The political wing of a terrorist group that has repeatedly attacked Türkiye while receiving weapons and training support from the U.S. government has hired a U.S.-based PR firm to defend its interests in Washington, according to documents reviewed by Anadolu Agency (AA).
The Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political branch of the terrorist group PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the YPG, signed a six-month lobbying contract with public relations firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
The SDC, which is the political body of the PKK/YPG in northeast Syria, signed the contract with the PR firm on Oct. 12, according to official documents filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
The contract includes "government relations services and strategic counsel on matters before the U.S. government. Specifically, Brownstein is being engaged to help the SDC attain and to expand its engagement with the U.S. administration as an interlocutor when dealing with issues related to North-East Syria."
This goal in particular could set off alarms in Türkiye, which has long fought efforts by terrorist groups such as the YPG/PKK to establish a "terrorist corridor" in northern Syria, an area not controlled by Damascus lying along Türkiye's southeastern border.
In recent years, Ankara has carried out several cross-border military operations to ensure the safety of Syrian locals and prevent any terrorist formation along its borders. The PKK/YPG is known for sending members to infiltrate Türkiye to carry out terrorist attacks and occasionally rocket attacks targeting Turkish towns on the other side of the border. It is also known that the terrorist group transports members between Syria and Iraq through the two countries’ land border. The PKK’s senior cadres hide out in mountainous territories in northern Iraq, also close to the Turkish border.
Access to ‘halls of power’
The document also notes that the PR firm's efforts will "include educating policymakers in the U.S. administration that the AANES project is the best solution to achieve the enduring defeat of terrorism and a lasting solution to the Syrian crisis," referring to the so-called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, or the area controlled by the YPG/PKK.
Services that are to be provided include arranging meetings and communicating with the House and Senate leadership, the House and Senate Foreign Relations, Appropriations and Armed Services committees, senior administration officials in the State, Defense and Commerce departments, and U.N. agencies.
Brownstein has also been contracted to lobby federal agencies to promote further investments in northeastern Syria.
Brownstein's Nadeam Elshami, a former chief of staff for Nancy Pelosi, the long-serving former U.S. House speaker, is listed as the individual who will lobby on behalf of the terrorist YPG/PKK.
The agreement is worth $50,000 per month from October through to the end of March. The contract renews automatically for another six-month term unless the parties mutually agree to new terms.
The PKK is a banned terrorist organization in the United States, Britain, the European Union and Türkiye. Its YPG wing operates under the name of "SDF" as Washington's partner in counter-Daesh efforts in Syria, despite strenuous objections by Türkiye, which says using one terror group to fight another makes no sense.
U.S. support for the PKK/YPG, including weapons shipments and training, has long strained ties between Washington and Ankara. Successive U.S. administrations have refrained from designating the YPG as a terrorist group, despite Türkiye's repeated objections.
The YPG hired its first lobbyist in the U.S. capital Washington, D.C. in April 2021. According to a report by the Foreign Lobby website, the PKK/YPG signed an agreement with the Jim Dornan Strategies lobbying firm.
An estimated 3 million people live in areas controlled by the PKK/YPG in Syria. The terrorist group, which advocates for independent Kurdish entities, recruits members from the Syrian Kurdish population but has limited support among Syrian Kurds. Ethnic Arabs make up most of the population in areas controlled by the terrorists, most of whom want the group out of the territory.
The PKK/YPG is known to derive its funds from oil wells, which are Syria’s biggest, in regions they occupied after the departure of Daesh.
U.S. forces in the area have placed PKK/YPG terrorists to guard these oil fields when they moved into the territory after Türkiye launched Operation Peace Spring in October 2019 against the PKK/YPG and Daesh.