ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The sale of olives and olive oil taken from Turkish-occupied Afrin is harming the income of the crop's domestic producers, a Turkish nationalist parliamentarian said on Friday. Afrin, the once Kurdish-majority enclave in northern Syria long famed for its olive trees, has since 2018 been under the control of Turkey-backed armed proxy groups accused by local and European officials of exploiting the area's agricultural land and taking the harvest to Turkey. “Due to the import of this oil from Afrin, the prices of our local olives have dropped. This has compelled our local producers to sell their olives for a low price,” said Lutfi Kasikci, parliamentarian for Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in a Turkish parliament press conference. “Our people [farmers] use the money they get from the olive produce to educate and marry their children, and make ends meet.” A few businessmen have profited from the import of Afrin's olives while “thousands” of Turkish local producers are losing out, Kasikci added. The MHP, the main ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), is a de facto ruling party, able to make a say on government decisions without having elected officials in government. Turkey and its Syrian proxies invaded the Kurdish-majority enclave of Afrin in March 2018 with the stated aim of removing Kurdish forces on its borders. Accusations of human rights violations in the area including land theft have rung out since the invasion, dubbed Operation Olive Branch. Human rights groups and the United Nations have published reports detailing arbitrary arrests, detention and pillaging, among other violations. Prior to the invasion, Afrin was one of three cantons run by the mostly Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Ankara claims the YPG is the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish group that has been fighting for increased Kurdish rights in Turkey for decades. Turkey has categorised the PKK as a terrorist organsation. Officials in Ankara have openly admitted to taking olives from Afrin to Turkey. Agriculture minister Bekir Pakdemirli told parliament in November 2018 that his country had imported 600 tonnes of olive from Afrin since March of that year. "We do not want revenues to fall into PKK hands," he said. "We want the revenues from Afrin... to come to us. This region is under our hegemony." A Turkey-aligned Syrian opposition official for Afrin told Rudaw in February 2019 that they had little choice but to send their olives and olive by-products to Turkey, because of fighting in the area. “Only 25 percent of Afrin’s olives have been exported," chairman of Afrin’s Industry and Commerce Chamber Nasser Husso said. "This [low export level] is due to certain obstacles such as military operations. We try to export as much as possible,” he said. Turkey is itself a globally major olive producer, ranking fifth globally in 2019, according to state-affiliated media – bringing into question why it would need to sell Afrin's oil as its own. "Turkey has enough olive oil for its own market and for exports… Turkey produces 16 percent of the world's total olives and eight percent of its olive oil. It doesn't need olive oil from Afrin," said one commentator in Turkish newspaper Dunya. Turkey-backed rebels have been accused of cutting down masses of olive trees. “[The] cutting down of olive trees by the Turkish-backed rebels is systematic and on purpose,” one activist in Afrin, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, told Rudaw in January of this year. “Since the beginning of the Turkish invasion on Afrin city, more than 20,000 olive trees have been removed and cut down by the Turkish backed rebels, and that has threatened the olive tree lands in Afrin.”
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