Olive thief: Erdogan plunders Syria’s crops

Robier al-Faris

When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called his invasion of Syria Operation Olive Branch, he revealed his pretense to plunder the country’s agricultural crops, especially olives, which are one of the oldest agricultural products in Syria, the original home of the olive tree.

Syria’s olive farms reached a total of nearly 650,000 hectares, with the number of olive trees reaching more than 90 million, of which 80% in the productive stage were stolen and transferred to Turkey, especially since Syria’s olive varieties have been naturalized through thousands of years and constitute a genetic wealth of olives. Some of these varieties are used to extract oil and others for pickling and preparing table olives, while other varieties are considered dual-purpose for both extracting oil and pickling.

According to media reports, Afrin, which is occupied by Turkey, produces a third of Syria’s olive oil. The olive trees, which number more than 18 million trees in Afrin, have turned into a source of income for Turkey since its occupation of the region.

On January 20, 2018, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch to take control of Afrin in cooperation with terrorist groups, and olives were the first victim of this operation.

These groups seized a large part of the olive harvest by force and sold it to Turkish merchants, while Turkish forces and the disbanded groups prevented the oil from being removed from the area, which led to the deterioration of prices.

The BBC reported that a Swiss parliamentarian said Turkey had stolen olive oil from Syria and sold it in European markets as a Turkish product.

“In Afrin, which is under Turkish occupation, olive groves are being destroyed by the Turkish army and the militias loyal to it. The oil they stole is being sold to Spain, and the sale process is continuing,” the BBC added.

According to Spanish website Publico, the Turkish government uses a number of intermediary companies to export oil seized from Kurdish peasants in Afrin to Spain.

The website quoted local sources as saying that the stolen oil is mixed with Turkish oil before it is sold under fake names. It estimated the value of the oil stolen by Turkey from Afrin at about €70 million, and a quarter of that amount is the share of armed groups stationed in Afrin.

In November 2018, the Turkish Minister of Agriculture recognized Turkey’s seizure and sale of olive in Afrin. The minister’s confession came in response to the accusation by the head of the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) that Turkey was looting the olive oil crop in Afrin.

“We in the government want to put our hands on the resources of Afrin in one way or another, so that these resources do not fall into the hands of the PKK,” the Turkish minister said to the Turkish parliament during a session on the 2019 budget.

Turkish journalists quoted a CHP parliamentarian as saying that 50,000 tons of olive oil had been smuggled from Afrin to Turkey.

This was confirmed by a Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) parliamentarian, who said that not only was 50,000 tons of olive oil smuggled from Afrin, but olive fields there were also destroyed. Media reports confirmed that the olive represents more than 70% of the income of the people of Afrin.

Afrin economist Jalank Omar said that the region produced 270,000 tons of olives this year, which represents 30% of Syria’s production.

The market value of this production was about $150 million, according to estimates, but the farmers did not receive anything. Turkish journalist Nurcan Baysal said that she was surprised by the cheap price of olives in the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

Not only was a large part of the olive season seized, but there have also been numerous reports that militants cut down thousands of olive trees and sold the wood in Turkey.

The Turkish website Zaman Al-Wasl said that large numbers of olive trees in Afrin have been cut and turned into firewood sold in Turkey, a crime that equals the loss of human lives since this olive feeds the region’s residents. Cutting down olive trees prevents their source of livelihood and threatens their lives.

In the context of Erdogan’s soldiers plundering Syria’s crops, the areas of Aleppo, Hasaka and Raqqa are witnessing a state of public anger against Erdogan’s militias who steal Syria’s crops to be exported around the world in the name of Turkey.