Assad to Erdogan: "Help my opposition, & you might as well help the PKK & build a second Kurdistan in your backyard!"

Turkey accuses Syria of harboring Kurdish rebels

Published Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Syria is allowing Kurdish rebels who are fighting Turkish forces to establish bases in Syrian territory, as ties between the two neighboring countries deteriorate, a Turkish minister said Wednesday.

Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said Turkish intelligence indicates that Syria is allowing rebels to establish themselves in areas close to the Turkish border.

Some Kurdistan Workers' Party rebels have even taken charge of running small Syrian towns, Sahin claimed, describing the development as an apparent act of revenge against Turkey.

Turkey has reacted to the popular uprising in Syria by urging its leader, Bashar Assad, to step down, by accepting some 23,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, as well as hosting civilian and armed members of the Syrian opposition.

Syria has previously accused Turkey of allowing its territory to be used as a launching pad for armed rebels and Islamist militants seeking to dislodge Assad from power.

Kurdish rebels have long used bases in northern Iraq to launch attacks in Turkey.

"Terrorist groupings that were not there a year ago have been spotted," Sahin told private NTV television. "Syria is turning a blind eye to terrorist groupings in areas close to the border to put Turkey in difficulty and perhaps as a way to take revenge on Turkey."

Turkish officials have accused Syria of reviving its ties with the Kurdish rebels, and Sahin's statement came a week after three Turkish military officers were killed in fighting with suspected rebels in the mountainous region of Amanos near the Syrian border.

It was the first such clash reported there in several years.

Syria severed its ties Kurdish rebels in 1998 after Turkey threatened military action. Ties between the two countries also improved after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power in 2003, and Damascus was cooperating with Turkey in its fight against the Kurdish rebels until ties soured over Syria's bloody crackdown on civilians.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party rebels took up arms in Turkey in 1984 for greater autonomy in the Kurdish-populated southeast of the country. At least 45,000 have died in the conflict.
(AP, Al-Akhbar)

Via FLC

"...Recently, though, Ankara has backpedaled, abandoning its aggression and sliding back toward Washington’s position. With this, Turkey has entered the third phase of its Syrian policy, falling nearly in line with Washington’s policy of “wait and see and hope for an orderly transition — for now.”
What could explain Turkey’s new posture? Many factors come to mind, from the fear of getting bogged down in a war with a neighboring country to being left alone to fight al-Assad. But one key factor is its fear of two Kurdistans.
Syria’s restless and well-organized Kurdish minority, for the most part, does not trust Turkey. Instead, the Syrian Kurds are looking to their counterparts in Iraq’s Kurdish region, the Middle East’s first autonomous Kurdish political entity. Some Syrian Kurdish leaders aspire to gain what the Iraqi Kurds have: their own Kurdistan.
Turkey can deal with one Kurdistan, but two might be too many.
In recent years, Ankara’s policy with the Iraqi Kurds has evolved from open hostility in 2003, when the Iraqi Kurds built their Kurdistan, to open friendship today.
In this regard, the Iraqi Kurds have helped Turkey by embracing a crucial strategy: Since 2003, the Iraqi Kurds have gradually abandoned their policy of turning a blind eye to the presence of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish Kurdish terror group that fights Turkey inside northern Iraq.
As far as Turkey is concerned, anyone who hosts the PKK is an enemy. Seeing this plain fact, the Iraqi Kurds sacrificed the PKK to ally with Turkey against Iraq’s increasingly authoritarian central government in Baghdad......
So far, so good. But what if there were two Kurdistans, with a second to emerge in Syria after al-Assad’s potential fall? Could Turkey deal with the second one with the same ease it has learned to deal with the first?
Maybe, if the Syrian Kurds also denied the PKK safe haven. One could then envision commercial ties cementing the relationship between Turkey and the Syrian Kurdistan, similar to Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdistan.
This could be a tall order, though. While the PKK has had negligible support among the Iraqi Kurds, this has not been the case among the Syrian Kurds. Granted, the Syrian Kurdish umbrella group, the Kurdistan National Council, has excluded the PKK from its membership. But still, some intelligence analysts suggest that the PKK has grassroots appeal inside Syria.
Then there is the Syrian regime’s complicity on the PKK issue. Damascus harbored the PKK for years, only stopping in the past decade to improve relations with Turkey. Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, however, al-Assad has once again allowed the PKK to have an armed presence inside Syria in retaliation for Turkey’s support to the Syrian uprising.
The prospect of a second Kurdistan, one with a menacing PKK presence in it, now looms on Turkey’s radar screen. The al-Assad regime has caught on to that fear, allowing the PKK ample room to operate inside Syria, speaking to that primal Turkish strategic anxiety and sending a message to Ankara: “Help my opposition, and you might as well help the PKK and build a second Kurdistan in your backyard.”

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