Turkey persists in building new settlements in Syria’s Afrin
AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – The local council founded by Turkey, completed two weeks ago the construction of a new Turkish settlement in the town of Mabata in the countryside of Afrin, northwestern Syria.
An exclusive source told North Press the new settlement was built with Kuwaiti funding and was named the Kuwaiti Residential Village of Humanitarian Excellence 2. It was constructed in the outskirts of Mabata on the road to Afrin city.
The source added that the settlement consists of 50 houses, and additional 100 would be built in the future.
Families from the governorates of Idlib, Hama, and Aleppo have been settled there. The construction is supervised by a contractor from Rif-Dimashq Governorate, in coordination with the Sultan Suleiman Shah Division (al-Amshat) affiliated with Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, aka the Syrian National Army (SNA).
Afrin has been under the occupation of the Turkish forces and their affiliated SNA factions since March 2018 following the so-called “Olive Branch” military operation to push away the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) under the pretext of protecting “Turkish national security.”
Since then, they have constructed multiple settlements, in which they housed Syrians and Palestinians from other areas, in addition to settling thousands of people in the houses of the forcibly displaced Kurdish inhabitants in Afrin.
Since the beginning of 2023, Turkey has initiated the construction of 21 settlements in Afrin, with the support of Kuwaiti, Qatari, Saudi, Palestinian, and Turkish organizations, according to the Monitoring and Documentation Department of North Press.