Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party says Syria-SDF deal in line with Öcalan’s peace call

Tuncer Bakırhan, co-chair of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), has welcomed a new agreement between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), saying it aligns with jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s recent call for peace, the ANKA news agency reported.

The landmark agreement was signed by Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi on Monday as the new Syrian administration tries to unify the country’s diverse communities after a decade of civil war.

Speaking at an event in Diyarbakır ahead of the spring festival of Nevruz, traditionally marked by Kurds in the second half of March as the first day of spring, Bakırhan said the deal was crucial for safeguarding the cultural and political rights of all communities in Syria.

“This agreement is clear in its intent — rejecting sectarianism and ethnic nationalism, ensuring that Kurds, Alawites, Arabs, Druze, Christians, Armenians and all other communities can live with their identities intact in a democratic framework,” the DEM Party co-chair said.

The new accord, which is expected to be implemented by the end of the year, comes after days of violence in the heartland of Syria’s Alawite minority that has posed the most serious threat yet to the country’s stability since the fall of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December.

The deal will bring northeast Syria under government control for the first time in more than a decade while recognizing Kurdish cultural rights. Under the deal, Syria’s Kurdish community will be officially recognized as an integral part of the state and citizenship will be granted to tens of thousands who were previously denied it under the Assad regime’s decades-long rule.

Bakırhan linked the agreement to a historic statement by Öcalan, the imprisoned founder and leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in which he called on his Kurdish militant group to disarm and disband. The landmark declaration was read aloud in İstanbul by a delegation of DEM Party lawmakers on February 27.

“Peace has become a topic of conversation in Turkey. Peace has become a topic of conversation in Syria. A Syria where Kurds can live with their identities on equal and democratic grounds has become possible,” he said while praising Kurds who worked hard to achieve this.

He said both developments would be crowned during Nevruz.

“Öcalan’s paradigm is in Syria today. Those who work for uniformism in Syria, who try to confine Syria to a nationality, have understood very well that this is not the case,” he said, adding that Kurds will celebrate this Nevruz with the best feelings.