The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has officially confirmed that its sees the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is headed by chairman Salih Muslim, as the Syrian wing of the internationally-recognized terror group PKK.
Under its “The World Factbook” section and Syria subcategory, the agency listed the Syria-based PYD as a PKK branch under foreign-based terrorist groups.
The page was last updated on January 23, 2018.
This revelation comes not long after State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert described the terrorist People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northwestern Syria, which is the armed wing of the PYD, as “the PKK.”
During a press briefing, Nauert said that Turkey was dealing with “the PKK instead of fighting Daesh.”
“We understand Turkey’s concerns regarding this matter,” the spokesperson said, adding retrospectively that she actually meant to say “YPG” and not PKK.
However, this was not the first time the U.S. confirmed their links.
Despite the previous U.S. administration’s insistence on recognizing no direct links between the PKK and the YPG and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter had confirmed the link between YPG/PYD and the PKK while testifying before a Senate panel at the U.S. Congress in April 2016.
After admitting the link between the PKK and PYD, Carter acknowledged that the PKK is a designated terror group by the U.S., Turkey and the EU.
A Tactical Action Report (TAR) prepared by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), had also confirmed the affiliation between the PKK and the PYD/YPG terror groups.
PYD current chairman Muslim has also implicitly accepted that there were hundreds of PKK militants in the ranks of the YPG.
Turkish authorities labeled the PYD as the KCK’s Syrian branch in 2009.
