By Farouq Hamo
AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – Spending five years away from his homeland hoping for stability, Hannan Hassan went back to his village in Afrin region, northwest Syria, to spend the rest of his life in the place where he was born, however, he was confronted with foreigners seizing the house.
Hassan, 56, an old man from the city of Afrin in Aleppo northern countryside, left his house in al-Mahmoudiyah neighborhood when the city was subjected to fierce clashes between the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the armed opposition factions backed by the Turkish army in early 2018. He headed to Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
On January 20, 2018, the Turkish forces and their affiliated opposition factions, known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), launched a military operation against Afrin and its countryside – including 365 villages – dubbed “Olive Branch” to push away the YPG fighters under the pretext of protecting the Turkish national security. The operation continued until March 18 of the same year which resulted in the occupation of the region by Turkey and the displacement of more than 300,000 Kurds of the original people.
Since then, the SNA factions adopted the policy of looting and seizing the properties of the people who fled to the neighboring villages in an area north of the city of Aleppo that is called Shahba region. The area includes 42 villages and towns in addition to five camps that house the Afrin IDPs.
Hassan, after five years of migration, decided to go back to his house and die in his homeland. However, the winds do not blow as the vessels wish, as the man was shocked by a family from Homs Governorate, central Syria, living in his house, and when he inquired about the situation, they said they had bought it from a member of the SNA two years ago.
After the SNA factions took control over Afrin, they distributed the neighborhoods and villages among each other based on the areas of control of each faction so that they started seizing the houses whose owners displaced to other Syrian areas or emigrated to the neighboring countries. And they started selling and buying them although the original owners are absent.
In 2019, Ali Hannan, a pseudonym, and his family fled the war in Syria and took refuge to Turkey. However, after the Turkish-SNA control of Afrin, he thought the situation might be better, so he decided to go back to live in his house in al-Ashrafiyeh neighborhood in Afrin. But a family from Rif Dimashq, southern Syria, was living in the house. When he asked: “How is that?” the family replied that they had bought the house from a leader of the Sultan Suleiman Shah (al-Amshat) faction. Hannan had to go to the headquarters of the faction to recover his house but he was told that his son was “wanted” on charges of joining the “party” in reference to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), and that if he does not hand over his son, they will not give him back the house.
Factions including al-Amshat, al-Hamza, Jaysh al-Sharqiya, and others have distributed the neighborhoods of the city and the towns and villages among themselves, and they sell the houses without the existence of their real owners.
Ali Hannan was forced to move back with his family and leave Afrin again after he had given up on recovering his house because the family from Rif Dimashq showed him an illegal contract of sale in exchange for $2,000 only while the house is worth $15,000 at least.
Dayan Sido, a pseudonym for a 36-year-old man from Afrin, told North Press that the factions worked on the acquisition of houses under several pretexts including the affiliation of their original owners with the PYD or the YPG, or under the pretext of the absence of their owners.
Sido confirmed that the factions worked on counting the empty houses through asking the neighbors who informed them that the owners displaced or emigrated so that the factions seize the houses and sell them later to the settlers, the militants’ families and the people who fled the government-held areas in Homs, Hama, Daraa, and Rif Diamshq.
An exclusive source told North Press that the leaders of the factions illegally sell the houses to the settlers for a pittance that do not exceed $1,500 for each. After a year or more, they come and expel the buyer, so that they sell them once again to other customers. “It is a matter of fraud,” he said, preferring not to be named.
What prolongs this problem is the absence of cadaster. The cadaster of Afrin region used to be in the city of Aleppo, even before 2011, people have to conduct their property transactions in Aleppo so that the Syrian government can tighten its grip on the process of real estate sales on the border areas by forcing the owners to obtain security approvals.
Following the control of the SNA over Afrin, the absence of the cadaster has aggravated the problem, especially with the forcibly displacement of the original owners.
“There is no cadaster in Afrin, however, all the real estate records are noted in the city of Aleppo,” said Nalin Abdo, a lawyer based in the city of Qamishli in northeast Syria. “Many real estates of those who fled Afrin were sold to the comers from other regions through issuing false powers of attorney that recognize the sales conducted by the armed factions.”
“It is worth mentioning that such sales also harm the buyers who pay for a house without being recorded in the cadaster or a competent court,” Abdo told North Press.
Although the settlers, who came and resided in Afrin following the Turkish occupation, demanded the recording of properties’ sales, Turkish authorities refused so that to be able to freely pass its policy of erasing the identity of Afrin, according to the lawyer.
Turkey has followed a ‘Turkification’ policy in Afrin raising the Turkish flag and imposing Turkish IDs on the population, as well as the Turkish language, which was taught in schools and institutes under its control. The Turkish lira also has become the common currency. In addition, it built 26 settlements in the area to house the families of the armed factions’ militants and other IDPs it brought from other Syrian governorates.
Sales and purchase contracts conducted between the SNA militants and the settlers are mediated by what is called the “local council” that was founded by Turkey following the occupation of Afrin. This proves Turkey’s involvement in the violations committed by the SNA, as the “local council” is authorized by the Turkish authorities.