Devlet Bahçeli, head of the government’s major ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), urged Ankara to collaborate with Syria’s Assad regime to root out U.S.-backed terrorists in the neighboring country.
Addressing the lawmakers of his party at Parliament on Tuesday, Bahçeli mentioned a new “plot” by the PKK terrorist group in Syria, referring to so-called local elections the group seeks to hold later this month.
After decades of a bloody campaign for a so-called Kurdish state encompassing Türkiye and Iraq, the PKK strives for legitimacy in Syria’s north. It plans to hold a local election on June 11 in a region controlled by its Syrian wing, the YPG, which has already dealt a blow to Syria’s territorial integrity amid the ongoing civil war in the country.
The PKK, which always promoted itself as a “political party,” has accentuated it recently in a bid to cultivate international support. The U.S. has already thrown its full support to the group’s Syrian wing under the guise of cooperation against another terrorist group, Daesh. Its plan to organize elections is viewed as null and void in Syria, which has been mired in a civil war since 2011. A U.N. resolution adopted in 2015 by the U.N. Security Council, which the U.S. is also a party to, calls for a cease-fire and political settlement in the war-torn country and highlights that the only sustainable solution to the crisis in Syria is an inclusive and Syrian-led political process. It calls for commitment to Syria’s unity and territorial integrity.
Bahçeli said the PKK’s election plan was a “new stage” in plans to divide Türkiye as well. He branded the U.S. as “master” in this conspiracy and terrorists were simply “extras in this film.”
“Türkiye should stand with the Syrian administration based on mutual understanding and reconciliation, build a bridge with Damascus and should not allow the terrorist group to besiege further the areas it occupied through democratic instruments,” he said.
“I propose synchronized military operations by Türkiye and Syria to drain the swamp where the separatist terrorist group breed, to stamp (terrorism) out in its source,” he said.
Türkiye severed ties with Syria after the Assad regime brutally suppressed an uprising that evolved into a civil war in 2011. The country is home to the largest Syrian refugee community in the world, mostly comprised of those fleeing the regime’s shelling of cities and towns held by the opposition in the north, near the Turkish border. Ankara, however, maintained ties with Russia and Iran, two major supporters of the Assad regime. And it was those two countries that facilitated steps for normalization between Ankara and Damascus. Representatives of the two countries met in Moscow in 2022, years later, in the first step to normalization. More meetings followed, but the two countries failed to reach a consensus on higher-level talks. The Assad regime, at times, accused Türkiye of damaging its territorial integrity by carrying out military strikes in the country’s north. Türkiye’s military operations helped drive out terrorist groups Daesh and PKK from the regions they once controlled amid lawlessness. The PKK, through the YPG, still retains a major swathe of land in northeastern Syria, something of deep concern for Türkiye, which sought to eradicate the terrorist group for decades.
Türkiye’s NATO ally, the U.S., has angered Ankara for its overwhelming support of YPG under the guise of a joint fight against Daesh.
Bahçeli said U.S. support for terrorist groups was a threat to Türkiye’s security and the U.S. should draw “a thick line between itself and terrorism.
“Türkiye is not under colonial rule. It is neither 51st state of the United States,” Bahçeli added.
