New report sheds light on Turkey’s ‘systematic oppression’ against Kurds in Afrin

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A report published by two Syrian rights groups on Wednesday reveals a “systematic oppression policy” by Turkey and its Syrian mercenaries against the residents of the Kurdish city of Afrin in northwest Syria, based on the testimonies of 40 victims.  

Kurdish forces controlled Afrin after Syrian regime forces withdrew from it in the beginning of an uprising in the country in 2011. However, Turkey and its Syrian mercenaries invaded the city in 2018, causing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kurds as well as committing crimes against those who stayed.

Human Rights Organization-Afrin and Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) on Wednesday published a joint report which is based on interviews with 40 victims of the Turkish invasion of the city. The testimonies were taken between 2021 and early 2022.  

“Witnesses shared their traumatic experiences of torture and ill-treatment during their visits to detention centres. They described arbitrary arrests, cruel torture, and acts of sexual violence. Most of the arrests were made in March 2018 by the Turkish Army and allied Syrian armed groups after Turkey’s invasion of Afrin,” reads the report. “After their release, most of the victims fled Afrin towards IDP camps and safe areas in Aleppo for fear of being rearrested, as has happened to survivors who remained in Afrin.”

All the interviewed victims were Kurds, except for six Arabs. Twenty-five of them were male and the rest were females, including a young child, according to the paper.

One of the victims is a woman who says she was kidnapped by three gunmen when Afrin was invaded. She was initially taken to a detention centre in the city and then along with six other women and 37 men she was transferred to a prison in the Kilis province inside Turkey. Later, they were all returned to Afrin and kept in a military base of the mercenaries “where they saw dozens of detained women.”

The witnesses told both rights organisations that the Turkey-backed armed groups converted the homes of people into detention centres. 

A female victim recounted that she was put in a communal cell where she was repeatedly interrogated for over five days. “They tortured me brutally by beating me with a four-conductor cable and gave me electric shocks. There were more than 20 women in the room, some of whom had their children with them. The prisoners insulted me and called me an ‘infidel’ because I am Yazidi and forced me to convert to Islam.”

The United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic said in a report in 2020 that the residents of Afrin and Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain), which was occupied by Turkey and its Syrian proxies in 2019, “witnessed an onslaught of violations perpetrated by members of the Syrian National Army as well as shelling and vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices,” referring to the military alliance of Turkey-backed groups which was previously called Free Syrian Army (FSA).   

“During the period under review, the Commission corroborated repeated patterns of systematic looting and property appropriation as well as widespread arbitrary deprivation of liberty perpetrated by various Syrian National Army brigades in the Afrin and Ra’s alAyn regions. After civilian property was looted, Syrian National Army fighters and their families occupied houses after civilians had fled, 50 or ultimately coerced residents, primarily of Kurdish origin, to flee their homes, through threats, extortion, murder, abduction, torture and detention,” reads the report.

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