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| Yesterday's Erdogan-Barzani meeting and the title of Michael Weiss' piece |
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has now played his
“Kurdish card” -- not to win Syria back, but mire Turkey and hopefully walk
away with an Alawite state.
This explains why he mobilized his Qaeda-linked
surrogates to take control of Kurdish areas in the north of Syria on the border
with Turkey.
In the face of the Syrian uprising, Assad forces
originally pulled out of those areas in July and August 2012, hoping the vacuum
would be filled by Turkey’s nemesis at the time, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK).
The March 2013 peace deal between Turkey and the PKK
spoiled Assad’s plan.
His fallback in recent weeks on his Qaeda-linked
proxies – Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) –
is to keep the plan alive.
In context, I can’t think of a better eye-opener than
yesterday’s commentary by Michael Weiss fittingly titled “Assad’s no enemy of
al-Qaeda.” You
can read it here.
Overnight, news broke of jihadist groups linked to
al-Qaeda -- read Assad -- having taken hostage around 200 Kurdish civilians
after violent clashes with Kurdish fighters in two villages of northeastern
Syria.
“Fighters of Jabhat
al-Nusra and the ISIL have seized control of Tall Aren village in Aleppo
province and are laying siege to another village nearby, Tall Hassel,” said the
London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Clashes between jihadists
and Kurdish fighters have raged for some two weeks, after jihadists were
expelled from the key town of Ras al-Ayn on the Turkish border.
The fighting claimed a
prominent casualty on Tuesday, as a car bomb planted by Jihadists killed
Kurdish leader Isa Huso, a leading member of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party
(PYD), a pro-PKK organization of Syrian Kurds and the
most powerful faction of the ethnic group in the region (see
yesterday’s post).
Politically, Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met yesterday with Nachervan Barzani, prime
minister of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government and nephew of KRG President Massoud
Barzani.
The two-hour meeting at
the Prime Ministry in Ankara was closed to the press.
The talks are believed to
have focused on bilateral relations, the PYD’s agenda in Syria and the upcoming
three-day Kurdish National Conference.
The latter opens in Erbil
on August 19 with 500 Kurdish delegates attending, mostly from Iraq, Turkey,
Syria and Iran.
Before Barzani's visit,
PYD co-chair Salih Muslim, a graduate of Istanbul Technical University
in the late 1970s, was able -- on Turkey’s invitation -- to fly from Erbil to
Istanbul after 35 years.
Foreign Minister Ahmed
Davutoglu told reporters after meeting with Muslim he
acknowledged Syrian Kurds’ need to establish a “civilian administration” in
their areas, just as other opposition groups have. He warned such provisional
measures were possible provided the administration does not gain “permanent
status.”
The understanding is
that such a provisional local administration would include other ethnic groups
such as Christians, Turkmen and non-Kurds who live in the Kurdish-majority
areas of northeastern Syria.
Turkish
columnist Sedat
Ergin, writing for Hurriyet daily, says Turkey’s dilemma of late was
to choose one of two options that would serves it interests best: Control of
Syria’s Kurdish areas by the PYD or by the Qaeda-linked groups?
“We
understand from Muslim’s interview with Ali Çelebi for Özgür Gündem daily,” writes Ergin, “that
the Justice and Development (AKP) government has gone for the first option.
“…This being the case,
instead of approaching the Syrian Kurds with animosity, building a permanent
friendship with them starting today appears to be a wiser, more realistic
policy. The path to this passes along a road that approaches them with respect,
knows them and talks to them as counterparts.
“From this aspect,
Muslim’s visit has been a positive step in the sense that a dialogue has been
launched between Turkey and Syrian Kurds; also, it complements the peace process
launched with the aim of solving the Kurdish issue domestically.”
Separately, Turkey
has also stepped up economic relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government in
northern Iraq.
The KRG is now pushing
ahead with plans to build an oil pipeline between Turkey and northern Iraq
despite objections from Baghdad and the United States.