ISTANBUL, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Turkey’s ruling AK Party welcomes the dissolution of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as an important step towards strengthening Syrian unity, a spokesman for President Tayyip Erdogan’s \u200bparty said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
NATO member Turkey has emerged as one of the main \u200callies of neighbouring Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa after he toppled Bashar al-Assad’s decades-long rule.<\/p>\n
Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n Ankara has vowed to help Damascus rebuild the country and restructure its state institutions and armed forces, and it has provided Damascus \u200bwith political and diplomatic support.<\/p>\n “An important threshold was passed in terms of strengthening \u200bSyria’s internal unity with the dissolution of the SDF,” AK Party spokesman \u2060Omer Celik wrote on X, adding Ankara supported Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.<\/p>\n The announcement by \u200bSDF commander Mazloum Abdi<\/a> of the group’s dissolution and integration into Syria’s armed forces under an \u200bagreement with Damascus comes amid peace efforts in Turkey with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, which Ankara views as linked to the SDF.<\/p>\n In February 2025, jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his group \u200bto disarm and disband, and it announced in May 2025 that it would do \u200bso. A group of militants symbolically burned their weapons at a ceremony in northern Iraq two months later.<\/p>\n As \u200cpart \u2060of the process, Ankara has repeatedly said the SDF must also dissolve and disband, voicing support for the integration process.<\/p>\n Turkey, which backed rebels looking to oust Assad, had mounted several cross-border military operations against the SDF in northern Syria and still has thousands of troops stationed \u200bthere. It says they \u200bwill only be \u2060withdrawn once the security threats it faces are eliminated.<\/p>\n The government describes the peace process with the PKK as part of its goal of \u200bcreating a “terror-free Turkey” and “terror-free region”. While Turkey’s parliament passed a law \u200bthis month establishing \u2060a legal framework for the disbanding of the PKK, Kurdish politicians have said lasting peace will require broader democratic and legal reforms.<\/p>\n The PKK, designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United \u2060States and \u200bthe European Union, launched its insurgency in 1984. The \u200bconflict has killed more than 40,000 people, imposed a heavy economic burden on mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey and fuelled \u200bdecades of political and social division.<\/p>\n Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Hugh Lawson<\/p>\n Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n