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March 22nd, 2018 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on Wednesday, ruffled Turkey’s feathers over Ankara’s military offensive against Kurdish militants in Afrin, in northern Syria.
Merkel ruffled Turkey’s, Syria’s and Russia’s feathers over developments in Afrin and Ghouta.
Addressing Germany’s federal parliament (Bundestag) during her 2018 government statement, Merkel said that “despite all legitimate security interests Turkey has, it is unacceptable what is happening in Afrin, where thousands of civilians are being persecuted, dying, or forced to flee”. Merkel stressed that the German government is condemning this in the strongest possible terms.
The Syrian – Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main constituent of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was driven out of Afrin in Syrian Kurdistan a.k.a. Rojava on Sunday. The YPG has last week announced that it has evacuated civilians from areas in Afrin to prevent a massacre committed by Turkish troops and the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army and other Turkey-allied Islamist militia.
Turkey has also threatened that it will expand its operations to Manbij, along the entire Syrian – Turkish border, as well as in Iraq’s Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR) and northern Iraq’s Mount Shingal region, where ever there are Kurdish “anti-Turkish” militia including PKK units and the YPG.
Turkey considers the YPG as a Syrian offshoot of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). The YPG denies the alleged organizational overlap but notes that the YPG and the PKK are rooted in the same philosophy with regard to self-determination, governance, equal rights, ecological and environmental policy and more. The United States, for its part, supported the YPG and the SDF as vanguard in the fight against ISIS in northern and northeastern Syria.
Germany, for its part, has relaxed its policy with regard to tolerating pro-PKK manifestations in Germany. Germany also recognizes the YPG’s role in the fight against the Islamic State. In 2013, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the political branch of the powerful People’s Protection Units (YPG), has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013.
On March 17, 2016, Kurdish authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan. However, the PYD and YPG have also repeatedly stressed that they respect the territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic, and that they don’t threaten or intend to threaten Turkey.
In her address to the federal parliament, Chancellor Merkel offered an unequivocal defense of her decision to allow more than one million asylum seekers into Germany since 2015 while she criticized Turkey’s role in the war in Syria and by implication Turkey’s role in creating a situation that forced many Syrians to flee the country.
Merkel stressed that the conflict required a political solution as well as a humanitarian response. The German Chancellor warned that the current offensives were exacerbating the already desperate situation for the civilian population there. Merkel would also criticize the Syrian and the Russian government. “Just now we are seeing horrific things with the bombing for example in Eastern Ghouta,” Merkel said. “We condemn these bombings by Assad regime — for example on a school, in the strongest terms, but also Russia which is looking on.”
CH/L – nsnbc 22.03.2018
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2018/03/22/88177/
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