However the PYD is also often considered to be closely affiliated with another Kurdish political group, the Kurdish Workers' Party, or PKK. The latter, based in Turkey, has been defined as a terrorist organization by some countries mainly due to its long and violent conflict with the government of Turkey, where Kurdish nationalists and Turkish military have often clashed. The decades-long struggle has claimed an estimated 40,000 lives.
Recently the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan called for a ceasefire and declared that his group would be open to be negotiations with the Turkish government. But perhaps this is hardly surprising considering that the PYD are now basically running parts of Syria by proxy, along the Turkish border. In the more recent past the Turkish government has said it considers this a threat to its own sovereignty. And the Turkish are often harried by Kurdish PKK fighters living in the mountainous areas of its border with Iraq.
As Foreign Policy magazine wrote: “The speed and ease with which the PYD was able to establish control raised Turkish suspicions that Assad might have orchestrated the withdrawal to strengthen the PKK at the expense of Turkey and the Sunni-dominated Syrian opposition.”
Hence the reason not all Syrian Kurds are devoted to the PYD.
Meanwhile the PYD continues to stress their distance from the PKK. They’ve pledged allegiance to the Supreme Kurdish Authority, a body made up of various Kurdish interests in the country, and that Authority has in turn, pledged support for the Syrian opposition, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. So even though they may not have been involved directly, initially, and even though they themselves have clashed with the rebel-run Free Syrian Army, the PYD are now supporting the Syrian revolutionaries.
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