“Once we have purged the terrorists (from Afrin) we will then cleanse them from Manbij, Ayn al-Arab, Tal Abyad, Ra’s al-Ayn and Qamishli,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

A classic British colonial tactic was the ‘confiscation’ of conquered lands, especially in Ireland, and the settling of this land with soldiers in lieu of pay, or families from Great Britain. This resulted in ongoing conflict, hatred, violence and war right down to the present day.

Erdogan boasts openly that the same is happening in Afrin. Though he sometimes says the settlers will be ‘Syrian refugees’ at others he says they will be FSA mercenaries and their families, as well as Turkmen refugees from other parts of Syria and boasts that the ‘Ottoman Empire will rise from the ashes’.

Afrin nearly doubled its population in  hosted refugees despite a siege blockade (172k to 323k )  while Turkey’s only increased by 4.4%  (3.5 million out of 80 million).(The total population of Afrin as of 2005 was recorded at only 172,095 people, of whom 36,562 lived in the town of Afrin itself.  Wikipedia. According to the United Nations, Efrin district ….has a population of 323,000 people.)

Afrin while suffering from an economic and military blockade hosted a huge number of Arab, Christian, Assyrian and Turkmen internal refugees and was hailed as a  model of direct democracy, gender equalty and religious and ethnic tolerance. We care for these people but we are not sure how to attend to their needs when our small city has been blocked from all sides,” Mahmoud, a refugee camp director,  added. The Turkish takeover has forced a mass exodus amidst documented reports of mass murder, widespread looting , kidnapping, rape and pillage by the Jihadi mercenaries and Turkish militar

The Future under Turkish Rule.

The future looks bleak. Large areas of SE Turkey, Cizre, Nusaybin  etc, itself lie in ruins under special forces military occupation and frequent curfews after the Turkish State pogroms against the peaceful ‘Kurdish Spring’.

Afrin can expect a similar fate. Even if Turkey decided to lift the blockade and allow in some aid with a view to legitimizing its future conquests it can only hold onto Afrin by permanent and total military repression of the popular defense force volunteers.

Afrin fell because all the States and Jihadi militias involved sacrificed  justice and democracy to their financial, sectarian and military power interests. Next step will be the whole Rojava revolution if it is not strongly defended by its supporters worldwide.

The YPG/YPJ has called for an international wing (YPG International – Official information portal for the Rojava Revolution) and volunteers from around the planet have fought and often died defending the revolution against ISIS and Turkish tyranny.

There has been a huge response in demonstrations, pickets, occupations and direct action attacks on Turkish property worldwide.. but it has not been enough. Nowadays nation states are showing arrogant contempt for justice, reason and their own citizens protests.

New tactics are clearly needed, perhaps using the power of social media, to organize citizens opposition in ways that really hurt those in power and can force them to desist from their moronic macho power games that destroy, for example in Afrin, the only positive  seeds of future harmony for the sake of their arms sales, pipelines,  prestige and arrogant patriarchal kudos.

Manbij

Erdogan says his next conquest will be the Manbij area, which doesn’t have a Kurdish majority but was captured by the YPG/YPJ/SDF from ISIS in an epic battle and became ”a laboratory for anti-sectarian and feminist direct democracy’. Despite the economic  blockade Manbij Defence Council has proved to be a popular and thriving way of sharing power among the various ethnic minorities.

The United States has set up a military base outside the town and there is hope that this might deter Erdogan, (though the US refused to supply the SDF with anti tank and aircraft weapons that would have  prevented the invasion of Afrin). We may have to help defend Manbij despite the possible aid of the US which is only there for its own confused belligerence.

Refugees in Efrin

“Turkey wants to bring Syrian refugees to Afrin from various parts of Syria to change the demographics,” Abdulkarim Omar, head of Foreign Relations for the Jazira canton in Qamishli, told The Defense Post.

He added that Efrin already hosts 200,000 to 300,000 refugees from all parts of Syria, including from cities like Homs, Idlib and Aleppo.

“If they fled to Afrin, why should other people [replace them] there?” Omar said, adding that returning refugees to Syria is “just a pretext for Turkey to attack.”

With the economy in free fall Turkey may have a problem paying the tens of thousands of ex ISIS and Al Qaeda mercenaries recruited to the FSA and now looting and pillaging Afrin.

And the moment they stop getting their $300 a month from the Turkish State the war effort in Afrin and north Syria will collapse. The YPG is now facing some of the same Isis fighters in Afrin with whom it fought over the past four years.”

The Turkish taxpayer pays $300 a month to the 25,000 ex ISIS and Jihadis to kill Kurds (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w… #BreakSilenceOnAfrin #DefendAfrin #YPGPressOffice

  AFTER ETHNIC CLEANSING NOW TURKISH “PLANTATION”

 original by séamas carraher, shared and abridged with thanks

Since the beginning of the Turkish invasion into the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (Rojava – “one of the only islands of democracy in a sea of Middle Eastern despotism“) similar concerns have been expressed at the intent of the Turkish State and in particular its President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in relation to his Kurdish neighbours.

To show its happy with the genocide in Afrin Russia announced it will speed up S-400 deliveries to Turkey – Lavrov. Just 24 hrs before they started blasting the only progressive forces in the Middle East with US planes and German tanks the ‘Turkish Hitler’ Erdogan gave permission to Russia to build the 2nd #turkstream gas pipeline through Turkey into Europe. (see Jan 21 2018 Gazprom receives construction permit for second string of TurkStream) In return Russia was probably blackmailed to criminally okay the bombing.

From day one, talk of ethnic cleansing and demographic change featured high on the list of reasons for the Turkish military invasion.

The YPG Command in the Afrin region recently said:

“One of the most attention-grabbing practices is the settlement of families of the gangs that act with the invading Turkish state and the Turkmens brought in from Atme, Azaz, Turkey and Iraq in the regions of Shiye and Jindires.

This is a clear manifestation of the practice of demography change in the region that fascist Erdoğan had spoken of before, during the initial invasion attacks.”

.Pro-Turkish forces pillage Afrin after taking the city: Reports   https://anfenglish.com/news/pro-turkish-forces-pillage-afrin-after-taking-the-city-reports-25574

Earlier, in a communication to the Reuters Press Agency

Redur Xelil, the head of foreign relations in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said Turkey was conducting a policy of “demographic change” in the area despite denials by the regime in Ankara. “The Turkish government is settling Turkmen and Arab families in the villages of Afrin that it occupied after forcing out its people and is distributing the belongings of the people of Afrin to the new settlers,”periment in religiously pluralist, gender- and ethnically-egalitarian, bottom-up democracy.Defeated but defiant. Reports of massacres  by Turkish troops and  the mercenaries of FSA came from around Afrin  as the NATO tanks finally rolled in.

Shahoz Hassan, co-president of the Executive Body of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria’s Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM), in an interview with Rudaw , the Iraqi Kurdish News Agency, echoes the allegations that Turkey is attempting to “change the demography of Afrin.” “They bring in some civilians, who are affiliated to them, and place them in those villages. They rush in this regard so that they make demographic change a reality.”

Christian Concerns

“Turkey has already ‘cleared’ villages of Yazidis, Kurds, Christians and others, promising to replace them with Syrian refugees. In fact, Afrin already had enlarged its population by 50 percent to house (internally displaced) Syrians, who are among those being killed, injured or captured,”   two Christian activists, Bassam Ishak and Lauren Homer, said: “Turkey has committed war crimes and ethnic cleansing already in Afrin and the Federation of Northern Syria…”

Ishak heads the Syriac National Council and is a member of the political bureau of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Lauren Homer, is a Washington, D.C. based international human rights lawyer.

Memories of ISIS

Concern has also being raised at the FSA groups currently being placed in the frontline of the Turkish military assault with many of them having been identified as either originating from or being connected to extremist Jihadist groups.

 French journalist Jeremy Andre:

“The attackers of Afrin are ultra-violent radical groups, who already commit acts of ethnic cleansing (destruction of Yazidi temples, forced displacements), and want to destroy all the political and social progress in Rojava, like gender equality…”

From daily The Independent in Britain, 7 February 2018:  Turkey accused of recruiting ex-Isis fighters in their thousands to attack Kurds in Syria Former Isis fighter tells The Independent that Turkey is using the name of the now defunct, Western-backed Free Syrian Army to conceal its use of jihadi mercenaries.

 This has been corroborated in a number of videos released on social media. For example in one video  a militia fighter flanked by others describes the Kurds as “infidels” and issues a stark warning, saying “by Allah, if you repent and come back to Allah, then know that you are our brothers. But if you refuse, then we see that your heads are ripe, and that it’s time for us to pluck them.”

“The video is 100 per cent authentic,” said Rami Abdulrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which released it, in an interview with The Independent. He adds that he is very concerned about the fate of some Yazidi villages in Afrin captured by the advancing Turkish forces, saying he has seen videos taken by the militiamen  themselves in one of which “an elderly Yazidi man is questioned by them, asking him how many times he prays a day.”

YPG Afrin Command statement 

 YPG Afrin Command released its statement on March 14th “regarding the invading Turkish state’s settlement of refugees in camps in the plundered villages of Afrin in an attempt to change the demography of the region.” Other than the concerns expressed, the statement declares that those following in the wake of the Turkish military invasion with the hope of settling on the captured territory will become legitimate targets (“a target to the legitimate aims of our fighters“) in a war that appears now to be endless and ongoing.

“At a time when our people are subjected to fascist practices by the invading Turkish state and affiliated gangs in Afrin, international states lapse into a doubtful silence. These fascist practices have targeted the history and future, and the free and honorable life of the region as a war has been started through a military intervention in violation of international law.

Solidarity

March 7, 2018Icelandic anarchist Haukur Hilmarsson killed fighting Erdogan’s fascist invasion https://wp.me/pIJl9-b77 #HaukurHilmarsson#anarchist#YPG#Afrin#DefendAfrin#RUIS#Iceland#NoBorders

Relying on military technology in its attacks, the Turkish state has engaged in the fascistic practices of massacring and displacing our people in the areas they have invaded recently. Still, our people have manifested their devotion to their land and history. Our people remain standing with the same determination against those who plunder the people’s properties and those who vow in videos circulated on social media that those refusing the Turkish state’s sovereignty will be beheaded.

Other Voices appeal to UN, EU, and UN Security Council

Nadia Murad, since September 2016 the first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking of the United Nations (UNODC) as well as being an ISIS survivor, a Yazidi human rights activist from Iraq and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. She was kidnapped and held by the Islamic State in August 2014.

Feb. 3, 2018 – Mother (3rd-L), sister (2nd-L) and brother (C) of the late 23-year-old YPJ fighter Barin Kobani, during a mourning ceremony in her honor in Afrin. Delil souleiman / AF

“200 civilians have been killed, including 3 Yazidi children. Shrines and religious sites have been destroyed or forcibly converted into mosques. People’s homes are being looted and minorities are being shamed by extremist militias…” “Many of these actions are war crimes and should be documented. This horror is reminiscent of the initial actions of ISIS in Iraq. Medical and healthcare services are urgently needed. This situation foreshadows “ethnic cleansing” and genocide…”

On Wednesday 14th March, the HDP, Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) also warned of an unfolding humanitarian crisis:

“We believe the UN must take a stance before great human tragedies, like those in Srebrenica in the past, occur,” HDP’s Spokesperson Ayhan Bilgen told a press conference in Ankara.

“The HDP fears the Turkish state may engage in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kurdish population that also harbors the religious Yezidi (Ezidi) minority by driving them out of Afrin and resettling Sunni Arabs, Turkmen, and foreign fighters brought as far away as China’s Xinjiang region.”

In a letter to UN’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, recently published on Global Rights HDP Deputy Faysal Sariyildiz said:

“The worrying statement by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, ‘We will put 350,000 Syrians into Afrin,’is absolutely an indication of [a] planned ethnic cleansing… President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself has numerous times claimed that Afrin of northwestern Syria belonged to Arabs and his army’s operation was aimed at “giving it back to its rightful owners.”

Ilham Ehmed a Syrian Kurdish Politician:

“The Turkish state is resettling families of gangs [in Afrin villages]. The policy of changing demographics has begun,” she tweeted.

CONCLUSION

David Romano, professor of Middle East Politics:

“The rhetoric and policies regularly coming out of Ankara, from Erdogan’s party and his government coalition partner, is actually full of anti-Kurdish animus, from banning the word “Kurdistan” and closing down all independent Kurdish media (including even a Kurdish children’s television station) to claiming that Afrin does not have a Kurdish majority. President Erdogan even went so far as to claim that the Kurds in Afrin are imposters and that Turkey will “return Afrin to its rightful owners.

Athens, Greece: Incendiary Attack Against Turkish State-Owned Company Istikbal in Solidarity with the Defenders of AFRIN

Ramazan Mendanlioglu, (for ANF, on 12 March)

“The aim of the AKP’s foreign policy is to annihilate the entire north of Syria, i.e. the local self-government and carry out ethnic cleansing in order to subsequently establish Turkey-compliant Arab Islamists there in order to both destroy the self-determination of the Kurdish people, and secure Ottoman motivated influence in Syria. So here we are dealing with the racist-colonialist policy of Turkey, which also ignores all international agreements, laws and standards. It is openly pursuing the goal of ethnic cleansing, of at least cultural genocide – and the international community supports them! ”

Mention of the United Nations and the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica should be enough to wake those currently sleeping from their shameful silence and begin to take the action necessary to protect the inhabitants of  the Afrin region. Problem has been up to now that by the time they woke up in Srebrenica – more than 8000, mostly male, Bosnians had been butchered.

So – despite what Gokcan Aydogan wrote recently:

“The problem here is not what Erdogan thinks or does. In history, there have always been dictators like Erdogan. The problem is the inability to condemn what he does or stop him. The dull and ineffective international rules, dirty arms deals, the very immoral refugee deal, the secret political agendas of the EU, the US and Russia strengthen Erdogan’s hand in his assault against the very same people who sacrificed their lives fighting against the “common evil” ISIS.”

…and urgently: better wake up soon, Mr Guterres.

We will not continue to watch this injustice passively. We will not leave the people in Rojava and our fighting comrades alone, because the war against Afrin is just as much a war against us. The Turkish attack on Afrin is NATO’s political, economic and military push into the heart of our revolutionary struggles, dreams and hopes.

We will carry this war back to where it is approved, supported, legitimized and produced. We will drive up the costs for those who benefit from this war.