Erdoğan says Syria’s agreement with Kurds will ‘serve peace’

An agreement to integrate autonomous Kurdish institutions in Syria’s northeast into the new Syrian national government will “serve peace,” Turkey’s president said on Tuesday.

“The full implementation of the agreement reached yesterday will serve Syria’s security and peace. The winner will be all of our Syrian brothers,” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said at a Ramadan fast breaking dinner.

Syria’s new authorities under interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa have sought to disband armed groups and establish government control over the entirety of the country since ousting long-time leader Bashar al-Assad in December after more than 13 years of civil war.

On Monday the Syrian presidency announced an agreement with the head of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to integrate the autonomous Kurdish administration that has governed much of the northeast for the past decade into the national government.

The new accord is expected to be implemented by the end of the year.

The SDF — seen essential in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants — is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara views as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed group run by ethnic Kurds in Turkey that has waged a bloody war against the Turkish state since 1984.

Turkey, which has forged close relations with al-Sharaa, has pressed Syria’s new rulers to address the issue of the YPG’s control over wide parts of Syria.

On Tuesday Erdoğan said Turkey attached “great importance to preserving the territorial integrity and unitary structure of our neighbor Syria,” adding, “We see every effort to cleanse Syria of terrorism as a step in the right direction.”

The agreement comes nearly two weeks after a historic call by jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan for the militant group to lay down its weapons and disband.

© Agence France-Presse