Sir — India and Turkey are fully functioning democracies which is why both nations are under direct attack from terrorist groups. The writer of the article titled, “Rojava: Road to Kurdish Motherland” (February 17) by Makhan Sakia, however, has unfairly targeted Turkey and tried to discredit its President by distorting facts.
PKK (so-called Kurdistan Workers Party) is an organisation recognised and listed as terrorist by the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia for past couple of decades. PYD or YPG are the extensions of PKK operating in Syria. This was stated not only by Ash Carter, former US Secretary of Defense, but also by Dan Coats, US National Intelligence Director in front of the US Senate Intelligence Committee on February 13, 2018.
However, the US opted to cooperate with a terrorist organization in the fight against another, i.e. PYD/YPG against ISIS/DAESH.
Turkey, the Turkish Government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been in the forefront to convince the Syrian leadership to grant civil rights to all its nationals, including the Kurds, to register them as citizens. The Syrian leadership has never done so, triggering uprisings in the country which allowed DAESH to find fertile ground in the region.
PYD/YPG, together with YPJ, its women faction, receive their instructions from the PKK leadership based in the Qandil mountain, in Northern Iraq.
How a Marxist-leninist organization could collaborate on the ground with the military might of the US is a subject of serious concern and academic discussion, just as how and why on October 12, 2017, the PYD/YPG allowed 250 Islamic State terrorists (3,000 including family members) to leave freely and peacefully the town of Raqqa, the capital of DAESH, a.k.a. so-called Islamic State, in Syria.
Turkey, for its part, will never allow the cross-border terrorist attacks on its soil, be it DAESH (ISIS) or PYD/YPG or PKK. Turkey hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees on its own territory who fled not only the brutal regime of Damascus, but also from the PYD/YPG which rules Northern Syrian towns; 350,000 thousand of these refugees are the Kurds of Syria. The Kurds, Arabs and Turcomans who sought shelter in Turkey are looking forward to going back to their villages and towns once the region is cleared of terrorists including PYD/YPG and DAESH.
Operation Olive Branch against DAESH, PYD/PKK since January 20, 2018 might have irritated many including so called “international affairs experts” around the globe.
Apart from expecting them to get their facts right before contributing articles to the media, I may refer them to Amnesty International’s report titled ‘We had nowhere to go: Forced displacement and demolitions in Northern Syria’. So far, the cross-border counter terrorism operation has been carried out successfully, with no civilian casualties.
Dr Makhan Sakia responds:
The Turkish Ambassador alleges facts have been distorted in my article but fails to mention any such ‘distortions’. It is clear he is simply defending his President. Nowhere have I said that the Turkish President is not democratically elected. I have neither targeted the Turkish President nor Turkey but have discussed the issue of ‘Rojava’, which has been described as the future homeland for the Kurds by many.
The Ambassador’s comments only contains a personal attack on me and some sort of description of the PKK, YPG/PYD and how they are viewed by various countries and organizations.