French daily accuses PKK leader of sacrificing Kurds for his ambitions


An article published in French daily Le Monde accuses senior PKK figure Cemil Bayık of "treason" against the Kurdish people for his personal ambitions in reaching an agreement with Bashar al-Assad about establishing an autonomous region in northern Syria.

The article written by Jean-Pierre Filiu imputes Bayık for "sacrificing" the Kurdish people in exchange for an agreement with al-Assad and claims that he uses the PKK's Syrian offshoot the Democratic Union Party's (PYD) armed-wing the People's Protection Units (YPG) to suppress the Kurdish opposition against his policies in the region. He also asserted that YPG terrorists have been conducting ethnic cleansing against non-Kurdish people in regions they control.

Last month, Bayık threatened to spread violence across cities in an interview with PKK-affiliated Fırat News Agency (ANF). He said that war will be waged everywhere, including "in the mountains, across plains and in the cities," explaining that "the war is not limited to the mountains anymore."

In recent months, thousands of Turkmens and Arabs have fled YPG terror in the town of Tal Abyad in northern Syria, as the organization conducts brutal offensives, including forcing people to migrate after confiscating their property in ethnic cleansing efforts.

Also, in August 2015 a report on the PYD was published by KurdWatch, an independent group of experts reporting on Kurdish rights' violations in Syria, that revealed information regarding the PYD's forceful recruitment and deployment of child soldiers. The report, called: "Forcible recruitment and the deployment of child soldiers by the Democratic Union Party in Syria," states that along with adults who are also forcibly conscripted by the PYD to serve in the PYD's armed wing the YPG, in the past 14 months there has been a surge in the recruitment of children as young as 12 years of age. While the recruitment process is explained as sometimes voluntary and sometimes obligatory, nevertheless it is conducted without the legal consent of the children's legal guardians.