US State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller’s claim that Turkey does not intend to change the demographics of Afrin, a historically Kurdish region of northwestern Syria that has been occupied by Turkish forces and Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) militias since 2018, does not hold up to scrutiny, a new Kurdish Peace Institute report has found.
The report reviewed evidence of demographic change in Afrin from United Nations bodies, Syrian, Kurdish, and international human rights NGOs, and academic studies. It focused on the role of housing, land, and property (HLP) violations targeting Afrin’s original population and forced repatriations of Syrian refugees from Turkey to Syria, as Miller had called on actors involved in Afrin to respect HLP rights and ensure that all refugee returns from Turkey were safe, dignified and voluntary in his statement.
The report found that HLP violations and forced repatriations were not only common, but were integral to a well-documented campaign of demographic change that is central to the Turkish strategy in northern Syria.
It called on the State Department to “align its rhetoric and policy on forced demographic change in Afrin with the evidence,” noting that the Department’s most recent Country Human Rights Report on Syria stated in a section on property seizures in Afrin that “NGOs continued to assess these and other abuses by armed Syrian opposition groups supported by Turkey were part of a systematic effort to enforce demographic change targeting Kurdish Syrians.”
It also urged the United States to implement the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s recommendations to “exert pressure on Turkey to withdraw from all territory that it occupies as a result of cross-border operations into north and east Syria,” including Afrin, and “demand that Turkey order armed factions under its control or influence to cease all activities negatively impacting religious and ethnic minorities in Syria.”
In the long term, it concluded, the United States should seek a negotiated political solution to Turkey’s transnational armed conflicts with Kurdish groups, arguing that this is “the only way to guarantee the kind of long-term stability in northern Syria that will allow displaced communities to return to their homes and prevent further displacement.”