Turkey continues shifting demography, culture of Syria’s Afrin
AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – In the approach of submerging the culture of the children of the indigenous people of Afrin, northwest Syria, Turkey’s Yunus Emre Cultural Institute opened on Thursday its second branch in the city.
“This subsidiary of the institute was established to submerge the indigenous people in the Turkish culture and language by forcing schools to teach Turkish language in both public and private schools,” North Press correspondent said.
The institute was opened in a building belonging to the Industrial School which had been rehabilitated to be a Medical Institute two years before the Turkish institute opened, but Turkish officials in Afrin turned it into a new subsidiary of the Yunus Emre Cultural Institute,” he added.
The Yunus Emre Institute serves as Turkey’s main instrument for promoting its language abroad.
On Aug. 20, Turkey’s Yunus Emre Cultural Institute opened a school for teaching Turkish language in the city of al-Bab in Aleppo eastern countryside to target 300 children in a bid to submerge them in the Turkish culture in the area held by the Turkish-backed armed opposition factions.
A number of press reports indicated that Turkey carries out an approach of “Turkification” by teaching the Turkish language by force in the schools and universities of the areas it occupies.
Further, Turkey endeavors to manipulate the civil record of the indigenous people in the Turkish-occupied territories like al-Bab, Afrin, Jarablus, Azaz, Akhtarin, Mara’a, Sere kanyia, and Tel Abyad, in addition to dealing in Turkish Lira and Turkification of neighborhoods’ names.
The Kurdish region of Afrin has been under the occupation of Turkey and the Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, aka the Syrian National Army (SNA), since 2018 following a military operation dubbed “Olive Branch” against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) under the pretext of preserving “Turkey’s national security.”
The operation caused the displacement of about 300,000 of the original inhabitants of the Kurds of Afrin who have been taking shelter in 42 villages and five camps in Aleppo northern countryside, locally known as Shahba region, since then.