How to deal with Syria’s Kurds

[flamingdem]

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21621872-emergence-another-kurdish-entity-its-borders-unsettles-government-how-deal?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/how_to_deal_with_syria_s_kurds

A SENIOR commander of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a rebel group that has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey since 1984, declared on September 21st that the Ankara government had until October 1st to meet several conditions. “Otherwise we may resume our war,” said Cemil Bayik at the PKK’s headquarters in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq. On October 1st the government duly issued a directive that lets unspecified observers monitor its peace talks with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader (pictured on the flag). A long-running PKK demand was thus fulfilled and an 18-month-old, mutually observed, ceasefire salvaged. But for how long?

The question is gaining urgency as fighters calling themselves Islamic State (IS) continue their onslaught against Ain al-Arab (known as Kobane in Kurdish), a Syrian town with a majority Kurdish population on the Turkish border. Kobane and a cluster of villages is one of the three enclaves governed by Syria’s Kurds. Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, ceded them to a group known as the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) so that he could concentrate his fight against rebels elsewhere. The PYD and its armed wing, the People’s Defence Units (YPG), are closely linked to the PKK.

Mr Bayik insists that Turkey is backing IS fighters and that this is because they want to “crush” the Syrian Kurds’ fledgling autonomy. Turkey denies these claims. It supported the American-led coalition against IS, albeit only after the group released 46 Turkish hostages, seized at the Turkish consulate in Mosul on June 10th. As The Economist went to press, parliament was poised to pass a vaguely worded bill that allows Turkish troops to intervene against “terrorist groups” inside Iraq and Syria. It also allows foreign troops to use Turkish bases in the fight against the jihadists, a move that is bound to stir controversy among pro-secular Turks and the pious base of the ruling Justice and Development party (AK).

Turkey is deeply unnerved by the emergence of yet another Kurdish entity on its frontier. Making matters worse is that, unlike Iraqi Kurdistan, which is now Turkey’s biggest regional ally and trading partner, the Syrian Kurdish region, known as Rojava in Kurdish, is dominated by Turkey’s biggest foe, the PKK.