Elderly Afrin Kurd ‘expelled’ from his home by Turkey-backed rebels: monitor

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have turfed an elderly Kurdish man out of his Afrin home and forced him to hand over his property to a Syrian family displaced by regime forces, a local rights group has claimed. 

Hanan Ali Battal, a Kurdish resident of Chakali Wasani, was forced to leave his home on April 12 by a Turkish-backed militia group and relocated to his son’s house in Afrin city, the Afrin-based Human Rights Organization said in a report on Wednesday. 

“Armed groups affiliated with the faction of Sultan Suleiman Shah al-Amshahat in the village of Chakali Wasani on 12/04/2020 expelled the elderly Hanan Ali Battal from his house,” the report states.

“Battal was forcibly relocated to Afrin city where his son Mahmoud is residing in order to seize his house and rent it to a settlement family and collect the rent for them [the militia],” it added.  

The monitor also reported on Thursday that a 23-year-old Kurdish resident named Battal Mustafa Hassan from the Shih area of Afrin was executed earlier this month by former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), accused of working with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) – the political wing of the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

“Almost seven months ago… Battal Mustafa Hassan, from the town of Shih, was detained on charges of communicating and reporting news of Turkey to the PYD organization,” the report states.

Turkish authorities allegedly detained Hassan in the southern Turkish province of Hatai and handed him over to HTS via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.

Hassan and his family had been displaced six years ago to Turkey’s Hatai province, where they owned a supermarket.

“About a month ago they [HTS] asked for a ransom of $10,000 to be provided during a very short period of time. However, due to their [the family] inability to secure the amount, they [HTS] executed him by shooting him almost ten days ago,” the report added.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Abdi has called for an international investigation into the alleged crimes perpetrated by Turkish-backed forces in Afrin since Ankara invaded two years ago.

“The Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, called on Thursday for an international investigation regarding what he described as crimes committed in Afrin since the Turkish army and its factions took over two years ago,” North Press Agency (NPA), a local news outlet with close ties to the SDF, reported on Thursday.

Abdi also claimed the devastating truck-bombing in Afrin city centre on Tuesday, which left 40 people dead and 47 wounded, was the result of Turkey’s occupation and the behavior of its Syrian proxies. 

Thousands of indigenous Kurds were forced to flee Afrin when Turkish forces and their Syrian militia proxies launched Operation Olive Branch on January 20, 2018.

By the time Ankara had seized control of Afrin city from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) on March 24, tens of thousands of Kurds had fled, many of them to Kurdish-controlled areas in northeast Syria.

Families displaced by regime offensives to the south were resettled in their place.

Afrin is now home to 298,700 Kurds and 458,000 people displaced from elsewhere in Syria, while Afrin city is home to 53,300 Kurds and 110,000 people displaced from elsewhere in Syria, according to Afrin-based organizations.

According to UN estimates, upwards of 150,000 Kurds have been displaced from Afrin, most of them to Shahba camp in Tel Rifaat, north of Aleppo.

Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch with the stated aim of pushing 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.

The YPG, which makes up the backbone of the US-backed SDF, denies any organic ties with the PKK.

Monitors regularly accuse Turkey’s Syrian militia proxies of committing abuses against Afrin civilians, especially Kurds – both during and after the offensive.

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 national culture.

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.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched another offensive against Kurdish forces in October 2019, this time in the northeast, after US troops withdrew from the Syria-Turkey border region.

UN observers accused these Turkish proxies of potential war crimes and allowing an Islamic State (ISIS) revival in areas liberated by the Kurdish-led SDF. 

The Russian-backed Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has demanded Turkey withdraw from Syrian territory and recently clashed with Turkish troops in the opposition holdout of Idlib.