Free Republic

..."Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported. The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons. Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and Daesh in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside. This comes at a time when Ankara is preparing to...

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

Continuing to criminalize the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey and strengthening Turkish authoritarianism serves no one but President Erdogan and his neo-Ottoman, Islamist-nationalist agenda. On November 6, the U.S. unexpectedly announced a total of $12 million in reward payments for information on three senior members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – Murad Karayilan, Cemil Bayik and Duran Kalkan. These three have led the PKK’s decades-long rebel war against Turkey. For Ankara and Washington, the PKK is a terrorist group.But it’s not that simple. The PKK is fighting for Kurdish rights and freedoms in Turkey, which Turkey has long violently...

Former ECHR Judge and CHP Izmir MP Riza Turmen stressed that Turkey is obliged to comply with the ECHR’s Demirtas ruling. Former ECHR Judge and CHP (Republican People's Party) Izmir MP Riza Turmen stressed that Turkey is obliged to comply with the ECHR’s Demirtas ruling. Riza Turmen called for compliance with the European Court of Human Rights ruling and stressed that Selahattin Demirtas should be released without delays. Turmen stated that noncompliance with the ruling, which references Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights and poses a precedent for other political prisoners, will be the confirmation that Demirtas’s...

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday said that Turkey is not bound by verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) following the court’s decision calling for the release of Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş from a lengthy pre-trial detention. “ECtHR decisions do not bind us. Up until now, most of the decisions about the organization [Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)] have been negative. There is a lot to be done in reaction [to the verdict]. We will take steps in response and finish the case. Terrorism continues,” Erdoğan said in parliament after the ruling. The ECtHR on Tuesday urged Turkey...

Turkey does not differentiate between what it sees as terrorist organisations and any support for Syrian Kurdish forces means supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), state-run Anadolu news agency quoted presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın as saying on Wednesday in reference to U.S. backing for Kurdish fighters in Syria battling Islamic State. Turkey sees the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), that control most of northeast Syria as part of the PKK that has been fighting for self-rule inside Turkey for more than 30 years. The YPG denies being part of the PKK, but...

This November will mark 40 years since the founding of an organization that has gained greater geopolitical prominence than most non-state actors ever will. Millions of Kurds— the world’s largest nation without a state, oppressed by the autocratic states that occupy their lands— support it and consider it their political representation on the world stage. In the struggle against occupation and denial of Kurdish identity, it has evolved an ideology based on direct democracy, ecology, pluralism, and women’s liberation that poses answers to questions asked by political movements around the world for generations. This is the PKK— Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan...

The incident occurs after a meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Tuesday. ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish warplanes have conducted airstrikes in the Yezidi (Ezidi)-populated city of Shingal in northern Iraq; sources told Kurdistan 24 on Wednesday. According to the sources, there were some airstrikes to the west of Baraa village, located close to the border with Syria. Snip- In April 2017, Turkish airstrikes supposedly targeting the PKK-affiliated YBS killed five Peshmerga soldiers and wounded nine others, as well as causing extensive damage to the area, resulting in condemnation from...

The case to remove the PKK from the European Union terror list was heard on Monday in the Court of Justice of the European Union. The verdict is expected to be announced in 6 to 9 months. The case filed in the CJEU to remove the PKK from the European Union terror list was heard in Luxembourg on Monday. The verdict in the case is expected to be announced in 6 to 9 months. The panel of judges said, “Looking at the last decade, the PKK hasn’t carried out any visible ‘terrorist’ actions, but there is an insistence that it...

The lawsuit filed to the European Court of Justice, demanding the lifting of the PKK from the EU's list of terrorist organizations, opens on Monday 16 April, writes Yeni Özgür Politika. The PKK has been on the EU's list of terrorist organizations since 2002. Acting on behalf of PKK leaders Murat Karayılan and Duran Kalkan, the Prakken d'Oliveira Law Office in the Netherlands has presented a file every six months when the new list is written and then the file went to the European Court of Justice. Next Monday the trial will open aiming at lifting the PKK from the...

British woman Anna Campbell is believed to have died while fighting against Isis in Syria. It is claimed that the 26-year-old from Lewes, East Sussex, was part of the all female Kurdish Women’s Protection Unit in Afrin, a besieged city. According to the Guardian the convoy she was travelling in was hit by a Turkish missile on Friday. She is said to have dyed her hair black so that she looks less like a westerner and begged her commanders to send her to the front line. Her father Dirk Campbell told the paper: ‘Anna was very idealistic, very serious,...

The PKK threatens to move the battle into Turkey, saying that the battle of Afrin is the beginning real revolution Kurdistan in Turkey and calls Kurdish youth to join the resistance against the Turkish occupation army in every a place.

Die Linke member in the European Parliament (EP) Martina Michels issued a statement and stressed that Erdoğan’s Turkey stockpiling large scale forces to attack Afrin and its surrounding villages is unacceptable. The statement issued by EP-Turkey Relations Delegation Member MEP Martina Michels stresses that the PYD and YPG are the “thorn in the eye” for Erdoğan’s “fantasies of great power”. The statement titled “Erdoğan sends German tanks against Kurdish autonomy” demands the EU to call for the military attacks to stop and states that Erdoğan wants to complete his dreams of suppressing the demands for rights in Northern Kurdistan by...

NEWS DESK- Iraq Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said that he spoke with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu about the need for the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Iraq and stressed on not allowing Iraq to become a regional conflict zone.Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu arrived at the capital Baghdad on an official visit and is scheduled to head to Hewler to meet with leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud Barzani.The Turkish visit comes after the start of the campaign to restore Tal Afar in the province of Nineveh, also after the delegation left the referendum in the Kurdistan Region...

US Secretary of Defense  James Mattis pledged support to Turkey in its ongoing fight against rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) during talks with the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish and US officials said today.The daylong visit was intended to help smooth fraught relations between the two NATO allies. The biggest thorn is the United States’ partnership against the Islamic State with the PKK’s Syrian franchise, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Erdogan expressed anger over that alliance to Mattis during a half-hour meeting at the presidential complex. Mattis, in turn, repeated assurances that the US partnership with the YPG is solely tactical and...

The German intelligence agency refused claims by Minister Gabriel that “PKK is involved with narcotics trafficking and extortion”, stating that PKK raises funds through donations and sales of publications, and a portion of the funds go to fighting ISIS. Germany’s domestic intelligence institution Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced their 2016 report in a press conference held in Berlin on July 4. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution Chairperson Hans-Georg Maassen and Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière were present in the press conference and the report they announced included information on institutions and organizations that...

Amid the war against the Islamic State, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is bombing our villages and soldiers on an entirely false pretense. Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan bombed and shelled our villages in northern Syria. The strikes killed our soldiers and unnecessarily escalated the conflict between Turkey and us at a time when we are engaged in a historic battle alongside U.S.-led international coalition forces to retake Raqqa and end the Islamic State’s reign of terror. I am a member of the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM), an umbrella organization made up of six political parties...

Although the United States has signaled its increasing support for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) for the last few years, US President Donald Trump’s decision to arm the Kurdish forces in Syria for the battle against the Islamic State came as a shock to the Turkish government. Turkey considers the YPG and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to be part of one common terror group, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been throwing tantrums over symbols of US support for the YPG. Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian conflict for the last six years has been mind-boggling. To put it in the simplest...

PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) Executive Council released a statement regarding the Turkish airstrikes on Rojava and Shengal. The statement by PKK said: “After facing a 'No' from Turkey's peoples in April 16's referendum, the AKP-MHP fascist dictatorship conducted airstrikes on our people's sacred place Shengal and Rojava Kurdistan -the vanguard and fortress of resistance against ISIS fascism- at April 24 night, and struck the positions of YBŞ and HPG and the YPG-YPJ headquarters with warplanes. To begin with, we commemorate with respect all those martyred in this savage fascist attack, and state that they will be avenged and the...

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House principal deputy press secretary, said that rather than congratulating Turkish President Erdogan, “the bigger point and priority” of Trump’s call was to talk about important issues in the region with a NATO ally.“Look, the Middle East is a pretty rough neighbourhood, and sometimes you have to get together to help them beat the bullies, like Syria,” Sanders said. “And that was something that certainly needed to be talked about.”The deputy press secretary also said that the president was not prejudging the outcome of the referendum that granted Erdogan with new executive powers, and...