ANKARA, Turkey—The pro-Kurdish Peoples Democracy Party (HDP) has condemned Turkey’s military incursion into Syria as an occupation that is neither in the interest of the Turkish people nor their Syrian neighbors and that the people of Turkey will have to pay the price of the wrong policies of their ruling party in the future.
The public relations department of the HDP said in a statement on Thursday that the Turkish military advance will only further complicate the Syrian situation.
“Syria has been in war for more than five years and Turkey’s participation in it will deepen and complicate the crisis even further,” read the HDP statement. “The Turkish government has only recorded failures in its Syria policy and now occupying Jarablus is in the interest of neither the people of Turkey nor Syria.”
The HDP said that by sending troops into Syria, Jarablus in particular, Turkey will be replacing the Islamic State (ISIS) with another “bandit” group, arguing: “Turkey could have closed the border on ISIS and its supply routes when the group first took Jarablus in 2014.”
“With this move the Turkish government is trying to get a long-term strategic foothold in Syria, but once again this is a grave mistake,” read the HDP statement.
Backing members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) Turkish special forces, artillery and tanks crossed the border into Syria on Wednesday and took the city of Jarablus, from which ISIS militants are said to have retreated without putting up any resistance.
The HDP leadership warned that Jarablus could in the future become a contested area like Kirkuk in Iraq and the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel.
“After expelling ISIS the area must be handed back to its own inhabitants,” the pro-Kurdish group of Selahattin Demirtas said.
The HDP argued that the Turkish incursion was more to stop any further advance of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) especially after the recent liberation of Manbij.
The party went on to accuse Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of sidelining the parliament and sending troops into another country without consulting members of parliament.
“This operation was carried out when the parliament was on summer holiday and with this the president of the republic and his AKP party ignored the role of the parliament,” said the HDP. “The obvious blunders of the AKP party will plunge the people of Turkey into major crisis in the future.”
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