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AFP 2016/ DELIL SOULEIMAN
The announcement of the leadership of the Syrian Kurds that they would open their first foreign office in Moscow is telling: their choice of Russia over Washington or Western Europe signals that Russia is allying with the Kurds in the Middle East, which will certainly undermine US and Turkish policy in the region, according to the Israeli media.
Wednesday
is set to see an inauguration ceremony of the first European office
of the Syrian Kurds, which will be located in Moscow. The ceremony is
to be attended by Russian foreign ministry officials as well
as representatives from several other countries, according to Abdulsalam
Ali, the Syrian Kurdish envoy in Moscow.
“The choice of Moscow and not Washington or Western Europe is telling,” says The Jerusalem Post.
Meanwhile, Turkey has denounced the move.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued what can be considered as an ultimatum to the US this week, saying that its, that it’s “either us or the PYD”,
Gallia Lindenstrauss, a Turkey expert and research fellow at the
Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University told the
newspaper.
“It is highly likely that Russia will take advantage of the trend and support the Kurds,
effectively turning an American ally into a Russian one,” the newspaper
quotes Shmuel Bar, a senior research fellow at the Samuel Neaman
Institute for National Policy Studies at the Technion-Israel Institute
of Technology in Haifa, as saying.
“Putin appears to be making another shrewd play
for power in the Middle East by allying with the Kurds, in a step that
undermines United States and Turkish policy in the region,” states the
Israeli newspaper.
The US has established its cooperation with Syrian Kurdish fighters
against Daesh (ISIL/ISIS). It has developed working relations with the
Syrian Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units) – the military wing
of the Syrian Democratic Unity Party (PYD) – the most dominant force
among the Syrian Kurds and an affiliate organization of the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish group located in Turkey which remains
listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Turkey, and the EU.
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Flickr/ Victoria Pickering/http://bit.ly/1vtCH3w
“Russia’s Kurd gambit”, the outlet says, takes
advantage of US hesitancy in fully supporting the Kurds because
of worries about angering Turkey.
This “makes Ankara’s life much more difficult as it continues fighting a Kurdish insurgency at home.”
This “makes Ankara’s life much more difficult as it continues fighting a Kurdish insurgency at home.”
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AFP 2016/ DELIL SOULEIMAN
This opinion is also echoed by The Guardian, which says that the possible alliance between Russia and the Syrian Kurds “puts Erdogan in a corner”.
“A big, new military operation against Kurdish strongholds,
in defiance of both Russia and the US, would be a sign of Erdogan’s
desperation, marking a potentially catastrophic spreading of the Syrian
conflict,” the outlet states.
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