Kurdish state or PKK state?

Sedat Laçiner from the Star daily focuses on the roots and identity of the Syrian Kurds, who number between 1.5 million and 2 million people. He says the majority of Syrian Kurds migrated from Turkey to Syria in and after 1920. The Damascus administration regarded these Kurds as “foreign elements” and had concerns about their presence in the country. However, Syrian Kurds have become a very Arab-like people. Most of them are Sunni and live in the northeast, where there are borders with Turkey and Iraq. What is a matter of concern for Turkey, Laçiner says, is that Syrian Kurds are a continuation of the Kurds in Turkey, but they are constantly fed misinformation about Turkey. But despite all this, Turkey should not confuse demands that stem from terrorism with demands stemming from ethnicity. Objecting to a demand for autonomy just because Kurds are the ones demanding it is neither reasonable nor fair. After all, it is their right to demand autonomy, but as long as they get the state’s approval and respect other ethnic groups.

In his article “Are we against a Kurdish state or a KCK state,” Bugün’s Gültekin Avcı asks: Are the PKK and its affiliated Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) terrorist organizations? Have these two organizations been killing our innocent people, soldiers, security officers and teachers for years? Do these two constitute threats to Turkey’s unity and peace? If “yes” is the answer to all, then we are supposed to be against a probable state that the KCK or PKK intend to establish inside or outside of our country, because any state they establish will produce further terrorism in Turkey. But from a liberal perspective, Kurds who are not from the KCK have the right to establish an administration in northern Syria. This, however, is not the case here, and those Kurds in northern Syria are not unrelated to the PKK or KCK, Avcı says.