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 US Still Views PKK and PYD “Separate Entities”: US Official

WASHINGTON — 24 March 2016 –  The US State Department Spokesperson has made it clear that Washington views the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as “two separate entities.”Earlier this week, Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani told al-Monitor that PYD and PKK are “exactly one and the same thing”, and the US knows that very well.

In his daily press briefing on Wednesday, Mark Toner stated that USA respects Barzani’s  views on the issue, but USA does not see these two Kurdish parties as the same. “We still adhere to what our policy’s been for the past many months, which is that we view PKK as a foreign terrorist organization. We condemn its violence that it carries out against Turkish civilians and citizens,” Toner said. “And separately, we have been working with PYD – or YPG, rather, in parts of Syria as part of a number of groups we’re working with who are actively fighting and dislodging Daesh or ISIL [Islamic State] from territory it controls.”The spokesperson, however, pointed out that despite supporting the Syrian Kurdish forces, Washington has disagreements with them over some issues such as semi-autonomous self-rule zone.  “We disagree with them on that and we have frank discussions with them about that. But they are part of a number of groups that have been very effective in taking the fight against – or taking the fight, rather, Daesh [IS].” www.mesop.de