Tag Archives: People’s Protection Units

Australia’s No-Nonsense Approach to the PKK

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 August 2018

Funeral for the victims of the TAK/PKK terrorist attack on the Besiktas football stadium in Istanbul, December 2016. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the separatist group in Turkey that is a designated terrorist organisation across much of the West, has always used a vast array of front-groups in the West to raise funds and recruit. After 9/11, with the advent of the War on Terror, the PKK switched tactics in the region to try to conceal its operations and avoid the “terrorism” label. This involved rebranding its operations in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, and setting up a special forces-style urban terrorism wing, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), to deniably carry out its most atrocious activities. The PKK’s rebranding has not been without success. In Australia, however, the government has refused to accept the PKK’s propaganda about TAK and lists it, quite correctly, as simply an alias for the PKK. Continue reading →

The Outlook for the America-Turkey Relationship is Bleak

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 August 2018

America’s imposition of sanctions on Turkey brings the relationship to its lowest ebb in more than forty years. Almost as soon as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, came into office in 2002 there have been tensions in the relationship. These manageable differences escalated considerably during the time of President Barack Obama, primarily because of his Syria policy, and now threaten to boil over. The chances to soothe a vital strategic partnership appear to be slipping. Continue reading →

The Russian-Orchestrated Fall of Deraa Sets the Stage to Push the U.S. Out of Syria and Enable Assad’s Reconquest

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This article was published at Ahval under the headline, “Russia to Pick Apart NATO Allies to Reconquer All of Syria”.

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 31 July 2018

An Israeli solider hands out water on a bus, during the Syria Civil Defence extraction from the Golan Heights // 22 July 2018, provided by Israeli Army to Reuters

The collapse of the opposition in southern Syria is the final destruction of the originally constituted rebellion against President Bashar Assad. It is also a demonstration that the United States under President Donald Trump is no more invested in shaping the outcome in Syria than his predecessor, and marks the potential end of the diplomatic pact that had allowed Turkey to retain some sphere of influence unmolested by the pro-Syrian government coalition. Continue reading →

The Secular Foreign Fighters of the West in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 July 2018

Foreign fighters with the YPG/PKK on the outskirts of Tal Tamr in northwestern Syria, 16 April 2015. UYGAR ÖNDER ŞİMŞEK / AFP / Getty Images

ABSTRACT: The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) operates under the names of the Democratic Union Party and the People’s Protection Units in Syria. The PKK is registered as a terrorist group by most Western governments, the European Union and Turkey, where it originated as a separatist organization. Nonetheless, the YPG has been the partner of the United States-led coalition in Syria against the ISIS. The strengthening of the YPG/PKK and its political messaging has brought in a flow of western foreign fighters. Some of these fighters are now returning to their homelands with indications that they are bringing security problems with them.

Article published in Insight Turkey.

French Leftists with the “Syrian Kurds” Threaten Terrorism Against France

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 April 2018

The Facebook group for the Antifascist Forces in Afrin (AFFA) posted a video message and transcript yesterday, which was dated 12 April, threatening terrorist attacks against two NATO states, France and Turkey. AFFA, announced in February, comprises French-speaking Left-wing extremists, who are part of the foreign fighter brigades within the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) command structure in Syria. A rough translation of the statement (and the original) are reproduced below, with the key sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

The Islamic State Spokesman Directs His Fury At Regional Governments

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 April 2018

An audio statement by the official spokesman of the Islamic State (IS), Abu Hassan al-Muhajir,[1] was released today. The speech was entitled, “By their example, be guided” or “So From Their Guidance Take An Example”—drawn from Qur’an 6:30. Abu Hassan continued the themes that have been cropping up in IS messaging and propaganda for the last few months that have more firmly reoriented IS away from its foreign attacks campaign toward a more local focus in the Middle East. IS has been stressing its post-caliphate insurgency—concentrated at the present time in Iraq, but with notable operations in Syria—and its war for influence with regional rivals for Muslim loyalty, whether governments such as Egypt and particularly Saudi Arabia, or other Islamist movements like Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (HAMAS) in Gaza. Continue reading →

Turkey’s Progress in Syria

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Originally published at Ahval

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 31 March 2018

Turkish Armed Forces and allied Syrian Arab fighters capture Efrin city, Syria, 18 March 2018 (Reuters)

Since its incursion into Afrin began in January, Turkey has made significant progress in turning the military landscape in Syria in its favour. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signalled that further operations are to come in Syria, and perhaps in Iraq, too. These next operations would present new challenges, particularly politically, an area where Turkey has not made quite as much progress. Continue reading →

The PKK and Terrorism in Europe

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 March 2018

Screenshot from video of a PKK attack on Turkish diplomats in Paris, France (13 March 2018)

A wave of politically motivated violence has swept over Europe in the last few days, carried out by an extremist group and its sympathisers, accompanied by public statements threatening further attacks.

These attacks are intended to change western policy to one more suitable to the attackers.

The conventional term for this is “terrorism”.

These assailants are not Islamist, however; they are from the Kurdish PKK, and this seems to have both reduced the amount of attention this campaign has received, and to have dulled the reaction from some who suggest that perhaps the attackers have a point. Continue reading →

Syria’s Revolution Has Been Overtaken By Outside Powers

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 March 2018

Devastation in Aleppo (image source)

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the Syrian revolution. A movement that began with peaceful street protests calling for reform and—after the government responded with lethal violence—the downfall of the dictator, descended into war that has to this point cost the lives of at least 500,000 people and displaced nearly twelve million others—more than half of Syria’s pre-war population.

In any strategic sense the rebellion has been defeated—it is not able to overthrow Bashar al-Assad by force on its own—and its political cause is increasingly strained as the remnants of the armed opposition are increasingly co-opted by external actors, state and non-state. Continue reading →

United Nations Documents Human Rights Abuses By the “Syrian Kurds”

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 March 2018

Kurdish YPG/PKK fighters (Rodi Said/Reuters)

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry (IICI) on the Syrian Arab Republic was set up in 2011 by the United Nations Human Rights Council to track human rights abuses in Syria.

Naturally, this has meant that most of the Commission’s work is focused on the industrial-scale crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Asad’s regime and his enablers in Russia and Iran. Later, as non-state terrorist and extremist groups intruded into Syria, the Commission documented the atrocities by the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which works under the label of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria and dominates the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that the U.S.-led Coalition works with against IS. The Commission has also recorded abuses by rebel groups.

The Commission’s latest report, released on 6 March 2018, “draws from more than 500 interviews and encapsulates the trends over the past six months in the Syrian Arab Republic, with particular focus on the impact of the offensive against [the Islamic State] and the use of siege warfare on the civilian population.” The report, therefore, has something of a focus on the SDF/PKK human rights violations, though IS’s horrific treatment of religious minorities and so on, plus the pro-Asad coalition’s ongoing campaign of massacre and displacement in areas such as East Ghuta, are given ample attention. Continue reading →