ANKARA: Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party said on Monday that the Turkish government had no more “excuses” to delay a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) now that a landmark integration deal was achieved in neighboring Syria.

On Sunday in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to come under the control of authorities in Damascus — a move that Ankara had long sought as integral to ‌its own peace ‌effort with the PKK.

“For more than a ‌year, ⁠the ​government ‌has presented the SDF’s integration with Damascus as the biggest obstacle to the process,” Tuncer Bakirhan, co-leader of the DEM Party, told Reuters, in some of the party’s first public comments on the deal in Syria.

“The government will no longer have any excuses left. Now it is the government’s turn to take concrete steps.” Bakirhan cautioned President Tayyip Erdogan’s ⁠government against concluding that the rolling back Kurdish territorial gains in Syria negated the need ‌for a peace process in Turkiye.

“If the ‍government calculates that ‘we have weakened ‍the Kurds in Syria, so there is no longer a ‍need for a process in Turkiye,’ it would be making a historic mistake,” he said in the interview.

Turkish officials said earlier on Monday that the Syrian integration deal, if implemented, could advance the more than year-long process with the ​PKK, which is based in northern Iraq. Erdogan urged swift integration of Kurdish fighters into Syria’s armed forces.

Turkiye, the strongest ⁠foreign backer of Damascus, has since 2016 repeatedly sent forces into northern Syria to curb the gains of the SDF — which after the 2011–2024 civil war had controlled more than a quarter of Syria while fighting Islamic State with strong US backing.

The United States has built close ties with Damascus over the last year and was closely involved in mediation between it and the SDF toward the deal.
Bakirhan said progress required recognition of Kurdish rights on both sides of the border.

“What needs to be done is clear: Kurdish rights must be recognized ‌in both Turkiye and Syria, democratic regimes must be established, and freedoms must be guaranteed,” he said.

Meanwhile, outlawed Kurdish militants in Turkiye said they will “never abandon” Kurds in Syria following the offensive by Damascus. 

You should know that we will not leave you alone. Whatever the cost, we will never leave you alone.. we as the entire Kurdish people and as the movement, will do whatever is necessary,” Murat Karayilan of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was quoted as saying by Firat.

Karayilan said the Damascus-led offensive was an “attempt to nullify” the peace process in Turkiye.
“This decision by international powers to enable these attacks, will be a black mark for the US, the UK, Germany, France and other international coalition states,” he said.
On Monday, at least 500 people rallied in Turkiye’s Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir against the Syrian offensive. Clashes erupted when pollice tried to break up the protest.
The pro-Kurdish DEM party, the third largest force in the Turkish parliament, called for a rally on Tuesday in the town of Nusaybin, located on the border with Syia.

*With Reuters and AFP