Erdogan blurs the identity of Afrin and changes its population

Ali Rajab

In a new crime by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Afrin region in northwestern Syria is witnessing a displacement of the Kurds, in exchange for the settlement of other nationalities, such as Turkmen nationalism.

Turkey, with the participation of the factions of the army loyal to it, took control of Afrin, and extended its security influence in it, amid violations by the factions of looting, kidnapping, and the seizure and intimidation of civilian property during the first months, which led the Kurds to leave Afrin.

Afrin is one of three regions in the north of Syria where the Kurdish self-administration was announced in 2015, and it is worth noting that the majority of Afrin is a Kurdish population.

In October 2018, Ankara launched an attack on the Syrian Kurdistan regions, and Turkey sought to return tens of thousands of Syrian refugees residing in Turkey and reside in that region, which raised the fears of the indigenous people of the demographic change, as the majority of these refugees are residents of southern Syria.

The human rights organization in Afrin, Turkey, has been accused of “creating chaos for the deportation of the remaining indigenous people” and of settling over 600 families over the past two days.

The Human Rights Organization in Afrin, in a statement, on Monday, January 6, 2020, that the “reference” obtained a copy of it, that those displaced by the bombing of Idlib governorate regions by the Syrian government and Russia went to Afrin because of “closing the doors of the Turkish borders in front of them and directing them towards an area Afrin and their settlement.

The statement indicated that the primary goal of the Turkish government, the Syrian interim government, and armed militia leaders is to change the demographics of the people of the region, to bring about demographic change on the one hand, and to coerce the Kurdish citizen to live in his area and village and urge him to leave in various ways and fight him economically.

On December 10, 2018, the Kurdish National Alliance in Syria issued a statement saying that Afrin “occupied by the Turkish authorities is a living testimony to the most horrific violations of human rights. This Kurdish region is witnessing a systematic demographic change supervised by the Turkish occupation authorities.

The statement continued that “Turkey is pitting settlers against Kurdish administrators from the people of the region and encouraging them to carry out protests against them in order to separate them and keep them away from providing services to the people of the region.”

Administrative and military change

Turkey has established a large number of military headquarters, and the most prominent of those bases are the Mariamin base, the farm, Anab and Kilberry, which is the largest Turkish military bases in that region, in addition to the Kafr Jannah camp, which is equipped to be a landing ground for Turkish helicopters.

Indeed, it asserts that Turkish policy succeeded militarily in permanently expelling the Kurdish People’s Protection Units from Afrin, and used loyal Syrian factions to implement a systematic security policy that led to the displacement of half of the population of Afrin, through waves of arrests and kidnappings in exchange for a ransom.

Over a year, Turkish forces and their pro-Syrian factions arrested more than 2,500 civilians, nearly 1,000 of whom were still in detention until March 2019.

The number of displaced people brought by the Turkish occupation to Afrin reached about 87,936, of whom 51% are displaced from Ghouta, and 20% are displaced from Aleppo Governorate, according to an accurate unpublished census conducted by the local council of Afrin by the end of May 2019. In addition, 2,600 families were displaced as of May 2019 due to the fighting in the northern Hama countryside.

Not only did the Turkish occupation bring in this large number of settlers, but it hastened to bring in Turkmen families from the countryside of Homs and Hama recently and also brought families from the residents of the camps located on the Turkish side and settled them in the villages and towns of the occupied province, and began providing logistical assistance to them, with the aim of eliminating Kurdistan The city and its historical identity. These families were distributed in each of the districts of Shara, Bulbula, Mobata, Shih, Raju and Jendrisah, while the “Bulbala” district received the largest share in the demographic change.