“On March 18, 2018 Turkey and its Free Syrian Army invaded Afrin in northern Syria, killing hundreds of civilians, committing atrocities against religious and ethnic minorities and women, and causing hundreds of thousands to flee,” said Nadine Maenza, commissioner of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), in a video message on Thursday.
Maenza said her office has documented crimes “including killings, rapes, kidnaping, extortion, forced conversion, and the destruction of religious sites” committed in Afrin and other areas in northern Syria controlled by Turkey and its Syrian proxies.
“Today, it is important that the international community stand up for a free Afrin, and hold Turkey accountable for these crimes,” she said.
Turkey, backing Syrian militia groups, launched Operation Olive Branch against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin in January 2018. Their forces entered the city of Afrin on March 18. The YPG withdrew in order to avoid conflict in the heavily populated centre and Turkey announced it had full control over the region on March 24.
Turkey’s goal was to push the YPG back from its southern border. Ankara believes the YPG is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group which has fought a decades-long war with the Turkish state for greater political and cultural rights for Kurds. Soon after the operation was launched, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they would “show no mercy to those who try to harm our future and freedom.”
By the time Ankara had seized control of Afrin city, some 150,000 people were displaced from their homes, most of them Kurds who fled to Kurdish-controlled areas in northeast Syria known as Rojava.
Afrin is now administered by groups backed by Turkey who have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Photographs quickly emerged in March 2018 of militiamen looting Kurdish homes and businesses and pulling down a statue of Kawa the Blacksmith – a core figure in Kurdish folk legend. Observers accused the militias of ethnic cleansing after homes were commandeered by fighters, residents intimidated or kidnapped for ransom, and displaced families blocked from returning. The United Nations documented abuses of arbitrary arrest, detention, and pillaging.
“Turkey and its Islamist militias govern in the exact opposite way Afrin has been governed under the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria… where all can practice their faith and follow their conscience,” said Maenza, referring to the Kurdish-led administration in Rojava.
Under Turkish rule in Afrin, the Kurdish population has dramatically decreased, according to a report published by the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria (Yaketi), a political party independent of the two main Kurdish coalitions in Rojava.
The percentage of Kurds in the Afrin region dropped from “more than 95% before the invasion to about 25-30% after the occupation, which is the desired goal Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clearly expressed in the early days of the invasion,” read the report.
Since Turkish forces entered Afrin city three years ago, 161 civilians have been killed, including 29 children and 18 women, according to Yaketi.
“The Ankara government remains fully responsible for what is happening in the region,” the report stated.
The European Parliament on March 11 called on “Turkey to withdraw its troops from Northern Syria which it is illegally occupying outside of any UN mandate.”
Mazloum Abdi, general commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella force that includes the YPG, on Thursday said the international community has failed to protect human rights and international law in Afrin. “The constant disregard for protecting Afrin residents from occupation and war crimes committed by the occupier contradicts all international laws,” he tweeted, calling for a return to Kurdish rule as the way to restore security.
.JPG&w=3840&q=75)