Turkey mainly, Iraq and the Kurds (2006-2014)

[Jedburgh]

Rudaw, 25 March 2014: YPG Calls on all Kurdish Groups to Unite Against Jihadist Threats in Rojava

All Kurdish groups in the region must set aside their differences and unite to counter threats by Islamic extremists in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), said the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) which is the most powerful Kurdish force in Syrian Kurdistan.

"All the parties and forces of Rojava, the officials of the autonomous Cantons of Cizire, Kobani and Afrin, the Kurdish National Council and Council of Western Kurdistan must put aside their differences at this stage," the YPG said in a statement.

It suspended military operations in the three cantons, created in the northeast last month by its political overseer, the PYD, saying it would only act defensively.

However, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has vowed to take control over the Kobani area and annex it to areas under its control. In the past several days, it has launched heavy assaults on Kobani areas, but has failed to capture territories due to resistance by YPG fighters….

[Jedburgh]

ICG, 8 May 2014: Flight of Icarus? The PYD's Precarious Rise in Syria

......The PYD did not liberate Kurdish areas of Syria: it moved in where the regime receded; most often, it took over the latter’s governance structures and simply relabelled them, rather than generating its own unique model as it claims. Fringe Arab, Syriac and Assyrian leaders are participating, even if they do not adhere to its ideology, as a way to ensure security and access to services for their communities.

Rojava is thus more shell than rising sun, an instrument that enables the regime to control Kurdish areas. Established in isolation from the society it means to govern, it is overburdened by an ideological foundation with which most Syrian Kurds and non-Kurds scarcely identify. Its political architecture enjoys only narrow buy-in beyond the PYD affiliates and co-opted personalities, and international recognition is not on the horizon. More than three years after the Syrian uprising erupted, the movement’s popular legitimacy still seems largely a function of the threat that gave rise to it....