Turkey, an occupying power in northern Syria

The Turkish occupation state continues to follow the systematic policy of demographic change in the occupied areas at all levels, and seeks to separate the north of Syria from the Syrian territories and annex it to Turkey, by building a series of settlement complexes in the areas of its occupation in general and Afrin in particular.

Turkey has continued to work on the systematic demographic change policy in the occupied city of Afrin, in conjunction with looting, robbery and kidnapping, in addition to the fabrication of accusations against civilians.

The Turkish invasion and occupation of Afrin in northern Syria in 2018 was aimed at PKK-aligned Syrian-Kurdish groups there. The October 2019 Turkish invasion and occupation of parts of northern Syria east of Afrin had the same objective.

Although no significant attacks from Kurdish forces in Syria into Turkey had occurred since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey claimed a need to occupy and establish “buffer zones” in northern Syria. The Turkish invasions seriously threatened Kurdish-led operations against Daesh in Syria.

Turkey claims a right to defend itself and act against the PKK presence in Iraq or PKK-aligned Kurdish groups in Syria. 

If the mere presence of such groups, especially in the very mountainous and difficult-to-control territory along the border, justifies invasions and occupations of Arab territories, a similar logic could in theory be used by Israel or the US to target Palestinian Hamas leaders hosted in Ankara and Istanbul today, to say nothing of Arab countries whose Islamist critics have extensive propaganda campaigns operating from Turkish soil.

The official Turkish approach of the last 100 years seems rather like a policy of opposing Kurdish self-government “even if it’s in Alaska,” as a popular Turkish joke goes. 

When Turkey invaded northern Syria in 2018 and 2019, one justification offered by Turkish leaders was that they did not want “to see Syria become another northern Iraq.” By this, they meant Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, of course.

The Turkish occupation state has recently rushed to build settlement complexes with the support and funding of Gulf and European societies in the areas it occupies, with the aim of changing the demographics and obliterating the identity of the region.

Among the most prominent steps taken by the occupation during its air aggression on the areas adjacent to the border strip in northern Syria was the destruction of entire neighborhoods, while it continued to establish military bases on that destroyed geographical area, instead of compensating the affected.