Robbery, looting and arrest of civilians: Turkey tightens its criminal grip in Afrin

Sherif Abdel-Zahir

Turkey does not stop its continuing crimes and support for terrorist groups in the Syrian north, in terms of dominating private property in areas controlled by groups, threatening and restricting civilians.

Militias loyal to Ankara carried out a campaign of pillaging and plundering of the private property of civilians in the city of Afrin in the Syrian province of Aleppo, with the aim of obtaining funds to support its elements for the continuation of the fighting.

That was confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday 20 April 2020. The militias sold the homes of the Kurds, who forced them out of the city, for prices ranging between 3 to 5 thousand US dollars for the house.

According to a report by the French news agency AFP on Sunday, April 18, 2020, the Turkish forces and armed militias looted the property of civilians and shops belonging to the people of Afrin who were displaced from the city in northwestern Syria.

In the same context, the armed Syrian factions supported by Turkey expelled the people from their homes on the pretext of their association with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, in an attempt to bring about a demographic change in the Kurdish-majority city, provided that the displaced Arabs replace the Kurds who were displaced on terrorism-related charges.

In 2018, Turkish military operations in Afrin prompted more than 300,000 civilians to flee to neighboring areas, according to a Turkish news website.

Turkish crimes

In May 2019, the Kurdish community in Germany announced the submission of a 37-page file in English on violations and crimes committed by Turkey in the Kurdish city of Afrin, to the representation of the European Union.

In a previous statement to The Reference, the Kurdish human rights defender and member of the Board of Trustees of the Kurdish Organization for Human Rights in Syria stressed that the file of violations of the Turkish army and its militias in Afrin will not stop complaining with the European Union, but there will be a request to the United Nations, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague, demanding the United Nations to put an end to Turkey’s crimes against the Syrians, and to establish a commission of inquiry regarding these crimes.

The third year of occupation

The city of Afrin in the Syrian province of Aleppo entered its third year under the control of the Turkish occupation, as it marked last March the memory of Turkey’s control of the city, after what was known as the “olive branch” military operation.

This comes amid talk about the consequences of that control of looting and theft of the property of the Kurdish majority in the city from the pro-Turkish militias.

Turkey is working to transfer the Syrian refugees residing in it and descending from different Syrian governorates to Afrin as a kind of concealing the Kurdish character from the city, especially re-registering real estate in Afrin, in order to deprive the displaced Kurds of the ownership of their lands.

Ankara also conducts statistics on real estate, properties, and the number of residents in each village and the ethnicities they belong to, to assist it in demographic changes.