PKK fighters begin withdrawal from Turkey after nearly 30 years of conflict

Kurdish rebel fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have begun their withdrawal from southeastern Turkey as stipulated by a peace deal negotiated between Turkey and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in March. Over 40,000 people have died in the conflict, which has spanned nearly three decades. There are an estimated 2,000 PKK fighters in Turkey, and they will withdraw in phases over the course of about four months. The PKK expressed concern over an apparent increase of Turkish troop movements and reconnaissance drones on Tuesday. During a negotiated withdrawal in 1999, the Turkish military ambushed Kurdish fighters, killing an estimated 500 people. Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas said, "We have no doubt about the state but fear provocation from dark forces." There was, however, no sign of military activity on Wednesday. The first fighters are expected to arrive in northern Iraq’s Qandil mountains in a week. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized the timeline of the withdrawal, stressing that the fighters should disarm before leaving. But, this was rejected by the PKK, which feared the departing forces would come under assault.

Syria

After meetings on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov announced a plan to arrange an international conference aimed at ending the over two year conflict in Syria which has killed over 70,000 people. Kerry said their intention is to convince representatives from the Syrian government and the opposition to attend. He continued that the United States and Russia want to hold the peace conference "as soon as practical, possibly, hopefully as soon as the end of the month." The move seemed to be an optimistic step as the United States and Russia have not been able to agree to unified efforts on Syria. Lavrov said the United States and Russia were committed to a deal that would assure the "sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Syria. Kerry and Lavrov did not offer details on how they would get the warring parties to the negotiating table, nor did they elaborate on why they expect these efforts would be any more successful than those taken in the past. Meanwhile, four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers were seized Tuesday "by an unidentified armed group" while they were on patrol along the ceasefire line between Syria and Israel in the Golan Heights. The Islamist opposition group Martyrs of Yarmouk reportedly published a photo of the four men, and said they were being held for their own safety. The Martyrs of Yarmouk abducted 21 Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan in March, and released them after holding them for three days.

Headlines

• British physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has joined the academic boycott of Israel, pulling out of President Shimon Peres’s annual conference over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
• Suspected al Qaeda militants ambushed and killed three Yemeni air force pilots Wednesday when they were in a car traveling to the Al Anad air base, which is jointly used with the United States.
• Israeli police detained Jerusalem’s top Muslim cleric Muhammad Hussein over reported disturbances ahead of Jerusalem Day, when Israelis mark the city’s "reunification" during the 1967 Six-Day War.
• U.S. Republican lawmakers are continuing their inquiry into the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, focusing on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Arguments and Analysis

Lessons from a massacre that Assad looks to exploit (Hassan Hassan, The National)

"The narrative is that the regime’s forces are driving Sunni families from Alawite areas, in Homs and elsewhere, for the purpose of paving the way for a potential statelet on the coast. But that narrative is inaccurate because such moves are not systematic or universal. Sunni families were welcomed in the Alawite heartlands and Alawite families are similarly leaving their areas in the country’s middle when there is violence and heading to the coast.

These moves, therefore, suggest that sectarian cleansing is not being conducted for the purpose of establishing a potential state but for other strategic reasons to ensure the flow of Alawite fighters from and into this area. As the rebels close in on the coastline, the regime probably feels that such massacres will deepen sectarian tensions and pit Sunni and Alawites against each other, thereby convincing the Alawites they need to fight alongside the Assad regime for their survival.

…The recent carnage in Banias has been among the most grisly in Syria’s conflict in terms of numbers dead. The message to Sunni fighters is that the coastline is a red line. For Alawites the message is one of reassurance, that the coast will not face the same fate as Al Qusayr’s in Homs, where residents felt the regime could not shield them from rebel attacks last month – when Hizbollah intervened.

Alawite fighters have been steadily suffering losses; if these losses come closer to home, that might push many of them to realise a victory for the rebels is possible. And this is a scenario the Assad regime seeks to avoid."

The Thin Red Line (Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker)

"Just after midnight on April 25th, a Syrian medical technician who calls himself Majid Daraya was sitting at home, in the city of Daraya, five miles from the outskirts of Damascus, when he heard an explosion. He ran outside, and, on the southern horizon, he saw a blue haze. "I’ve never seen a blue explosion before," he remembers thinking. Seconds later came another blast, and another blue haze. Majid, who used a pseudonym to protect his identity, told me that his city had become a violent and unpredictable place; for five months, it had been the scene of heavy combat between forces loyal to the regime of Bashar al-Assad
and the rebels who have been fighting for more than two years to drive him from power.

Within a few minutes, Majid said, his eyes began to burn, and he felt sick to his stomach. He decided to walk to the local hospital, where, as an anesthesia specialist, he spent most of his daytime hours. When he arrived, dozens of people were streaming in, choking, vomiting, crying, saliva bubbling out of their mouths. About a hundred and thirty people were treated for similar symptoms; ten of them, Majid said, were in "dangerous" condition, though none died. The victims were suffering from chemical poisoning, but there wasn’t much that the doctors could do except try to alleviate the symptoms. "We don’t have medicine to cure that kind of poisoning," Majid said, in a telephone interview. (We had been introduced by the Syrian Support Group, a pro-opposition organization in Washington, D.C.) "The people were terrified, because no one could help them.""

–By Jennifer Parker and Mary Casey