By Jwan Shekaki
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – “With the support of Qatar, the work to build houses in Syria, which can accommodate 1 million refugees, continues,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in May 2023.
At a time when Turkey and Qatar accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, both governments, via organizations they fund and support, build settlements in areas occupied by Turkey in northern Syria, mainly in the Kurdish-majority ones including Afrin.
The settlements that have been built aimed at housing families of the militants of the Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, aka the Syrian National Army (SNA), who came from other parts of Syria and seized the houses and properties of the original people of Afrin.
Jusoor News, an Arabic-speaking news network based in New York, said while the world holds international conferences and demonstrations to express concern over the so-called genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, it turns a blind eye to the systematic ethnic cleansing and efforts to erase the culture and existence of the Kurds of the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin in northwestern Syria.
“We displaced under aerial bombardment and artillery shelling,” Naima Khalil, a displaced woman from Afrin, recalls the moments of the Turkish invasion of Afrin. “There were children and women.”
“We had nothing with us, no food, no clothes,” she told Jusoor News. “We barely tried to rescue ourselves and our children.”
In March 2018, Turkish forces occupied Afrin after 58 days of clashes with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The operation, dubbed “Olive Branch”, was carried out under the pretext to protect the Turkish national security.
The then operation caused the displacement of more than 300,000 Kurds who have taken shelter in five IDP camps in the vicinity of the city of Aleppo and other cities in Northeast Syria.
“We do not know our fate,” another displaced woman said. “We do not know where we will be or where we have to go.”
Since then, the Turkish government, led by Erdogan, with the involvement of some Gulf states especially Qatar and Islamist organization have launched the process of demographic change through building settlements and housing units to house families of the SNA members.
In September 2023, Executive Director of Qatar Charity organization, Youssef Bin Ahmad al-Kuwari, Deputy Governor of Gaziantep, Anal Alkal, mayor of Gaziantep, Fatima Shahin, and representatives of the Turkish AFAD organization and the Turkish Red Crescent signed an agreement in Turkey’s capital Ankara to build settlements in the city of al-Bab, east of Aleppo.
Qatar Charity claimed that its project was to support reconstruction projects in northern Syria after the devastating Feb. 6 earthquake that struck the region.
According to Jusoor News, Qatar agreed to fund 240,000 housing units for Arabs in the Turkish-occupied areas in northern Syria.
“Turkey assembles funding from Qatar to build the settlements,” Sardar Mella Darwish, a Syrian journalist told Jusoor News. “Political Islamist movements support the process of building.”
Many Turkish organizations such as WIFAK humanitarian association, Beyaz Eller (White Hands) Association, Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD) organization, AFAD, Türkiye Diyanet Foundation, Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), California-based Good Neighbors, and Orange Organization are the executing agencies that have accomplished building settlements in Afrin.
“Turkish authorities were quick to orchestrate the resettlement of hundreds of Sunni Arab families displaced from Eastern Ghouta in homes of the district’s Kurdish inhabitants,” a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in February said. “This was a clear example of Türkiye’s effort to change the demographics of the region in order to weaken the Kurdish presence there.”
In a meeting of the leadership of regional branches of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on July 31, Erdogan said, “Israel is the only state in our region that seeks its security through aggression, massacres and the occupation of lands, and acts like a terrorist organization.”
If so, how has Turkey’s Erdogan occupied lands in Syria and Cyprus? How is the Turkish forces launching operations in northern Iraq? How is Erdogan threatening Armenia and Greece? And how does he continue threatening to flood Europe with refugees?
Above all, Turkey supervises the human rights violations at the hands of the SNA factions against the Kurds in Afrin.
“Türkiye is responsible for acts committed by its agents or those under its control, and for failing to prevent and/or punish acts of others that it was or should have been aware of,” the HRW’s report read.