PYD party says Turkey should not interfere in Syria

A Kurdish party that is extending its power in northern Syria as President Bashar al-Assad battles an insurgency raging elsewhere, warned Turkey not to interfere in the region where it fears rising separatist militancy along its border, Hurriyet reports.
 
Turkey is alarmed at the growing influence of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and suspects it of links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
 
Turkey says it will not allow "terrorist" groups to gain a foothold across the border in Syria, where Kurds make up some 10 percent of the total population - part of an ethnic group of millions that also reaches into Iraq and Iran.
 
"Turkey has nothing to do with the Syrian Kurds," PYD leader Mohammed Saleh Muslim shot back, denying anything more than ideological affinity with the PKK. 
 
"The protection of my people in my areas, in my town: that is my right, no-one can deny it, and that's what we did. So there is no need for Turkey to be worried and make threats," he told Reuters via telephone from the Syrian city of Qamishli.
 
Saleh Muslim said the Syrian towns of Kobani, Derik and Efrin were now under Kurdish control.