No relief for Kurds
The widespread criminality of acting groups in Turkish-occupied Afrin is nothing new. Neither is their singling out of Kurdish targets. Ibrahim Sheikho, head of ‘Human Rights Organization – Afrin’ told North Press that “Kurds are racially discriminated against when rescuing survivors, retrieving bodies from the rubble, and distributing aid sent by BCF and the Saudis.” These acts are perpetrated by SNA factions as well as Arab settlers.
According to Sheikho, monetary donations for Kurdish residents have been confiscated by local authorities. Kurdish residential areas in Jindires destroyed by the earthquake were ignored by rescue teams. Such acts mirror the treatment of Kurds in Turkey, who have been left behind and prevented from taking part in rescue efforts by the government.
Afrin Post alleges that local factions erected IDP camps only for their sympathisers, leaving the Kurds under their occupation behind. Many Kurds from Jindires have preferred camping out next to the ruins of their buildings in order to prevent militants and settlers from looting the remains. “We were not safe from the harm of these displaced people when we were behind cement walls and closed doors,” one Jindires resident explains.
Some Kurdish residents have even been attacked. On Feb. 14, members of Faylaq al-Sham attacked a Kurdish family in Jindires for refusing to allow the militants to erect an IDP camp on their land. Witnesses say the local council had attempted to expropriate that land for years.
Feats of engineering
Shiekho and others have warned that the earthquake may be used to further implement Turkey’s demographic engineering project in Afrin. Already, Kurds in the region have been reduced to between a third and a quarter of the population, where once they made up around 97 percent. There is a good reason to believe that the SNA’ violence is thus not random, but part of a targeted policy.
On Feb. 18, a delegation headed by the Qatari ambassador to Turkey, the head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC, the political wing of the SNA), and the president of the SNC’s Interim Government visited Jindires.
Days before, the CEO of the state-linked Qatari Charity Foundation announced the ‘City of Dignity’ project, which would construct a new settlement to house Jindires residents made homeless by the earthquake. Initial renders show rows of single-family houses and wide avenues.
Another Qatari-funded settlement has begun construction near the village of Hekiche, in northern Jindires. A video released of the construction site showed heavy machinery flying the insignia of Sultan Suleiman Shah Division. Despite locals’ protests against the project, the local council erected 437 tents, which they say could be expanded to 1.000.
A third settlement, also with Qatari support, has been established on the road between Jindires and Kafr Safra village. Despite being labeled a temporary camp for the displaced, its name – Basma 3 – echoes the name of a Palestinian settlement established in the village of Shadere, Afrin.
Such projects are by no means a novelty. In Jindires sub-district alone, a Syrian-Kuwaiti-Turkish cooperation already built the al-Amal settlement near Kafr Safra. In the south, a Palestinian-Turkish project opened the Zaim settlement near Deir Ballot. These are part of around 20 such settlements in Afrin and over 100 across Turkish-occupied regions of Syria.
The main aim of these is to resettle Syrians. In recent years, they have become particularly important for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s xenophobic policy, which seeks to expel Syrian refugees from Turkey.
Yet, in Afrin, settlements serve a second purpose: to dilute the existing Kurdish population. Already, local residents complain that Jindires’ local council and the Civil Defense Organization (the White Helmets) have concealed the real toll of the earthquake in order to pave the way for demographic engineering in the region. Visiting delegations have reportedly been shown the pre-existing Zaim settlement, claiming that it houses earthquake victims.
According to a statement by the ‘Society for Threatened Peoples‘, a Germany-based human rights organization, “it is to be feared that Erdogan and his Islamist allies will try to use the reconstruction measures to establish new settlements in order to push back the Kurdish people, their language, and their cultural identity.”
The information presented in this report is likely to be out-dated within the week, as new violations come to light and the Turkish government and its Syrian proxies find new ways of sidelining the indigenous Kurdish residents of Jindires. However, what comes next for Jindires – already crime-ridden even by regional standards, beset by an encroaching HTS presence, and now weakened by the earthquake – is likely to reflect Turkey’s larger plans for the region and Syria’s Kurds as such. Observers should pay attention.