Vague provisions on anti-terror cooperation

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The Kurdish question is one of the most intricate and long-lasting issue in the Middle East. While early historical records of the presence of Kurds in the area date back to the times of Alexander the Great, the region of Kurdistan never achieved the statehood in modern terms, and the hopes for self-determination and the creation of a Kurd state fuelled by industry email list the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres were definitively repressed in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne.

Since then, the history of Kurds has been inextricably intertwined to that of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq. In Turkey, the independence movement in the oil-rich Kurdish region was met with repression and segregation by the central government. In turn, the militant separatist organization PKK started a bloody guerrilla-war that to some extent lasts until today. Nowadays, the PKK is widely recognised as a terrorist organization by NATO members and the European Union.

To the contrary, the Fethullah Terrorist Organisation (FETÖ) and the People’s Protection Units or Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG) are not generally considered terrorist groups. FETÖ is the Turkish denomination of the Gülen movement, led by the US-based preacher Fethullah Gülen. The YPG is a mainly-Kurdish armed group in Syria and the primary component of the Syrian Democratic Forces fighting ISIS in Syria and, until now, supposedly supported by Sweden. Several NATO members have explicitly rejected Turkey’s request to list FETÖ and YPG among terrorist organisations.