Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu accused Thursday the PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG) of forcing "nearly 500,000 Syrian Kurds into exile for not being Marxists and communists." With the Syrian conflict lingering on for more than six years now, the outlawed terrorist group PKK and its affiliates in Syria the PYD and the YPG have continued the control and oppression of Kurdish communities. Speaking at a campaign meeting in Southern Turkey's Antalya, Minister Çavuşoğlu said, "Their [PKK] affiliates in Syria [referring to the YPG] have forced more than 500,000 Syrian Kurds to leave their homeland for not being Marxist and communist."

He dismissed the claims that the PKK was working for and protecting Kurdish rights and drew attention to their oppression and tyranny.At the meeting in Antalya, which was attended by a huge crowd, Çavuşoğlu questioned the terrorist PKK's position against Kurdish citizens."You [the PKK] are a Marxist, Leninist terror group. Exactly which basic rights of my Kurdish brothers and sisters have you protected till today? You are tyrannizing them, exploding bombs in the middle of Diyarbakır… you [the PKK] are only living in the mountains through your own perversion, threatening people with your weapons."Çavuşoğlu pointed out that "only President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his friends were protecting the rights of Kurds."Turkey has repeatedly warned against the YPG's aim of making demographic changes in areas captured from Daesh in northern Syria, a call ignored by the U.S. as it continues to support the group.In addition to this, several human rights monitoring groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have exposed the PYD's unlawful, forcible conscription and deployment of children and adults.Earlier last month Xalid Eli, an official from the Syrian-based political organization the Kurdish National Council, stressed that the PKK's tyranny had surpassed that of the Assad regime, and claimed that Kurdish politicians were being terrorized by the militant group.Calling the PKK "a baton in the regime's hands," Eli continued: "The PKK is not on the side of the Kurds. Even Bashar Assad or his father did not harm us as much as the PKK. The Assad regime could not have changed the demographics of Rojava as much as the PKK has done."