Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has welcomed a new agreement between Syria’s government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), saying the deal prevented what it described as an attempt to undermine Ankara’s ongoing peace talks aimed at ending a decades-long armed conflict with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
AKP spokesperson Ömer Çelik said what he described as an attempt by the SDF/PKK to sabotage the goals of a “terrorism-free region” and “terrorism-free Turkey” had been thwarted by counterterrorism operations carried out by the Syrian government.
“The attempted coup targeting our goals of a ‘terrorism-free Turkey’ and ‘terrorism-free region’ has been stopped, and the mechanism in which the SDF was used as a tool has been rendered ineffective,” he said in a statement on X on Monday.
I)
Suriye Cumhurbaşkanı Sn Ahmed Şara tarafından geçtiğimiz günlerde yayınlanan kararname ile Suriye’deki Kürt kardeşlerimizin haklarının teminat altına alınması çok önemlidir. Esad yönetimi tarafından yıllar boyunca temel haklarından yoksun bırakılmış Kürt kardeşlerimizin hukuk…— Ömer Çelik (@omerrcelik) January 19, 2026
Turkey, which considers the SDF an extension of the PKK, has backed Syria’s new authorities and has called on Kurdish forces to integrate into the Syrian state. Turkish officials have repeatedly said Syria’s security is inseparable from that of Turkey, while Syrian Kurdish leaders warned that recent operations targeting Kurds endanger civilians and risk reigniting a wider conflict.
Çelik’s statement came after the Syrian government and the SDF reached an agreement on Sunday after weeks of intermittent clashes, providing for an immediate ceasefire and the SDF’s full integration into the national military, according to Syrian state media.
Under the 14-point agreement, Damascus will assume control over much of the semiautonomous region previously held by the SDF, following recent government advances that saw the seizure of strategic infrastructure, including dams and oilfields long under the group’s control.
Çelik’s “terrorism-free Turkey” refers to ongoing peace talks with the PKK, designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, aimed at ending its decades-long conflict, which has claimed at least 40,000 lives since 1984.
The new peace process with the PKK was launched following a surprise call from the country’s far-right leader, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Chairman Devlet Bahçeli, in October 2024 and endorsed by his political ally President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Bahçeli asked jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to instruct his group to renounce its armed campaign while hinting that the end of PKK violence could lead to Öcalan’s freedom.
As a result the PKK announced in May that it would lay down its weapons and dissolve itself.
Yet it is not known whether this new process will succeed since another attempt at peace launched in 2013 collapsed two years later, sparking renewed clashes between the PKK and the Turkish armed forces.
In a similar development Öcalan has said recent deadly clashes in Syria between government forces and Kurdish fighters appear aimed at derailing the ongoing peace talks between Turkey and the PKK, according to a delegation from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).
The delegation said Öcalan made the remarks during their visit on Saturday to the İmralı prison island near İstanbul, where he has been held in near-total isolation since 1999.
According to the delegation, Öcalan “sees this situation [in Syria] as an attempt to sabotage the peace process” in Turkey and reaffirmed his commitment to what he described as a process of “peace and democratic society,” calling for steps to move the talks forward.