West too quick to damn Turkey over Syria op: Columnist

LONDON

The West is too quick to condemn Turkey as "bloodthirsty" while hailing YPG/PKK as "harmless savior," a British columnist said on Tuesday.

Writing an article on the situation in Syria, The Times journalist Sarah Tor said in her article, titled Why I Can’t Keep Silent Over Turkey in Syria Any Longer, that the "time has come to talk about Turkey in Syria".

She said: "[I] may well end up hung, drawn and quartered by writing this, but there are a lot of outraged opinions flying around in Britain and I can’t hold my tongue much longer".

She argued that the West supported those "Kurdish groups" because they defeated Daesh but added that it is "naive and orientalist to think that the "good little Kurds" were fighting purely to protect the West".

"Of course they weren’t. They were fighting for land, for a Kurdistan, and that meant getting rid of anyone standing in their way," she wrote.

Tor said she understands why the Kurds may want their own land, "but using terrorism to get it is unacceptable".

"The Syrian Kurdish forces of the YPG/SDF are a faction of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist terrorist organization in Turkey that has caused chaos and death for over 40 years," the article said.

It added: "With the PKK/YPG/SDF in control in Syria, it’s very likely that the Turkish government will be coerced, through far more terrorism, into handing over part of Turkey. I’ve personally seen the damage and grief caused by the PKK to both Turks and Kurds, and this risk of a further and much larger battle with the PKK cannot be taken. Waging a war heavy-handedly is not the way to get it, but a buffer zone is definitely needed."

"It’s a complicated situation and outsiders have to consider history and ultimate political aims before making a judgement," Tor said.

"Western people are too quick to hold the Kurdish fighters up as harmless saviors and damn the Turks as bloodthirsty. We need to remember that no army is innocent in war".

On Oct. 9, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring to eliminate terrorists from northern Syria east of the Euphrates River in order to secure Turkey’s borders, aid in the safe return of Syrian refugees, and ensure Syria’s territorial integrity.

On Oct. 17, a U.S. delegation headed by Vice President Mike Pence paid a working visit to the capital Ankara, where they met Erdogan and discussed Turkey's anti-terror operation.

Following the meeting, the two sides reached a 13-article agreement on northeastern Syria.

As part of the deal, Turkey paused its anti-terror push east of the Euphrates River for 120 hours to allow the withdrawal of terrorist PKK and its Syrian offshoot YPG/PKK from the planned safe zone.

The pause for the anti-terror operation will end Tuesday night.

Ankara and the U.S. also agreed on a 32-kilometer (20-mile) safe zone south of the Turkish border in Syria, where Turkey wants to accommodate more than three million refugees it is currently hosting.

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union -- has been responsible for deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.