PYD is threat to Kurdish people: Brother of PYD leader

The PYD terrorist group is dragging the Kurdish people -- with the blessing of foreign powers -- into "uncertainty", Prof. Mustafa Muslim, brother of PYD Co-Chairman Salih Muslim, told Anadolu Agency.

Prof. Muslim warned that history would "repeat itself" and that the international powers would -- once again -- let the Kurds down when they had achieved their own political goals.

"The Kurdish people should learn from their history and not rely on these big powers," he said.

"History is repeating itself," he warned. "Russia and the U.S. are only backing Kurdish groups -- especially in Syria -- to advance their own interests and objectives."

"Only Turkey stands against them [the PYD] in the region," he added. "They [the PYD and its patrons] say, 'We can only beat Turkey with the help of the Arabs and Kurds; we can use the Syrian Kurds against Turkey."

Prof. Muslim went on to assert that the Kurdish people had never persecuted the ethnic minorities living among them.

"The Kurds are a dignified people," he said. "They have always lived honorably in their mountainous homeland."

He added: "They don't tolerate persecution."

According to Prof. Muslim, foreign powers have been manipulating the Kurds for their own purposes for more than a century.

"Following the [1916] Sykes-Picot Agreement and the First World War, Germany, France and Britain wanted the communities inside the Ottoman Empire to assist in partitioning imperial lands," he said.

Prof. Muslim said the foreign powers saw the Kurdish people as a threat to their plans and had therefore worked to divide the Kurdish people into five distinct groups.

He reiterated his warning that the foreign powers were only helping certain Kurdish groups in order to further their own interests and that -- once they got what they wanted -- they would abandon the Kurdish people.

"In the 1920s, they briefly supported Sheikh Mahmoud Hafid [of the Kurdish royal family] in Sulaymaniyah, but eventually killed him once they achieved their goals," he said.

"And in 1946," he added, "[Kurdish leader] Qazi Muhammad, with Russian help, founded a self-declared Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad."

"But as soon as Russia's wider objectives changed, the Russians began supporting the shah of Iran and eventually executed Qazi Muhammad," Muslim said.