Kurdish PYD fighting DAESH ‘terror group’

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BRUSSELS, Oct 5, (RTRS): Syrian Kurdish militants backed by the United States in the fight against Islamic State belong to a terrorist organisation and are collaborating with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. The Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) role supporting the US-led coalition’s battle against Islamic State does not give the group legitimacy, Erdogan said in remarks broadcast live from Brussels.

The autonomy-seeking PKK, which has close links with the PYD, has waged a war against Turkey since 1984 that flared anew this summer. Turkey, the European Union and the United States all list the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s prime minister condemned dissemination of a video purporting to show a dead Kurdish militant dragged through the streets tied by the neck to an armoured police vehicle, images that could further inflame tension in the country’s southeast. “It is unacceptable to treat any corpse this way, even if it is a dead terrorist,” Ahmet Davutoglu said, while not explicitly confirming the veracity of the video and photographs widely posted on Twitter.

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