Kurdish Politics in Syria: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Feminism? Benevolent sexism?
These famous guerrilla women pledge all to the mustached leader of the PKK.

On her sleeve: Abdullah “Apo” Öcalan founded the PKK (read about that here.)

First and foremost for him…

While the PYD in Syria maintains it is not part of the PKK, Apo’s philosophy guides the movement. The degree of overlap in membership, beliefs and loyalty to the leader makes many believe there are ties between the two groups.

Iraq’s Kurdish leaders don’t like the Syrian Kurdish PYD.

The Barzani family’s struggle on behalf of the Kurdish nation goes back to the origins of the idea of Kurdish autonomy in the early 20th century. Their struggle against Saddam Hussein is legendary. Now they openly talk about independence, but only in terms of a peaceful process. Mesud Barzani, the clan’s leader and long-time leader of the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq, doesn’t have much good to say about the PKK or PYD.

Barzani discusses the issues in a 2016 interview with The Nation.

Excerpts from the article (emphasis mine):

Referring to a future Kurdish state, he took an indirect swipe at the PKK. “We’re speaking about Iraqi Kurdistan,” he said. “In Iraqi Kurdistan, the time is ripe. Our goal will come into being of course through dialogue, not through war and violence.”

As for a single Kurdish state, “of course if the opportunity presents itself, we would welcome it…. But we must keep the reality before our eyes and understand. We are in four parts. Each has its own circumstances, its own situation, and each must find a solution with each central government.”

He said the PKK had acted “very arrogantly” in Turkey after the mostly pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) gained 13 percent of the national vote during elections in June 2015 and entered the Turkish Parliament as a party for the first time. Barzani said he’d urged the HDP to try to enter a coalition with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), but the HDP was “infected” by the PKK.

“This arrogance led to a further separation. It led to conflicts, finally to a resumption of the war,” he said.

Barzani praised Erdogan for acknowledging in 2013 that Turkey had suppressed its Kurds and pledging to address the Kurdish problem. “That was a complete change in Turkish policy, which had been totally chauvinistic previously,” he said.

Barzani said that the PKK’s offshoot in Syria, the PYD, is allied with the Assad regime, and he charged both with responsibility for mass expulsions of Arabs and for repression of other Kurdish parties. He said at least 20 political activists from the party allied with Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party had been “disappeared or killed.”

Referring to the PKK, he said, “They control everything in Northern Syria…. They steal, they stick people in prison.”

Mr. Barzani on the Kurdish on the Syrian Kurdish situation: “They control everything in Northern Syria…. They steal, they stick people in prison.”

PKK history and recent tactics, relationship to Syria PYD.

“The PKK was founded in the late-1970s as a Marxist-Leninist organization with the goal of establishing an autonomous Kurdish territory in Turkey. In the Maoist strategy of the “People’s War,” the group focused on leftist political indoctrination and employed rural guerilla tactics primarily against Turkish security forces in the countryside. During the height of the violence in the 1990s….” READ THIS ARTICLE FROM WAR ON THE ROCKS.

Kurdish politics in Syria: an overview read here.

Photos: Kurdishstruggle [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]