Terrorism has become the greatest threat to Syria’s political unity and territorial integrity, as well as to regional peace and stability, Türkiye's permanent representative to the U.N. said Thursday.
"The current stalemate is unsustainable for Syria, and it is unsustainable for the wider region," Sedat Önal told a U.N. Security Council session on the political and humanitarian situation in Syria.
"Therefore, it is high time for a realistic stocktaking by all relevant actors," he added.
"The essential requirement for a sustainable solution to the Syrian crisis is to achieve a national consensus in line with the expectations of the Syrian people," he said. "This requires all stakeholders to review their positions and make paradigm shifts where necessary in order to contribute to lasting peace and stability."
Önal said a change of attitude is needed particularly in three critical issues, with a review of the Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process under U.N. facilitation being the first.
Second, according to Önal, is the "mistake" of sub-contracting the fight against Daesh to another terrorist organization, the PKK/YPG, which was later rebranded as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
"This separatist entity is neither Syrian nor democratic; it is nothing but the PKK/YPG itself," he said.
Önal added that sequential approaches that condition the return of refugees to advances in the political process have not brought the desired results so far.
"Creating the necessary conditions for the voluntary, safe and dignified return of Syrian refugees must be a part and parcel of the settlement process now," he added.
The YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, recognized as a terrorist group by the United States, Türkiye and the European Union. However, Washington calls the YPG its biggest ally in driving Daesh, another terrorist group, out of Syria’s north and east over the last four years.
Commemorating YPG terrorists
Similarly, on Thursday, U.S. soldiers deployed in the region attended a commemoration event for members of the PKK/YPG who died last year in two helicopter crashes in Iraq's northern Kurdistan Regional Government region.
According to posts on social media accounts close to the terrorist organization, the PKK/YPG organized the event in the city of Qamishli in Syria's Hassakeh province for nine terrorists of a so-called counterterrorism unit who died in the crashes last March. They had been trained by the U.S. under the pretext of combating the Daesh terror group.
U.S. soldiers and leaders of the PKK/YPG attended the event, including Ferhat Abdi Sahin, code-named "Mazloum Abdi," and Salih Muslim as well as several other members of the terror group.
In the footage posted on social media, three U.S. soldiers can be seen laying wreaths for the deceased terrorists.
Two of the soldiers also attended a ceremony together with Abdi on Wednesday for Nevruz, a festival marking the first day of spring and the new year.
During the celebration, the soldiers held the same torch as Abdi and lit the Nevruz holiday fire.
Taking advantage of the power vacuum created by the Syrian civil war in 2011 and with Washington’s help, 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.
Türkiye, which has troops inside Syria, and Turkish-backed opposition groups in Syria’s northwest routinely clash 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.
Türkiye has been home to some 3.7 million Syrians who fled persecution and brutality in their country when the civil war broke out in 2011 after the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity. A decade of fighting has left at least half a million Syrians dead and more than 14 million in need of humanitarian aid.
Ankara has been a vocal backer of the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a political solution to the Syrian crisis. Assad’s insistence on ignoring the political method, however, still poses a major problem for the return of his citizens.