Turkey Discriminates Against Kurds Fleeing Syrian War
LONDON -- Turkey has been accused of discriminating against Kurds trying to flee the civil war in neighboring Syria, including Kurdish casualties of the fighting there, according to the influential International Crisis Group (ICG).
The Brussels-based organization this week published its latest update on the Syria crisis, a 48-page report ominously entitled "The Rising Costs of Turkey's Syrian Quagmire."
Among its findings, based in part on first-hand interviews in the Turkey-Syria border region, the ICG cited complaints from Kurds in Turkey that their Syrian brethren were being treated differently from Syrian Arabs.
It quoted an unnamed official of Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) as claiming that wounded Kurds had been turned away from the main crossing point at Gaziantep on the suspicion that they were members of the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD).
In contrast, according to the informant, the crossing was not only open to Syrian Arabs, but also "they carry weapons and gangs back and forth in ambulances."
The report also quoted BDP officials as complaining that on-the-ground humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria had excluded Kurdish areas.
The ICG noted that the rise of the PYD in Kurdish areas of Syria had been one of the motives behind the Turkish government's decision to open a peace process in late-2012 with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the PYD's sister movement.
However, as the fragile settlement process with the PKK stumbled on domestically, the report said, relations with the PYD remained hostile.
Tensions over the treatment of Syrian Kurds have prompted BDP-organized protests in the border region as well as in Ankara and Istanbul. The report noted that, when some 1,000 Kurds last October attempted to cross the border from Qamishli in Syria to Nusaybin, Turkish police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse them.
Turkish officials rejected the claims of discrimination by quoting several relief agencies as saying some aid was reaching Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria, mainly through the Senyurt crossing in Mardin, and a second crossing point opposite Kobane.
The ICG report noted the first-ever United Nations aid convoy also crossed from Nusaybin in Mardin to Syrian Kurdish areas through Qamishli on March 20 this year.
Describing Turkey's evolving relationship with the PYD, which has declared autonomy in areas of Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) the ICG said Ankara was initially uncompromising, accusing the PYD of collaborating with the regime in Damascus and threatening other Kurdish groups in Syria.
"Ankara's reflex was to prevent the PKK/PYD from advancing in northern Syria, and it was even accused of helping other Syrian opposition groups, including jihadis, fight the PYD," the report said.
"This changed in spring 2013," it added. "In the midst of an ongoing settlement process with the PKK, and reflecting efforts to diversify reliance on Kurdish factions backed by Massoud Barzani, the Kurdistan Regional Government leader in Iraq, officials held a first meeting with PYD leader Saleh Muslim, in Cairo in May. Meetings in Istanbul and Ankara in July and August followed."
However, this positive mood eventually fizzled out as Turkey insisted on the PYD joining the opposition National Coalition and maintaining Syria's unity, which would have meant it shelving its plans to declare autonomy.
The ICG concluded that, as long as the PKK problem remained unresolved, Turkey saw the PYD as a security threat and remained suspicious of its disruptive potential in the difficult PKK peace process.
"Officials continue to accuse it of cooperating with the Syrian regime, as do some international officials," the report said.
But, although high-level visible meetings had been suspended, channels of communication remained open, the ICG said, noting that PYD officials from the Kobane canton visited Ankara on March 14 for talks with Turkish officials and foreign missions.
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