Muslim.
En stötesten i förhandlingarna är Turkiets stöd till de Al Qaeda-affilierade jihadister som legat i strider med kurderna de senaste veckorna:
Was Turkey finally overcoming its hostility to Syria’s most influential and only armed Kurdish group? The immediate answer seemed to be a big “No.” Only days after the Istanbul meeting, Muslim complained that Turkey was continuing to allow jihadist groups challenging PYD rule in a string of border settlements to use its territory to funnel weapons to mount further attacks.
Not only that, Turkey is continuing to keep border crossings with PYD held areas sealed in an effective blockade over the Kurds, adding to the humanitarian crisis triggered by the encirclement of several Syrian Kurdish towns by al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist forces, including Jabat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham in Syria (ISIS).*
*ISIS, Al Qaedas paraplyorganisation i Irak och Syrien, har nyligen bytt namn till ISIL för att betona sina anspråk också på Libanon.
Man kan fråga sig varför Turkiet nu förhandlar med ärkefienden PKK. Men Turkiet vill förstås till varje pris förhindra att striderna i Syrien - som man tappat kontrollen över - sprids till Turkiet:
The conflict in Syria has so tangled the Kurdish issue that it is slipping out of Turkey’s control. And “a lot of blame lies with Ankara,” Fehim Isik, a veteran Kurdish activist and writer, told Al-Monitor.
“The Kurdish question is becoming internationalized, and this is Turkey’s worst nightmare,” Isik asserted. Moreover, the jihadist attacks have helped unite PYD with its Syrian Kurdish rivals, if only for the moment. “This is al-Qaeda’s greatest strategic blunder,” Michael D. Weiss, a columnist for NOW Lebanon who closely follows the Kurds, told Al-Monitor.
Kurderna håller dock fler dörrar öppna, och förhandlar även med Iran:
It is no coincidence that Muslim flew to Tehran ahead of his Ankara trip. After meetings with senior Iranian officials, Muslim asserted that Iran endorsed the PYD’s plans to establish a transitional authority to run the Kurdish region for the duration of the war and “agreed on the necessity to fight the common enemy, the extremist fighters.”
Det kan nog vara klokt eftersom experter tvivlar på att Turkiet kommer att lyckas i sina försök att mäkla fred mellan kurderna och jihadisterna:
But Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a Shillman Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum who tracks the ISIS, disagrees. “I do not think that mediation can be successful because the conflict has gone beyond a mere isolated local crash and spilled over across areas where Kurdish and jihadist forces have co-existed,” he told Al-Monitor.
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Senast redigerad av Regulus 2013-08-13 kl. 22:23.