Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party on Tuesday accused Syria’s transitional government of launching what it called a genocide against Kurds in northeastern Syria with the backing of Turkey and international powers.
The Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) held its weekly parliamentary group meeting in the border town of Nusaybin in Turkey’s southeastern Mardin province, instead of Ankara, in a show of support for Kurdish-led forces across the frontier and to protest Damascus’s military campaign against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları said Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo had come under attack and described the broader offensive as an occupation attempt that first targeted areas west of the Euphrates River and then moved east toward what Kurds call Rojava. She said responsibility lay with Syria’s transitional leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group and the Islamic State group along with what she called the international forces backing them.
Hatimoğulları also accused Ankara of playing a double game, saying government allies spoke of peace with Kurds in Turkey while supporting operations in Syria.
Co-chair Tuncer Bakırhan said the Damascus leadership had set a trap for Kurds in Aleppo and claimed the region was facing killings, using language that framed the violence as a campaign to force Kurdish surrender.
The party’s border meeting came hours after scuffles erupted in Nusaybin between Turkish police and demonstrators trying to reach the border. Police fired tear gas and used water cannon, while protesters threw rocks.
Turkey has emerged as the main foreign backer of Syria’s transitional authorities since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in 2025. Ankara considers the SDF a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant group that has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
The SDF was the main US partner in the ground fight against the Islamic State group in Syria. Over the past decade it has built an autonomous administration across much of northeastern Syria, an area that includes major towns along Turkey’s border as well as prisons and camps holding Islamic State detainees and their relatives.
The border protest and DEM Party’s accusations came the same day Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli praised the Syrian campaign and called for what he described as terrorist activity to be “rooted out” not only west of the Euphrates but also east of it, from Kobani to Qamishli.
Bahçeli is President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main ally in parliament. He said “Damascus’s security is Ankara’s security,” emphasizing Turkey’s support for Syria’s push into SDF-held areas.
Kobani, Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, became known worldwide in 2014 when Kurdish fighters, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, resisted an Islamic State siege. Qamishli is a key city for Kurdish-led institutions in northeastern Syria.
With Turkey’s Kurdish political base mobilizing in the streets and Ankara’s nationalist bloc cheering Damascus’s advance, the battle lines in Syria are now spilling directly into Turkey’s domestic politics, raising pressure on authorities as protests spread across the southeast.