Andrew Jerez stated that the confrontation between Kurds and Turks living in European countries has intensified, especially after the Turkish attacks on the Kurds in Syria. This has led countries like Austria to accuse Turkey of supporting extremist Turkish citizens living in the country against the Kurds.

Some European countries also criticize the lack of serious efforts to support the Kurdish issue in Turkey and put pressure on Ankara.

KurdPress has interviewed Andrew Andreu Jerez, a political and media activist living in Germany, over the Kurdish issue in Turkey and the reactions of EU members to it.

Tensions between Kurdish and Turkish communities in Europe (Austria, Germany)

"On the one hand, the confrontations between Kurdish and Turkish communities in Germany and Austria are not new. We have seen them several times on the European ground when the armed conflict got worse in Western Kurdistan. On the other hand, the Austrian government could have been using the Kurdish question for its own political objectives in a national internal arena where the far-right positions of the FPÖ play a key role. That could explain why Viena says that foreign government could be behind the attacks of the ultranationalist Turks,” Mr. Jerez told KurdPress about confrontations between the Kurds and Turks who are living in European states, Austria in particular.

The role of Kurdish issue in Turkey accession in the EU

Regarding Erdogan's strategy towards the European position about Turkey's candidacy to join the EU, I do not think that the Turkish-Kurdish conflict really plays a role in that sense, he said.

The media expert noted that “the core of my Master Degree Final Research points out precisely that the conditional access system in the EU will be never able to make pressure on Erdogan's regime to solve the Kurdish question through democratic and political means since Brussels is not able / does not want to acknowledge the Kurdish question as a bilateral question between Ankara and the European institutions. This hasn't changed since I finished my MA final research seven years ago: the Kurdish is not part of the foreign agenda of the EU.”

“Erdogan knows it, therefore I doubt that he tries to use the Kurdish question to force Turkish accession in the EU or to try to influence an access process that has been anyway paralyzed for years," the analyst ultimately said.

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