Elements of the PKK terrorist group’s Syrian offshoot YPG/PYD carried out an attack against the Syrian Kurdistan Democratic Party (SKDP) office in Syria’s Hassakeh and Qamishli on Friday, security sources said.
The attack, carried out by armed assailants, set the office building on fire, causing material damage.
The SKDP previously announced that it would boycott the upcoming election, organized by the terrorist group, which targets all political parties that offer an alternative to their occupation in northern Syria. They aim to keep putting pressure on movements and parties and do not give them space to exist.
The terrorist group is planning to organize elections in Syria, a move viewed as void. A U.N. resolution adopted in 2015 by the U.N. Security Council, which the U.S. is also a party to, calls for a cease-fire and political settlement in the war-torn country and highlights that the only sustainable solution to the crisis in Syria is an inclusive and Syrian-led political process. It calls for commitment to Syria’s unity and territorial integrity.
The terrorist group conveniently contravened the resolution and launched a "local election" process in northeastern Syria. It initially set the date as May 30 before postponing it to June 11. So-called elections are planned in regions and towns, including Jazeera, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Afrin, where YPG has strongholds. Turkish sources say PKK aims to achieve an "autonomous" status first in Syria before moving to the next stage of its plan: an independent state.
Taking advantage of the power vacuum created by the Syrian civil war in 2011, the PKK/YPG has since 2015 occupied several Syrian provinces, including Arab-majority Deir el-Zour, a resource-rich region bordering Iraq, bisected by the Euphrates River and home to dozens of tribal communities.
The terrorist group has forced many locals to migrate, bringing in its militants to change the regional demographic structure, conducting arbitrary arrests, kidnapping children of local tribes for forced recruitment and assassinating tribe leaders to yoke local groups.
It has also seized the region's oil wells – Syria's largest – and smuggles oil to the Syrian regime, despite U.S. sanctions, to generate revenue for its activities.
Since then, U.S. forces in Syria have trained thousands of YPG/PKK terrorists in their military bases in the region under the pretext of combating terrorism.
The U.S. has also provided YPG/PKK terrorists with huge amounts of weapons and combat equipment.
Türkiye, which has troops inside Syria and Turkish-backed opposition groups in Syria's northwest, routinely clashes with the PKK/YPG, which seeks to establish a terror corridor along the country's border.
Since 2016, Türkiye has carried out successive ground operations – Euphrates Shield in 2016, Olive Branch in 2018 and Peace Spring in 2019 – to expel the PKK/YPG and Daesh forces from border areas of northern Syria, as well as Iraq and to enable the peaceful settlement of residents.
Ankara, which has taken some steps for possible normalization with Damascus last year, has also repeatedly called on its NATO ally to cut off support to the PKK/YPG, something heavily weighing on bilateral relations.