The >capture of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad by Kurdish fighters from Islamic State this week deals a significant blow to the radical Sunni Salafi terrorist group. The action not only cut off a vital supply line for IS to its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, but also marked a stunning reversal of fortunes for the group which just last month >captured Ramadi in Iraq and >Palmyra in Syria. The People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party that controls the Kurdish-populated areas on the Syrian side, was on the front lines against IS in Tal Abyad. Over the year, the YPG has been proved to be resilient in terms of its tactics and resolve in the fight against IS. It played a key role in rescuing thousands of Yazidis in Iraq from IS last year, and defeated the radical Islamists in Kobane near the Turkish border in January. With the capture of Tal Abyad, the YPG has emerged as a very potent anti-IS force. The YPG challenges the group both politically and militarily, which makes it a progressive alternative to the perverse world view of IS. Kurdish fighters of the YPG are social liberals whose commitment towards gender equality and secularism stand in sharp contrast with IS’s barbarism and misogyny. Ideally they should have been in the forefront of a united anti-IS campaign. But in reality the Syrian/Turkish Kurds are not getting the support they need in the battle.
This is mainly because of the Turkish approach towards the Kurds. The YPG is affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), considered a terror group by Turkey and the U.S. Ties between the YPG and the PKK have deepened since the start of the Syrian civil war, and Turkey fears any direct help to the YPG would eventually strengthen the hands of the PKK. But this approach has several flaws. First, IS is a bigger threat to Turkey than the secular PKK, which has been in a peace process with the government in Ankara for two years now. Second, a defeat of Kurdish militias by IS would trigger a humanitarian catastrophe, which would not only enhance the flow of refugees into Turkey but also make its borders strategically vulnerable. So it is in its best interest to move ahead with the peace process with the PKK and effect a rapprochement with the Kurds. The recent parliamentary elections in Turkey, in which the >pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party crossed the 10 per cent threshold to enter Parliament for the first time, set the political stage for such cordiality. Ankara has to seize the momentum to overhaul its approach to the Kurds. Such a move would not just help it end a three-decade-old civil war that featured the brutal persecution of the Kurds, but also infuse fresh energy into the Kurdish resistance to IS along the Syrian-Turkish border.