Turkish Forces in Syria Isolate Afrin with a ‘Protective Wall’
Forces linked to the Turkish army in Syria have continued the construction of a concrete isolation wall, started more than a year ago, in order to demarcate the Syrian border around the village of Afrin, cutting off the rest of rural areas of Aleppo both on the eastern and southern fronts.
Activists from Afrin have demanded rapid intervention to protect their land from what they see as a cross-border land-grab by Turkey, urging the United Nations to take action to end the Turkish occupation.
According to locals and matching news reports, “over the last few weeks Turkish forces have carried out demolition and bulldozing operations on a wide scale to homes and civilian properties in Jalbul village as part of their construction of the concrete protective wall, having started with the villages of Marimeen, in the north and Kīmār in the south, all in the region north of Aleppo.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has published a video of scenes that reveal the construction process by the Turkish army in Afrin after days of bulldozing and demolishing homes of civilians, as well as levelling public facilities and uprooting trees.
Speaking to 7Dnews, the activist and media figure Aram Hussein, an Afrin local who due to the Turkish occupation was displaced to Sardam camp in Al-Shahbaa, said: “We cannot take these procedures lightly. The objective is to separate Afrin from Syria. Honestly, the aim is to build a protective concrete wall starting from Adlib and Afrin, as well as the Mountain Hermon, passing through Afrin and all the way to A’zaz city. Its length will be 70 km and work started in three villages on April 3rd, when forces went to Jalbul, located 8 km east of Afrin, and bulldozed and demolished a large number of civilian homes, including the village centre, schools, water tanks and a number of graves. The plan is to continue by extending the wall to the ancient village of Kīmār, which is 8 km south of Afrin.”
Hussein also added, “the operation is proceeding quickly in stages at several points and at the end the forces doing this will connect all the parts with each other and it will mean that they have succeeded in separating the villages completely from Syria. Of course, the main target is Afrin and to protect the militant factions that belong to it there. In brief, it is seeking to recreate the Cyprus experiment in Syria via Afrin.”
Also, he noted that, “this operation is in direct sight of forces of the Syrian regime, who are just 2 km away from Jalbul. The operations can be seen with the naked eye. Russian forces are stationed in Kashti‘ār village, just 6 km away from Jalbul, and there the works can also be seen with the naked eye, which makes me think that construction of this wall is happening with the approval of the Russian forces as well as with the agreement of regime forces.”
In addition, the Kurdish media person revealed the names of a number of civilians whose homes were demolished in Jalbul village. These were: Muhammed Hassan, Hassan Abdo, Ibrahim Abdo Eissa, Abdo Eissa, Othman Eissa, Aziz Mageed, Hussein Mageed Eissa, Araf Salah, Fawzy Eissa, and Gamal Abdo Ali Saeed.
Hussein also described the factions loyal to Turkey as mercenaries who denied that the Turkish army is building a wall and who justified the presence of concrete blocks inside Afrin village only as a protective measure for security and military purposes. He stressed that, “the Turkish forces have extended the wall 900 meters, stretching it across Kīmār village, passing by Jalbul and Marimeen villages, and building it 3 meters high. Prior to putting up the wall the occupation destroyed 15 homes in Jalbul village, including the village centre, school, and water tank, and bulldozed the perimeter of the village. They dug trenches, built a military base and erected the wall, with sections in these villages of about 600m in Jalbul and about 100m in Kīmār, reaching 3 metres high, which will separate the Afrin area from Syria once it is fully built.”
Violations behind the wall
Ayhan Ali, a member of Human Rights Committee to Boycott Afrin, speaking from Sardam Camp in a phone call with 7Dnews said: “Turkish forces in a year have occupied Afrin, using all sorts of weapons, including some internationally banned, under the pretext of a threat to national security. This supposed threat was represented by civilian protection units, some made up entirely of women, who defended the land in the face of the occupation for 58 days while the rest of the world stayed silent, with the Russian-Turkish agreement officially allowing the occupation to become established in 2018.”
Ali added, “the Turkish occupiers and the factions loyal to them afterwards committed many actions that are classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity (forced displacement, demographic alteration, killing, torture, arbitrary detention, looting, and robbery of all kinds including confiscation of property, conversion of schools and hospitals to military premises, and the destruction of the infrastructure.”
In addition, she pointed out that “these activities committed by the Turkish occupation disregard the regulations and regulatory controls for any occupation under Article 907 of the Hague Convention and Article II common with the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which prevent the said violations during an occupation.”
“The Turkish government did not stop at that but went on with its violations in the shape of the concrete wall it is building, which was recently constructed in the villages of Jalbul, Marimeen, and Kīmār, on the eastern and southern fronts of Afrin district. We saw this take shape over a few weeks in the form of demolitions and bulldozing on a wide scale around Afrin, which is Syrian territory according to international law and the United Nations 1949 Charter, and Syria should still have full sovereignty over the land. This move has been confirmed by a Turkish government spokesperson, Ibrahim Kalen, who said, ‘it is illogical to hand over areas liberated by Turkey to the Syrian regime.’”
She confirmed there was “strong evidence of the intention of the Turkish government to incorporate Syrian land, including Afrin, into its territory, benefiting from the international, regional, and Syrian silence.” She stressed that “the Turkish intervention in this part of Syria is considered an occupation, given it is not backed up by any official authorization that allows it to intervene in other people’s land. This is not a new matter for the Turkish nation, since previously it occupied a part of Cyprus, among other places.” She invited the United Nations to end the Turkish occupation and force it to withdraw from Northern Syria, and peacefully resolve tensions and respect the will and aspirations of the Syrian people in determining the course of their future on their own while reinforcing a political solution for the Syrian crisis. Ali urged the Syrian state “to rapidly intervene to protect its land from the greed of the Turkish nation, politically via its seat at the United Nations, to defend, protect, and secure its Syrian land from any side.”
Situated on the banks of the Afrin river, Afrin lies in the far north-western corner of Syria, adjoining the Turkish border. It is bordered on the west by the deep plain of the Black River, which draws the demarcation line in that area, and It to the north by a railway line passing from Maydān Akbis to Kilis, and in the south by the area around Mount Simon.
Afrin is a mountainous area of about 3,850 sqm, equivalent to 2% of Syria’s territory. The majority of its inhabitants are Kurdish, although it is geographically separated from the other Kurdish-majority areas across the border in Turkey.
All of this brings strategic importance to the region, and for Ankara, controlling it will create a geographical link between all the border areas located between the city of Jarabulus, west of the Euphrates, and the Mediterranean Sea. Crucially, this link would also eliminate any geographical contact between the Kurdish controlled areas. This explains the importance of Afrin for Ankara, since this region is the dividing point between the areas controlled by the “Euphrates Shield” factions, supported by Turkey in Jarabulus, the door to A’zaz to the east of Afrin, and the province of Idlib in the west.
On March 18th, 2018, Turkish forces and related armed factions occupied Afrin as part of operation “Olive Branch,” thus named by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Begun in January 2018, it led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of civilians were killed.
On August 24th, 2016, the Turkish occupation army invaded Syrian territory, starting from the city of Jarabulus and driving down into Afrin province, in the absence of any opposition from the regime.
In 2015, Turkey began construction of a concrete wall along its southern border with Syria, starting from Qamishli city in the east and reaching to the city of Kesab city near the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Turkey initiated the move responding to a fear of attacks mounted by groups such as Isis across the border in Syria.
Source: Turkish Forces in Syria Isolate Afrin with a ‘Protective Wall’