The U.S. called on the terrorist PKK-affiliated actors in Syria to avoid holding so-called municipal elections in the country, a report said Friday.
The terrorists announced Thursday that they have postponed the elections scheduled for June 11 to August.
Washington does not believe that the conditions in Syria’s northeast are ripe to hold the elections in line with the U.N. Security Council’s Resolution no. 2254, an unidentified U.S. official told broadcaster CNN Türk.
The report noted that U.S. authorities told the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is dominated by the terrorist PKK’s Syrian offshoot YPG – not to hold the controversial elections, widely opposed by the residents of the region.
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, notably with a so-called local election.
Ankara was angered over plans for elections that would be held on May 30 before it was rescheduled to June 11. For Türkiye, it is the first step to establishing a “PKK-run state” in Syria’s north, immediately across the border. Türkiye has highlighted that the election was also a threat to the territorial integrity of 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.
Taking advantage of the power vacuum created by the Syrian civil war in 2011, 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.
Since then, U.S. forces in Syria have trained thousands of YPG/PKK terrorists in their military bases in the region under the pretext of combating terrorism.
The U.S. has also provided YPG/PKK terrorists with huge amounts of weapons and combat equipment.
Türkiye, which has troops inside Syria and Turkish-backed opposition groups in Syria's northwest, routinely clashes 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.
