Kurdistan Workers' Party

[Juche]

It appears that the PKK has aligned itself with the Ba'athist government of Syria.

Look at the "Battle of Aleppo (2012)"

Isn't the PKK on the left/our side?

[Ostrinski]

Apparently not, if it's going to side with a government of the bourgeoisie and a vicious one to boot.

[The Jay]

Assad agreed to give their region more autonomy. They are fighting for the kurds, not the syrians. Their alliance with the Syrian state is in exchange for favors towards their goals.

[Juche]

Apparently not, if it's going to side with a government of the bourgeoisie and a vicious one to boot.

So who are you siding with? You realize the rebels are funded/supported and carry the interests of the West right?

Also in other related news. Report: "Turkish jets strike PKK bases in Iraq".

I didn't know one country could just go bomb another sovereign nation? I thought Iraq was it's own country or is Iraq just a US colony?

[Red Commissar]

The case of the PKK is a complex one, as with other Kurdish groups they have had to cooperate with nations that are otherwise their enemies in order to get safe haven, aid, etc. It's the ugly reality of a lot of rebel groups, particularly those that are land locked, that they do not have the luxury to stick to their ideals.

The PKK's ties to Syria is older than this conflict, in the past Syria had once hosted a number of regional groups (PLO in particular, PKK was also here) and even outside the Middle-East (like the IRA), giving them safe haven and an area to train their recruits. The Bekaa valley in Syrian-occupied Lebanon was the main site of this, but Syria in general was safe haven. The PKK's leader Ocalan had been operating out of Syria, and when he was interviewed by press it was always from his safehouse provided by Syria.

The PKK at the height of its rebellion in Turkey, during the late 80s and early 90s, operated through Syria, much to the chagrin of Turkey. It was for this reason that relations between Turkey and Syria virtually collapsed, to the point that the Turkish government ended up fencing off tracts on the border, complete with military watchtowers and patrols, to try and block certain smuggling/transit routes. The PKK also began to operate within Iraq, coming into conflict with both the KDP and PUK (who were already fighting amongst themselves), which in turn ended up causing Iraq to try and manipulate the whole situation to benefit them while preventing Syrian and Iranian attempts to hurt it. It's very convoluted.

Like many rebellions though, this had a bad effect on civilian populations, that suffered greatly when caught in the fighting, then the subsequent attacks by both the Turkish government and PKK against villages who were seen as aiding the enemy.

The Syrian government *officially* ended its support of the PKK in 1998, when the rebellion had gotten to the point that it was becoming more of a liability to Syria. The Syrian government had Ocalan leave the country in order to avoid worsening an already serious diplomatic row with Turkey, and this eventually resulted in Ocalan being nabbed while under the "protection" of Greece (which as we knew later, surrendered Ocalan). Syria basically sold the movement out by that point, but allowed its members to continue living in the country. It meant the end of that phase in the PKK's insurrection though.

The Syrian government also supported the two main Kurdish groups in Iraq, the KDP and PUK, mostly as a means to get at Iraq which it had frosty relations with. Both the KDP and PUK maintained party offices in Damascus during their war against Iraq in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, and in this respect Syria's policy coincided with Iran's own support of those groups during the war. Both Iran and Syria granted government papers to their operatives to allow them to go abroad, I believe.

Now this didn't mean the Syrian government had necessarily been more enlightened in their treatment of Kurdish people. A lot of Kurds in Syria were unable to get citizenship due to an inherited and perpetuated alien status based on a census taken when Syria became independent that classified Kurdish residents as illegal aliens from Turkey. Language and cultural expressions were heavily proscribed too, it wasn't exactly pleasant to be Kurdish in Syria, but the same government was willing to encourage Kurdish rebellion in Iraq and Turkey when it suited its policies.

You can find the same thing with Ba'athist Iraq and Iran (both under the Shah and Ayatollah) which would, while pursuing oppressive policies against Kurds in their countries, would support Kurds from the other countries. So it was common for say the Kurdish groups from Iraq to get into fighting with Kurdish groups from Iran because they ended up on opposite sides in the Iran-Iraq War. On top of this is the ability for them to divide and conquer local populations by working through local notables (often tribal chiefs) and clerics. This is the reality of Kurdish groups, if not a lot of national liberation struggles, around the world.

With respect to this current conflict, this complex dynamic has continued. The Kurdish groups, even those allied to the more western friendly KDP and PUK in Iraq (under the banner of the Kurdish National Congress), have been skeptical of the Syrian opposition, as they are not confident their position will improve at all. This animosity has existed before, when Kurds were rioting in Qamishlo in 2004 and gunned down on the streets, the opposition that is going on right now did not condemn at all, and in some cases sided with the government there because they saw the Kurds as secessionists and nothing more.

When Arab League observers arrived in Syria earlier this year, the government intentionally tried to play up tensions between Kurdish and Assyrian populations in the Qamishlo area, painting themselves as the only ones defending the Assyrians against Kurdish violence. This is similar to what Saddam Hussein often relied on in Iraq with Kurdish groups there to justify his own governance.

On a side note, ideologically the PKK is not the most orthodox Marxist group. It must be emphasized that a lot of national liberation groups in their heyday paid lip service to socialism and anti-imperialism, and often dressed themselves up in that livery and rhetoric- even the Kurdish groups in Iran and Iraq did this. It is important to note that after the collapse of the Soviet Union alot of them watered down their views significantly to centrist or social democratic positions. Even the PKK has been focusing more on this idea of "democratic confederalism (http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/download/Ocalan-Democratic-Confederalism.pdf)" more than Marxism.


Assad agreed to give their region more autonomy. They are fighting for the kurds, not the syrians. Their alliance with the Syrian state is in exchange for favors towards their goals.

I have not seen anything to indicate that Syria is willing to grant autonomy to the Kurds. The PKK's relationship with Syria is based completely on Turkey, as it is worried that the fall of the Assad government will mean it loses one of its safe havens.

The issue here has been what exactly happened when the Syrian army evacuated from the eastern parts of Syria, whether if this was negotiated with the Kurdish groups there or if it's a risk Assad is taking considering both the PYD and the KNC are not on the best terms with the FSA or the SNC. I don't think this means that Assad is serious about granting the Kurds autonomy nor do those groups think he is- it's a matter of hedging bets and seeing how the situation develops.


So who are you siding with? You realize the rebels are funded/supported and carry the interests of the West right?

Also in other related news. Report: "Turkish jets strike PKK bases in Iraq".

I didn't know one country could just go bomb another sovereign nation? I thought Iraq was it's own country or is Iraq just a US colony?

Actually, the agreement which allows Turkey to strike Iraq originated from Saddam Hussein-era legislation that basically let Turkey do what it needed within a certain distance from the border. Turkey continues to use that as the Iraqi government has (until recently) continued to renew it every year in order to place stress on the Kurdish groups currently operating in virtual independence in the north now. While those groups were in conflict with PKK and are quite cooperative with Turkey when it comes to the economy, it's a good way to underscore their lack of strength that they can't do much about Turkish strikes there.

Iran also does several artillery strikes on Northern Iraq too, so it's not as if this is very clear cut and dry who're messing with Kurds.

Also, I must point out that on the wikipedia page you are referencing, the PYD and PKK are on opposite ends of the conflict. Frankly this does not make sense considering the PYD is a PKK front group.

In fact really this should be a reminder about war and conflict that allegiances are hardly concrete and change a lot. The Kurdish groups are mainly operating on a day to day basis on their actions, and on some days they are fighting Syrian government security forces, and on other days found cooperating with them as the FSA found. Kurds are involved in this Aleppo conflict because one of their enclaves is in that governorate, the city of Afrin near the Turkish border.

At the end of a day, a group will follow its directives and objectives more, and will pragmatically and/or cynically take sides accordingly. These allegiances are always in flux depending on the prevailing conditions.

[Ostrinski]

So who are you siding with? You realize the rebels are funded/supported and carry the interests of the West right?Dude I'm so sick and tired of answering this question. Please take the liberty to check out any one of the endless threads on Syria where people have explained over and over that to use a dichotomy like that is as idiotic as it is dishonest. If you believe one bourgeois political force is worth supporting over the other then you might as well be shilling for the Democrats (or whatever the traditional liberal party is in your country) as far as I'm concerned.