MESOP MIDEAST WATCH: PKK Attempting to Impose Its Will on Every Kurd: Former Official

30-11-2021 – ERBIL — The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) intends to impose its policies, vision, and will on every Kurd living in all the four parts of the greater Kurdistan, said a former senior member of the armed group.

Speaking to BasNews in an exclusive interview, Mahmoud Rash, the former head of PKK’s self-proclaimed Midya Region, said the PKK should realize the fact that even if its assistance is temporarily needed in any part of the greater Kurdistan, it is not welcome forever everywhere.

Rash, who abandoned the PKK in recent years, explains the mentality behind PKK’s current leadership. Below is the interview which was translated from Kurdish and edited for clarity and length.

BasNews: What the PKK wants from the Kurdistan Region, especially Sinjar?

Mahmoud Rash: When the Kurds face an ordeal, the leaders should act like President Barzani who rushed to help Kobani [in the war against the Islamic State] but withdrew his Peshmerga forces when the job was done. It’s true that the Kurds are all one nation, but they are divided into four parts. Being one nation does not mean one side can impose itself as the leader for all. The Kurds in each of the four parts should have the right to decide their fate themselves.

The PKK imposed a wrong policy in Sare Kani (Ras al-Ain) and Afrin, and it lost these Kurdish areas to Turkey. Why they don’t go and get these territories back? Now they are imposing the same wrong policy on Sinjar and yet expect to be praised. No, this is a wrong policy. They should leave Sinjar to its people and stop sacrificing the Yezidis for the PKK’s wrong policies. We know that the PKK is put in place in Sinjar by other foreign states, which will ultimately harm the PKK itself as well.

BasNews: What the PKK is doing in the Kurdistan Region is a strategy or a tactic?

Mahmoud Rash: It is a tactic within the PKK’s strategy. The PKK cannot move inside northern Kurdistan (Turkey) where is expected to be the PKK’s main battleground. Whenever they succeeded to score a victory for their strategy in northern Kurdistan, then they can start working to develop their policies in other parts.

Generally, what the PKK does is a wrong policy of imposing itself on everyone. Even in northern Kurdistan, people are criticizing their policies after what is called ‘the war of trenches’. People are asking what trenches could mean when the people’s will is broken. What a politics is this? The PKK had no clear understanding of this situation, and that left the party with a massive recess in the public sphere.

The world has developed, and the PKK is now returning to the war of trenches. This has been counterproductive. The PKK is not in a position now to even bring a large crowd on the streets in northern Kurdistan. Why is that? Because the will of the people there is broken by the wrong politics of the PKK. With killing a few military officers and a few soldiers [of the Turkish Army] the PKK cannot resolve the Kurdish question in northern Kurdistan. Meanwhile, the PKK insists on its decisions; it does not allow the birth and progress of a new Kurdish political party with a different vision. Anyone against its policies would be destroyed through propaganda. This is actually dangerous.

BasNews: While almost everyone warns the PKK, why it still insists on its wrong politics?

Mahmoud Rash: Yes, the PKK insists on the wrong politics which led to the recess of the Kurdish political parties in the last elections in Turkey. It helped the AKP to win the election with the decisive votes of the disappointed Kurds. In Syrian Kurdistan as well, they keep burning and attacking ENKS offices which cannot resist the pressure put by the PKK. They are trying to create the same problems in the Kurdistan Region as well, but this is actually going to be costly for everyone, for which the PKK should be held responsible.