ISTANBUL, Turkey – Syria's main Kurdish rebel group, the People's Protection Units (YPG), confirmed Sunday it was fighting alongside other rebel forces against Islamic State (ISIS) in the besieged town of Kobane and other Kurdish areas.
It said it wanted to strengthen this alliance which was essential to defeating the jihadists.
The announcement appeared to be the strongest rapprochement yet between the YPG and the Western- and Arab-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), who have largely been at odds throughout Syria's civil war and at times have even clashed with each other. The union could mark a significant milestone in the fight against ISIS which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
“The resistance shown by us, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), and certain factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is a guarantee for defeating ISIS's terrorism in the region. The success of the revolution is subject to the progression of this relationship between all factions and forces of good in this country,” the YPG said in a written statement.
“We can also confirm that there is coordination between us and the important factions of the FSA in the northern countryside of Aleppo: Afrin, Kobane, and al-Jazira. Currently, there are factions and several battalions of the FSA fighting on our side against the ISIS terrorists,” it said.
There have already been reports of battlefield alliances. While it follows a similar joint statement by the YPG and FSA last month, Sunday's declaration appeared to go beyond the need to combat ISIS, indicating the YPG was committed to helping the whole country, not just Kurdish areas.
“We as the YPG reaffirm that we will meet all of our responsibilities towards Rojava and Syria in general,” it said, referring to the Kurdish name for the Kurdish region in northern Syria.
“We will work to consolidate the concept of true partnership for the administration of this country and commensurate with the aspirations of the Syrian people with all its ethnic, religious and social classes,” it said.
The YPG and the FSA, a loose group of non-Islamist rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, have had an ambiguous relationship since the start of the war three-and-a-half years ago.
The FSA has accused the YPG of being allied to Assad and fears its intentions are to carve out a separate Kurdish state. For its part, the YPG has been wary to support the mostly Arab FSA over concerns the Kurds will be ignored in any post-Assad government formed by political factions allied to the FSA. The mistrust has led to both sides fighting each other, most recently in 2013.
The move will likely allay the United States, which revealed last week it had held direct talks with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the political arm of the YPG. The Kurdish fighters said they were helping the U.S.-led coalition identify ISIS targets for air strikes in the largely Kurdish town of Kobane where the YPG has been battling the jihadists for more than a month.
The U.S. military said on Sunday it had carried out 11 strikes with Saudi Arabia and the UAE near Kobane over the weekend, destroying 20 ISIS fighting positions, five vehicles and two buildings held by the militants.
The air strikes have helped YPG fighters hold off a siege of the town, which sits hard on Turkey's border. However, Sunday saw some of the fiercest fighting inside Kobane, which is still surrounded by ISIS, the group also known as ISIL. The Islamist militants want to seize the town in order to consolidate their grip on a large swath of the Turkish border.
The YPG announcement will also go some way to appease Turkey, which is at odds with the YPG and the PYD and has long called for them to join the main Syrian opposition.
Ankara is opposed to the PYD because of its close links to a Kurdish militant group in Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting the state for 30 years. Ankara has refused to intervene in Kobane, angering Kurds on both sides of the border. Despite this the PYD's co-leader, Salih Muslim, has held talks with Turkish officials in Turkey as recently as this month.
Apart from joining the main Syrian opposition, Turkey wants the PYD to distance itself from the PKK and to relinquish any ties it says the group has with the Assad government, which Ankara sees as the main instigator of unrest in Syria and which it wants to see overthrown.
While the PYD does not want Turkey's military to get involved in Kobane, it wants it to allow the free passage of weapons and fighters across its soil into the beleaguered town, a request Ankara has refused. On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated that position.
“There has been talk of arming the PYD to establish a front here against the Islamic State. For us, the PYD is the same as the PKK, it’s a terrorist organisation,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by local media.
“It would be very, very wrong to expect us to openly say ‘yes’ to our NATO ally America giving this kind of support. To expect something like this from us is impossible."
Turkey's refusal to help has sparked deadly riots across Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast and is threatening a fragile two-year peace process between Ankara and the PKK. It has also frustrated Washington, which wants Turkey to take a more active role in the coalition fighting ISIS.
But despite the tension, the United States has attempted to dismiss any rift between the two NATO allies and on Sunday the White House said President Barack Obama had phoned Erdogan to discuss the situation in Kobane and “pledged to continue to work closely together to strengthen cooperation against ISIL”.
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