Friday, October 31, 2014

Growing Kurdish Unity Worries Turkey, Helps the West

Kurds in Iraq and Syria set aside long-held rivalries and took steps to unify their forces this week to battle Islamic State, gaining greater international legitimacy but magnifying fears in Turkey that a powerful enemy is on the rise.
Turkish Kurds carry the coffin of a fighter killed in Kobani
 on Wednesday in the nearby town of Suruç. Reuters
The Kurdistan regional government in Iraq approved on Wednesday the deployment of 150 soldiers equipped with heavy weapons to relieve fellow Kurds in the besieged Syrian city of Kobani. Turkey, under U.S. pressure, agreed to allow those reinforcements to transit its territory despite concerns that this could indirectly strengthen a Kurdish militant group in Turkey that has fought the state for decades.
Key Battlegrounds in the Fight for Kobani
The U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is increasingly relying on Kurdish ground forces. This is also a concern for the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which worries Kurds there will assert demands for independence more forcefully.
“Kurdistan has emerged as the most reliable partner in the international community in the war against ISIS,” said Barham Salih, former prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. “We have different views but we have a resourceful enemy at the gate and now there is a consensus emerging.”
The deal to deploy Iraqi Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga capped a weeklong meeting of regional Kurdish factions in the city of Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan. The meeting yielded a slate of power-sharing agreements between the Syrian Kurds leading the fight for Kobani and smaller Syrian parties closer to the president of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, Massoud Barzani.
Mr. Barzani is an ally of Turkey, which supports the deployment of Peshmerga forces. But Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish militia in Kobani as an enemy because of its close links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a group the U.S. and Turkey both list as a terrorist organization.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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