As Turkey works to set up a new system of governance in recently captured Afrin, Syria, it is also rekindling discord among rival Kurdish groups.

Kurds who oppose the Democratic Union Party (PYD) recently met under Ankara’s auspices in Gaziantep, Turkey, to form the Afrin Liberation Congress. This first move toward new rule in Afrin was denounced as a betrayal by other Kurdish parties that have been working for autonomy in northern Syria. Mutual recriminations between the parties are gaining momentum. Anti-PYD Kurds have joined Turkey’s campaign to demonize the PYD, thus contributing to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s narrative: “We will deliver Afrin to its true owners.”

Turkey's news media is enthusiastically playing up the pro-Ankara statements of Kurdish representatives in Gaziantep who want to rule Afrin instead of the PYD and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG). (The YPG is the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a designated terrorist group in Turkey.)

A prominent name in this pro-Ankara campaign is Abdulaziz Temo, a member of the Kurdish National Council in Syria and president of the Independent Syrian Kurds Association. Temo, in a March 20 statement that made headlines, said, “Just like [the Islamic State] rose from the Arabs, the PYD is rising as the [Islamic State] of the Kurds. They want to establish a new Qandil in Afrin," he said, repeating Erdogan's frequent reference to the PKK's headquarters in the Qandil Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.