18 January 2018•Update: 19 January 2018
GAZIANTEP, Turkey
The Syrian National Kurdish Council said the PYD/PKK terrorist organization was oppressing citizens in northern Syria's Afrin city.
“PYD does not defend the rights of Kurds by any means, and it does not possess our ideology. We [Kurds in Syria] are the people who yearn for freedom, peace and tranquility,” Abdul Bari Usman, the press secretary of the council, told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview.
“PYD signifies oppression [in Syria],” he added.
He said the Kurdish people in Syria face torture and oppression, not just at the hands of the Assad-regime, but also PYD/PKK.
“We are trapped in a way. Locals do not know who to believe in or where to go,” he said.
Turkey is mulling over a possible operation in Afrin, a besieged city in northern Syria, to prevent a "terror corridor" from forming along its border.
Last week, Turkish security forces hit several PYD/PKK targets in Afrin.
An Afrin operation will follow Turkey's successful seven-month Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria, which ended in March 2017.
On Sunday the U.S.-led coalition in Syria controversially announced it was working with the SDF -- a group dominated by the terrorist PYD/PKK -- to set up and train a Syrian border protection force.
Turkey has long protested U.S. support for the PYD/PKK, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist group, and its military wing the YPG, while Washington has called it a "reliable ally" in its fight against Daesh in Syria.
Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU, the PKK has waged a terror campaign against Turkey for more than 30 years, killing nearly 40,000 people.
Usman has been living in Turkey’s southeastern province of Gaziantep. He took refuge in Turkey with his four children after he fled Qamishli, the regime-controlled district of Hasakah province in northeastern Syria, after raids by PYD/PKK.
Usman said Afrin belongs to the locals who yearn for freedom.
“Afrin cannot belong to PYD, it should not. Afrin is the land of its local people."
The Assad regime handed over Afrin to the PYD/PKK without putting up any fight and the area currently hosts 8,000 to 10,000 terrorists, according to information gathered by Anadolu Agency.
Terrorists are now hiding in shelters and pits in residential areas in Afrin -- a region bordering Turkey's Hatay and Kilis provinces -- after Turkey pointed out the region was a nest for terrorists.
Usman added that the Syrian Kurds fear that PYD/PKK will hand over Afrin to the regime in case of a war.
Reporting by Kerem Kocalar:Writing by Cansu Dikme
