Kamal Sido
Afrin University was founded on 26 July 2015. It was not only the first Kurdish university in Afrin, but in the whole of Syria. Under the Assad regime and all other governments, Kurdish schools and the Kurdish language were not allowed. People were often arrested if they had a book in Kurdish.
When the university in Afrin started its work, 850 students were initially able to begin their studies. In August 2015, the university had 22 professors, some of whom had a doctorate and a master’s degree, as well as some engineers. The university was founded with four faculties and six departments: Medicine, Kurdish Literature, Communication, Agricultural Sciences, Mechanical Engineering and Economics. At the beginning of the new semester, the Autonomous Administration of Afrin provided the university with offices, rooms, stadiums and libraries and opened six laboratories for the engineering and medicine faculties as well as a computer laboratory. The university also included institutes for medicine, surveying, music, theatre, business administration and Kurdish language. The university offered a five-year engineering programme.
the Turkish military operation in Afrin began in January 2018, the university was closed. Many professors, including the rector of the university, had to flee. Some were arrested by the Turkish occupying forces and their Islamist mercenaries and deported to Turkey.
In addition to the university, at least 400 Kurdish schools were closed or destroyed. Many schools were converted into mosques or military barracks for Turkish soldiers or Islamist mercenaries.
Instead of Kurdish schools and the Kurdish language, Turkish, the language of the occupying forces, was introduced as a compulsory language. Pupils who do not pass Turkish are not transferred. Kurdish is only offered as an optional subject at a few schools.
Many Kurdish schools in Afrin have been converted into Koran schools run by the “Office of Religious Affairs in Turkey” and other Islamist organizations. While values such as religious tolerance, international understanding and women’s rights were taught at the first Kurdish university and the Kurdish schools in Afrin before the Turkish occupation, today radical Islam, intolerance, misogyny, hatred of Christians, Alevis, Yazidis and Jews are taught at the schools run by the Turkish occupying power. In the schools run by the occupying power, girls and boys sit separately or are even taught in separate rooms. Girls usually have to wear a full-body veil or a headscarf. Religious education for Yazidis and Alevis was banned in the new schools run by the Turkish occupying power.
Not only were the first Kurdish university and the 400 Kurdish schools destroyed or banned, but the Kurdish language has also disappeared from public life. Wherever there were signs in Kurdish, they are now in Turkish. In the Kurdish cemeteries, almost all graves with Kurdish inscriptions have been destroyed or desecrated.
How did it all begin?
When Syria’s dictator Assad withdrew his troops from Afrin after the start of the Syrian revolt in 2011, teachers no longer had to parrot the Arab nationalist state propaganda. Young women were able to decide for themselves whether they wanted to study with or without a headscarf. The rector of the first Kurdish university, Dr. Ahmed Youssef, also had to flee. His story is representative of the last 15 years: under Assad, many teachers and professors were not allowed to teach because they were Kurds. Others were not allowed to teach what they wanted. When Afrin was finally administered by the Kurdish regional government for a short time, Dr. Yousef and his colleagues built the first Kurdish university in the history of Syria in Afrin.
In 2017, a year before the occupation of Afrin, I donated hundreds of books to the university for the library. I bought these books during my studies with the little money I had. I don’t know what happened to these books after the Turkish invasion six years ago. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s army and its Islamist allies mercilessly destroyed everything that had been built up in the few years of freedom in Afrin. Afrin University no longer exists.
Most of the many young people I met in Afrin had to flee. The university rector, Dr. Youssef, is also on the run. I met him in April 2023 in Raqqa, the former capital of the “Islamic State” (IS).
There, near Raqqa, IS still holds some positions. And in the north, there is the threat of death from the air: Turkish drones regularly attack the areas that are still held by Kurds. The diversity of ethnic and religious minorities and communities that I grew up with in Afrin in the 1960s and 1970s no longer exists there. Only the Kurdish-held areas in north-east Syria still offer protection to women and religious minorities.
The silence must be broken
I regularly travel to this region. Because there is widespread silence about what is happening there. Our Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) is one of the very few organizations documenting the serious human rights violations committed by the Turkish occupying forces and providing information in Germany and internationally about the terrible fate of the minorities. And we denounce the policies of Germany and other NATO states. Because the German government and other NATO governments are protecting Erdogan. They are also preventing Erdogan’s crimes from being discussed in the Security Council and other United Nations bodies. After the earthquake in February 2023, the German government provided a great deal of humanitarian aid to Turkey and parts of northern Syria. However, the German government rejects even informal cooperation with the Kurdish-led regional administration in northern Syria. It is also blocking humanitarian aid for the areas inhabited by Kurds, even though they have borne and are bearing the brunt of the war against IS and are thus ensuring the protection of ethnic and religious diversity. Erdogan will only refrain from a further invasion of northern Syria if Germany and like-minded NATO states end their silence on his crimes.
This is precisely why we are continuing to shed light on the Turkish crimes in northern Syria. We support lawsuits against the war criminal Erdogan. I will probably never see Afrin again. But I will do everything in my power to ensure that Germany and the other NATO states finally strengthen the forces on the ground that are defending ethnic and religious diversity and women’s rights in northern Syria every day.
What happened in Afrin after Turkey’s invasion in violation of international law is an ethnocide. An attempt to eradicate the cultural identity of the Kurds, but also of Kurdish Yazidism and Alevism in Afrin. Kurds who resist are killed, arrested or forced to flee as “terrorists” by the illegal Turkish occupying power and its Islamist mercenaries. Within six years, the Turkish occupying power has succeeded in reducing the number of Kurds in Afrin from over ninety per cent before the occupation to between 15 and 22 per cent. The Christian Kurdish community in Afrin has disappeared.
Against this backdrop, we renew our call to the German Federal Government, in particular to the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, not to provide financial support to the Turkish occupying power in Afrin. Germany must no longer hold its protective hand over Turkey. The Turkish occupying power in Afrin must not be supported politically or diplomatically.
*Dr. Kamal Sido, born in Afrin, is a consultant for ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and nationalities at the German human rights organization Society for Threatened Peoples (STP).
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