Today, the PYD/PKK administration that holds a part of North-East Syria claims to be anti-government. But let’s take a look at an article published in 1997 and a book published in 1996.
‘During the 1980s and 1990s, the PKK succeeded, with full knowledge of the Syrian regime, in enlisting tens of thousands of young Kurdish men and women and pushing them to a devastating war with Turkey, which the party began on 15 August 1984.
The PKK also succeeded in convincing hundreds of thousands of Syrian Kurds that the solution to their problems in Syria lay in resolving the Kurdish issue in Turkey, and that Hafez al-Assad was a friend to the Kurdish people – his regime had supported the party by providing shelter for its leaders and fighters, and treatment for its wounded.
In a long interview conducted by Syrian journalist Nabil al-Mulhim, published in 1996 as the book Leader and People: Seven days with Apo (the PKK leader’s nom de guerre), Ocalan literally denied “the existence of Kurdistan in Syria and the existence of a Kurdish problem in Syria”.
He also said that “most Syrian Kurds are immigrants who fled to Syria from the oppression and violence of the Turkish governments” and that “the PKK was trying to return them to their homeland”.
“The Syrian government is pleased by this”, he added.’
