QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – On Feb. 15, videos emerged of armed Turkish policemen taking over a Crisis Coordination Center in Hasankoca, near Kahranmaras, a province in southern Turkey and the epicenter of the Feb. 6 earthquake.
The center was established by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish opposition party in Turkey, in order to deliver humanitarian aid to victims in the district. However, “the district governor, accompanied by the police and gendarmerie, appointed a government ‘trustee’ to take over the Crisis Coordination Center … HDP’s volunteers in the town were forced to leave the town to avoid detention,” the HDP wrote in a statement yesterday.
It is far from the first such instance. In the same statement, the HDP accused authorities of “preventing us from distributing the aid to the victims by raiding our warehouses and confiscating the aid we have collected.”
The party said it joined extra-governmental relief efforts in the wake of the Feb. 6 earthquakes, which killed over 35.000 people across southern Turkey and northwest Syria.
Among the government’s actions which the HDP deems have obstructed relief efforts it counts “Four trucks carrying aid sent by the HDP’s Crisis Coordination Center to the earthquake areas,” which were “confiscated and one truck was sent back.”
“The government’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) in Adıyaman,” the statement continues, “seized a truckload of tents sent to the victims by the HDP. The police seized another truck carrying aid from Izmir to Osmaniye and detained three people, including the driver. 85 stoves and a truck containing tons of wood and coal sent from Siirt and Batman to the Nurdağı district of Gaziantep were also seized by AFAD, and the aid we collected was emptied into AFAD warehouses in Gaziantep.”
A day after the earthquake, the pro-Kurdish party reported that the district governor – a presidential appointee – had seized a vehicle carrying aid supplies sent by the municipality in Patnos, in the far east. Patnos is one of a handful of local governments still held by the HDP following Ankara’s purge of opposition-held local governments in the Kurdish-majority southeast of the country.
Northeast Syria: Business As Usual
The moves mirror similar efforts by the Turkish government in Syria. 50 aid relief trucks sent to Turkish-occupied regions in the northwest of the country by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) turned back on Thursday after nine days spent waiting at an internal border. The internal crossing, manned by Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) militants, had rejected the much-needed AANES aid, including 30 fuel trucks, “because of the insistence of Turkey and its mercenaries to politicize humanitarian issues at the expense of the helpless victims,” the AANES said in a statement on Feb. 16.
On the other hand, 145 trucks carrying in-kind donations from civil society in the Arab-majority Manbij, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor regions of northeast Syria were allowed through the same crossing and a second crossing further north yesterday. A second convoy, from Doctors Without Borders, was also allowed to pass by the SNA checkpoint after lengthy negotiations.
Besides, Turkey’s attacks against northeast Syria have continued unabated. Only a day after the earthquake, SNA factions targeted the town of Tel Rifaat, north of Aleppo. A day later, the frontline north of Manbij was bombarded, injuring four fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). On Feb. 12, a Turkish drone strike targeted a car near the city of Kobani, itself affected by the earthquake, and killed at least one person. Another drone strike on Feb. 15 targeted a yard in Tel Rifaat where Aleppines had fled to after the earthquake. It killed one civilian and wounded another.
One Exception
The only Kurdish aid the Turkish government has allowed in unobstructed has been that of the Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF), based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The Erbil-based Barzani government enjoys a cozy relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and has let the Turkish army occupy large swathes of KRI territory on the hunt for militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In Turkey, BCF has been allowed to operate freely. KRI President Nechirvan Barzani visited earthquake-hit regions of Turkey and met with his Turkish counterpart for a photo on Feb. 14.
However, BCF’s relief efforts in Turkish-occupied Syria have not been as smooth. North Press reported on Feb. 12 that the NGO had been forced to pay $1.000 by SNA factions in order to access the formerly Kurdish-majority city of Jindires, in the Turkish-occupied Afrin region. Much of the aid BCF delivered to victims in the region was carried away by the same factions.
The extortion against BCF forms part of a targeted anti-Kurdish campaign in Jindires following the Feb. 6 earthquake. Locals protested against slow aid delivery, the confiscation of aid sent by neighboring towns, and SNA militants preventing Kurdish volunteers from participating in search and rescue efforts.
No Thaw
Pundits have argued that the earthquake could ease tensions between the Turkish government and long-time antagonists, such as Greece or Armenia, who have provided generous humanitarian aid to the earthquake-afflicted nation. Politicians and government-linked media have put the usual nationalist discourse aside in order to thank countries it otherwise tends to demonize.
However, a similar thaw between Turkey and its own Kurdish population, or that just across the border, seems as unlikely as ever. A previous North Press analysis showed that the Turkish government has often used natural disasters to punish its Kurdish population. Accepting Kurdish aid – whether from the HDP or the AANES – would be unpalatable to the current right-wing government. It could hardly ban a party or launch a war against a region which had provided it with generous support during a time of crisis. Both plans – outlawing the HDP and invading northeast Syria – have been wielded by president Erdogan as concrete proposals to get ahead in the upcoming general and presidential elections.
Beyond that, the government’s obstruction of grass-roots initiatives, particularly in Kurdish-majority regions, “is destroying civilian networks of social solidarity and cooperation by abusing state of emergency powers,” wrote the HDP in its statement. “[They] seek to monopolize all humanitarian aid in the hands of the government and hide the government’s ineffectiveness in responding to the crisis.”