PYD closes gate from Turkey to Syria

Gülden Aydın - ŞANLIURFA

AFP Photo

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has reportedly closed the border gate in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad so that it can clear traps and bombs in the area following heavy clashes between Kurdish forces and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).  

Turkish officials at Akçakale customs, the Turkish side of the border, told Hürriyet June 18 that the gates were closed June 18 and that they were expected to be opened on June 22 once the area has been cleaned of explosives that were left by ISIL militants before they fled. 

Salih Müslim, the leader of the YPG’s political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Hürriyet on June 16 that the YPG would also built preemptive defense lines. 

Fızza, a 60-year-old Arab woman, told Hürriyet that her husband ran away with a “younger wife” two years ago, and that she lost her four sons in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s forces before the PYD killed her sole remaining son a year ago. Still, she said she did not want to see ISIL again. 

“I do not know what I will do when I return to [Tal Abyad],” she said. “I support no sides. May God not show us ISIL again. They are beheading people. They are bad. I am not afraid of the YPG. They would not do something bad to us.”