Western perspectives on the Kurds

The highly anticipated corridor for the Peshmarga fighters has finally opened and they have marched into Turkish soil to move into Kobane. It all looked like a long wedding procession. As BBC and CNN International broadcast the crossing, ordinary Turks who only watch TV series or football matches were not able to see even a glimpse of it on their favorite channels. “Ankara does not want a Habur Dejavu” said a columnist close to the Justice and Development (AKP) government, referring to the first cease-fire in 2009 when outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas came back home to Turkey with fireworks.

But the real outcome of the siege of Kobane has been the unification of the Kurdish cause in Europe. During a recent trip to Germany with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a young city council member in Hamburg told us that the campaign to take the PKK off of the terrorist list in Europe has gained a lot of support since the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Germany is not the only nation feeling sympathy with the Kurdish cause. CNN’s recent reporting about female guerrillas in the Democratic Union Party (PYD) fighting for secular lives and equality is a welcoming sign from the U.S.

Ankara believes that if the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Masoud Barzani’s troops land in Kobane, the tiny town will become more like Arbil. But on the contrary, the leftist and secular self-rule in Rojava has proven to be more attractive to young Kurds and Turks of Turkey, which is why a number of leftist university students from Istanbul have gone there to fight.

Still, there are questions left unanswered. NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Philip M. Breedlove, told me in...