Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said his country had seen “disturbing evidence” that the Kurdish PYD militias are coordinating with the Assad regime and the Russian air force.
“What we have seen over the last weeks is very disturbing evidence of coordination between Syrian Kurdish forces, the Syrian regime and the Russian air force which are making us distinctly uneasy about the Kurds’ role in all of this,” Philip Hammond told Parliament on Tuesday.
Recognizing Turkey’s concerns over support for Syrian groups linked to the PKK, Hammond said that “Turkey has a problem with links between the PKK and Syrian Kurdish groups, [the] PKK being a terrorist group designated as such in Turkey and indeed in the U.K.”
Member of the Syrian Coalition’s political committee Fuad Aliko last week said that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) could not claim to be a representative of the Syrian Kurds, especially after the attacks its militias have recently launched against rebel-held areas under Russian aerial cover.
Aliko described the PYD as a proxy organization whose actions do not serve the Kurds’ national interests but those of the Assad regime and Russia in Syria and the region. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)