DISINFO: US plans to create a Kurdish independent state were thwarted by Russia and Turkey
SUMMARY
Russian and Turkish presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Sochi to sign a memorandum about Syria after intense negotiations. The provisions include the deployment of Russian-Syrian forces on the territories previously controlled by the US and Kurdish militias. This historical agreement will put an end to the US attempts to implement a ‘Great Kurdistan’, the creation of a Kurdish independent state on Turkey’s borders.
RESPONSE
The allegations about a US plan to create a ‘Great Kurdistan’ are a conspiracy theory with zero evidence to back it. There is a long-established conspiracist mindset in Turkey called ‘the Sèvres Syndrome’, well known to political scientists and Turkish observators, which tends to think that Western powers are always plotting to divide Turkey as they did in the Sèvres Treaty in 1920, sometimes allegedly using minorities as a spearhead. One of its most recent expressions is the idea that the West is promoting Kurdish separatism as a way to weaken a resurgent Turkey, a belief reinforced by the support provided by the US military to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria. One survey conducted in 2018 showed that “ninety percent [of participants] said that the United States was behind the PKK and YPG [Kurdish armed groups in Turkey and Syria]”. This fits into the recurrent Russian disinformation narrative of Western powers promoting secessionism to weaken other countries, such as Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Belarus, Venezuela or Mexico.