Erdogan’s militias cut off water to Syrians despite corona

Ahmed Adel

Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in March 2011, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan found an opportunity to interfere and exploit the popular protests in his favor, as he worked to penetrate the war-torn country.

To achieve its expansionist ambitions in Arab, Islamic and African countries, the Turkish regime seeks to exploit terrorism for its benefit and to provide all support to extremist groups. Just as Ankara worked to plunder Syria’s natural resources such as oil, it also worked to steal the waters of the Euphrates River by building dams that would cause a humanitarian catastrophe for Syrians.

As part of his plot for Syria, Erdogan trained and armed terrorist groups in Turkey and then sent them to Syria to sabotage and destabilize the country with the hope of toppling the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and replacing it with another that is loyal to the Turks and abides with their orders.

Ankara has also worked to finance terrorist groups, supply them with weapons, and facilitate their entry into and out of Syria across the Turkish border. It has also worked to transform northern Syria’s Idlib into a gathering area for terrorists under the supervision of Turkish intelligence, which continues to wreak havoc in the region.

Erdogan’s intelligence sought years ago to turn Idlib into a terrorist outpost it could control under the pretext of confronting the Kurds, using the area to penetrate Syria and threaten the security of other nearby governorates, such as Aleppo, Latakia, Homs and Hama.

Turkey opened its borders to terrorist elements from all corners of the earth, and it opened its airports and border crossings to bring them into Syria to fight alongside ISIS.

In March, statements by the Turkish president revealed his ambitions for Syrian oil and exposed his false claims of concern for the Syrians and the territorial integrity of the country, as he announced that he had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to participate in the management of oil fields in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria instead of the Kurdish-led forces.

Erdogan said at the time that if Putin provided economic support, Turkey could build the infrastructure to extract oil in order to “help destroyed Syria stand on its feet.”

He added, “Instead of the terrorists who benefit here, we will have the opportunity to rebuild Syria from the revenues of this (oil). This would also show who is seeking to protect the unity of Syria and who is seeking to seize it.”

Syria’s oil reserves amount to about two billion barrels, with the largest concentration in Deir Ezzor, where Erdogan was referring to. Most of the declared oil fields are located near the borders with Iraq and Turkey.

To put pressure on the Kurds, Syrian armed groups cooperating with Ankara cut water to more than 500,000 Syrians in Hasaka and Ras al-Ain via the Aluk water station that they control.

Turkey is working to punish these people and make them thirsty in order to put pressure on the Kurds and provoke anger against them, which prompted the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to warn that hundreds of thousands of people in northeastern Syria are facing an increased risk of contracting the Covid-19 corona virus due to the interruption in the water supply.

In addition to its aggressive and retaliatory practices, the Turkish government has exploited the corona pandemic to transfer weapons to terrorists in Idlib, Afrin and other areas under the cover of humanitarian aid.