The PYD’s dilemma

Ankara allowing the passage of President Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Regional Governmet (KRG) peshmerga forces into Kobani was portrayed as "a surprising U-turn." There may be a single reason for this. Western media outlets interpret Turkey's views of Syria and Kurds within the context of the U.S. strategy in the region. They don't know the details of meetings between Ankara and the PKK, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria and the Turkish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). The most critical disagreement during these meetings has been, from the start, the Kurdish side's aversion to foreign soldiers. These three groups haven't wanted soldiers either from Turkey or from the Iraqi KRG to come to Rojava - the Kurdish-populated areas in northern Syria - because they predicted that once these soldiers enter the region they will stay there eventually causing the status and power balance of Rojava to change. The PKK and the PYD requested arms and safe passage for PKK fighters in Turkey. Ankara has opposed this from the point of principles and strategy - allowing its own citizens into another country to fight there might be a cause for declaration of war in itself and the ensuing war would undoubtedly spill into Turkey. The government also thought it might get stuck in a very difficult situation in the event that the arms sent there would be used later against Turkey. It determined that the possibility of provocation is high in a pre-electoral period.

Put differently, if the PKK had not tried to use the Kobani issue as a tool for blackmail in the reconciliation process and hadn't defined Turkey as a threat, a very different situation would have arisen. The PYD has acted in a rather opportunistic manner in the last three years. It has forcibly suppressed all Kurdish and non-Kurdish political movements in Rojava that have not bowed to it. Most of these groups had to stop their activities and leave the region. It watched the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) commit massacres while making a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The PYD and ISIS have long sought to capture new territories without fighting each other. When ISIS recently attacked Rojava, the PYD was instantly portrayed as a victim of persecution and Turkey's role was put forward. One of the peculiarities here is that while ridiculous claims about Turkey's support of ISIS were made Turkey was also asked to provide the PYD with weapons.

However, when the ISIS advance couldn't be stopped, the whole picture changed. There was a need for both additional weapons and fighters to enable the fighters in Kobani to resist the onslaught. At this point we should underline an important weakness of the PYD: the civilians there couldn't be turned into fighters to help the local government in its struggle against ISIS. There were at least 20,000 men of fighting age in Kobani. With a transfer of arms from the PKK headquarters in Iraq's Qandil Mountains to these people, a large-scale resistance could have been built. But that didn't happen because popular support for the PYD was low. Indeed, almost the entire population of Kobani has already fled to Turkey.

With the balance being so delicate, a series of decisions were made at a meeting held in early October between Ankara and the HDP with the purpose of accelerating the reconciliation process. It was apparent that such an acceleration of the talks would increase and legitimize Turkey's aid to Kobani. Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of the HDP, expressed his satisfaction after the meeting. Meanwhile, the road map that had been prepared by the government was taken to İmralı Island where the PKK's leader Abdullah Öcalan is imprisoned and to the PKK leadership in the Qandil Mountains and was approved by all parties. The government laid down only one condition for progress: maintaining public order in southeastern Turkey - that is to say, putting an end to activities like blocking roads, extorting money, abductions and burning construction vehicles. The PKK promised to meet this condition by Oct. 15, but only a few days later the Oct. 6-7 Kobani demonstrations broke out following a call to take to the streets. So the real problem is the ongoing inability of the PKK and PYD to carry out a consistent strategy.