ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday told reporters that Ankara will never allow elections to take place in northeastern Syria (Rojava) where authorities, under international pressure, delayed a planned vote until August.
"There is no election whatsoever; let's make that clear first," Erdogan told reporters on a plane following his return from Italy. He referred to the scheduled municipal election as “a scheme arranged to legitimize a terrorist organization.”
Turkey views Rojava’s ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) as the Syrian front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish group that has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state for decades in the struggle for greater Kurdish rights and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara. Kurdish authorities in Syria deny the accusation that they are linked to the PKK.
The elections were scheduled for June 11, but earlier this month the Kurdish-led administration in Rojava postponed them to August after heavy criticism from Turkey, which has threatened to carry out another military operation against Kurdish forces if the elections are held.
The Turkish president said that Ankara has a track record of “disrupting” similar plans in the past and stressed that the PKK will not be allowed to act freely in Syria.
“If such a situation arises, we will certainly mobilize our relevant units accordingly. We will not allow a terror state to be established right under our noses. We will never ever hesitate to do whatever is necessary to achieve this,” Erdogan added.
Kurdish officials have said that elections are their democratic right.
In a congratulatory message on the occasion of the Islamic Eid al-Adha, the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) said it hoped that the occasion is marked with “peace prevailing through the democratic solution that the people of Syria are waiting for.”
Washington has also called on Kurdish authorities in Rojava not to proceed with the planned elections. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said “we do not think that the conditions for such elections are in place in northeast Syria at the present time.”
The US embassy in Syria later confirmed that they had urged the Kurdish-led administration in Rojava not to carry out the vote.
About three million people are eligible to vote in Rojava and other areas under the control of the Autonomous Administration, including Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor provinces.
A total of 27 parties and 5,336 candidates are contesting the elections, and the electoral commission has opened nearly 2,000 polling stations across the region.
The main opposition, a group of parties forming the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), is boycotting the elections, claiming they lack legal legitimacy and protesting the imprisonment of several of their members. The PYD objects to ENKS’s relations with Turkey as a member of the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition.
