“Let there be talks, but these talks should not exclude the Kurds or suppress their demands. Let Erdogan meet with Assad, but also meet with the PYD,” Tuncer Bakirhan, co-chair of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), said in a televised interview.
Turkey claims that the PYD is the Syrian political front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish group that has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state for decades and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara.
However, Bakirhan argued that Turkey’s position against the PYD should not be an excuse not to host talks, as Ankara has previously hosted the Kurdish party’s leaders.
“They met with the PYD multiple times. Salih Muslim and Asya Abdullah [PYD co-chairs] came and were welcomed by the state media, it was wonderful. This is the right approach. Instead of hostility with Syria, let the future of Syria be decided by the Syrian people,” Bakirhan said.
“Be brothers with Assad, and also with the PYD,” he stressed.
Erdogan on Friday told journalists in Istanbul that there was “no reason” for Turkey not to establish relations with Assad’s regime.
"Just as we once developed relations between Turkey and Syria, we will act together in the same way again," he said.
Erdogan’s comment marks a significant U-turn in his policy against Assad’s regime. When the war erupted in Syria, Erdogan, then prime minister of Turkey, slammed Assad for committing violence against his own people. Erdogan demanded the removal of the Syrian president from power and labeled him a “terrorist.”
Through the conflict in Syria, Turkey has supported rebel forces, including those with links to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. Turkey has also launched repeated incursions into Syrian territory, most notably against Kurdish forces in the northern city of Afrin in 2018.
Syrians rose up against the Assad regime in March 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and has left millions more in need of dire humanitarian assistance.
The country is now divided into three territories, with the northeast being controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), where the PYD has formed the self-proclaimed Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES). The northwest is controlled by Turkish-backed rebels and opposition groups and the rest by Assad’s regime. The Islamic State (ISIS) also routinely carries out hit-and-run attacks in a security vacuum in the vast Syrian desert.
