Photo: Turkey-backed Syrian rebel fighters walk together near the border town of Tel Abyad, Syria, October 12, 2019. KHALIL ASHAWI / REUTERS
A UN Human Rights Council report outlines a litany of abuses by Turkish-backed extremists and Turkish forces in Syria, including mass murder and rape.
The report outlined how the groups backed by Turkey, sometimes with direct Turkish involvement, have sought to impose their will over the north of Syria, which is home to the Kurdish people, Yazidis and Christians.
Turkey sees the Kurds as a direct threat to their nation as Kurds in the southeast of Turkey and northern Syria have long fought for their own independent homeland. In the north of Syria, during and following the Syrian civil war, Syrian Kurds were able to develop their own autonomous homeland which they defended from ISIS. After the defeat of ISIS Turkish forces invaded the north of the country inflicting heavy losses on the Kurds. 150,000 Kurds were forced to flee the invasion.
Among the reported crimes, there is an incident where Turkish backed forces:
"Forced male detainees to witness the rape of a minor."
Executions and door to door searches, seeking out Kurds, were also reported, along with stories of farms being deliberately stolen or burned to the ground. Recently it was revealed that water had been cut off to the region after Turkish backed forces over a dam on which the Kurdish people rely upon to deliver their water supply, not only for drinking, but for the development of agriculture. Turkish drones have also targeted Kurdish separatists not only in Syria, but also in Iraq.
While the Turkish state, under president Recep Erdogan, claims that they are simply fighting terrorism others worry that a full scale genocide and ethnic replacement is planned. As many Syrians have fled Syria into Turkey, mostly of an Arab ethnic background, some commentators predict that they will be rehomed in northern Syria and that the Kurds will be intentionally replaced. Thereby Turkey would have created an ethnically friendly bulwark against the Kurdish forces and the Kurdish people.
The invasion of northern Syria was facilitated when President Trump withdrew US special forces from the region, who had been until then assisting the Kurds in their battle against ISIS. The withdrawal allowed Turkish forces to enter almost unopposed. Some have suggested that the Trump family has financial interests in Turkey and that this allowed Erdogan to impose pressure on Trump to go ahead with the troop removal. However, these have not been entirely substantiated.
It is unclear now how the Kurdish people will re-establish a homeland that they were only able to create through extreme sacrifice, particularly as the international community does not seem to be listening to their appeals.
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