Fréderike Geerdink
Abductions, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, sexual violence and torture are among the crimes committed by the Turkish army and its proxies in the north of Syria, a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) shows. The report is such a surreal read, that the recommendations that HRW gives, seem absurd. Justified and urgent, but absurd.
The report, 74 pages long, starts with a summary and with recommendations to Turkey, the Syrian Interim Government and the Syrian National Army (both under full Turkish control), the EU and UN member states. That’s the part that is usually read. To stick to my own profession: that part is enough to make a news story about the report, and you can quickly scroll the rest to find an especially gruesome example of, for example, torture, and finish your story. I’m not (entirely) cynical here: there is not always time to meticulously read every report published by every NGO.
But these past few days, I did take the time. Page after page after page I read about the total nightmare the people live in the parts of Syria under Turkey’s control. Kurds are definitely facing the most horrible abuses, but it is the wider context of lawlessness, arbitrariness, abuse of power and impunity that makes the occupied territories unliveable for everybody.
Three zones
Turkey has occupied three zones in Syria. It started in Summer 2016, when Turkey invaded just west of the Euphrates and occupied Jarablus Azaz and al-Bab, where ISIS reigned until then. In early 2018, the occupation of Afrin in the northwestern corner of Syria, started, followed by the invasion and occupation of a strip of land between Girespi and Serekaniye (Arabic names: Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain) since the autumn of 2019.
To be clear: the first invasion was explicitly not aimed at ISIS. Turkey was afraid that the Kurdish forces YPG and YPJ would cross the Euphrates River and kick ISIS out, as they had done in early 2015 in the legendary battle for Kobani situated on the other side of the river. If the YPG and YPJ had managed to do that, they could have connected Afrin to the lands under their control and strengthened the Autonomous Administration. Until Turkey invaded in the summer of 2016, Turkey had counted on ISIS to keep the Kurdish forces under control. When it became increasingly clear that ISIS didn’t have that power and that the International Coalition would continue to work with the Kurds and the newly founded SDF, Turkey stepped in.
Turkey wants to annihilate the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria as they consider it a threat (which it isn’t), but it also wants to establish what Erdoğan calls a ‘safe zone’ where he can house Syrians who fled to Turkey since the Syrian war started in 2011 and whom he now wants to get rid of. He already forcibly returned thousands of Syrians to these lands.
Brave journalists
HRW’s report shows that where Turkey invades and occupies, a danger zone comes into being. I already knew that of course: there are brave journalists in Syria who have reported on this throughout the years, and journalists and investigators outside Syria have done their important shares. But this report puts all of it together. The situation is totally out of control. Turkey works with what is known as the Syrian National Army (SNA). The SNA is in fact a hodgepodge of gangs that not only terrorize the civilian population, but also constantly fight each other and fight even within factions, and loyalties and alliances are constantly shifting, based on which gang leader has influence where and manages to earn how much money by looting, grabbing land, confiscating houses and kidnapping. At some point, Turkey set up a police force to give the impression that they wanted to curb these abuses, and it quickly turned into just another abusive group, with members from other gangs in leading positions.
When the report describes the crimes of the factions within the SNA, Turkish commanders and intelligence agents keep entering the scenes. Victims have seen these men with Turkish flags on their uniforms and they heard them speak Turkish and work with interpreters. In other words: it’s not that Turkey can’t keep this under control, Turkey is actually in charge. The ‘scenes’ I mention unfold in police stations, but also in illegal detention centres, which are spread all over the place: all factions have their own places where they keep and torture and kill prisoners. The circumstances in these centres are horrific, as is the torture.
Immediate steps
After reading the full 74 pages, I returned to the recommendations at the beginning. Turkey must, I read, “take immediate steps to halt human rights violations and potential war crimes committed by its military forces and intelligence personnel, together with affiliated local militias, and ensure that all individuals under its control, including military personnel and armed groups, adhere to international human rights law and humanitarian law.”
Turkey must also “ensure full and unhindered access for international and independent monitors to Turkish-occupied territories, including the prisons and detention centres run by the Military Police and those of the various factions, as well as the military courts” (this access is currently 100% non-existent), and “hold those responsible for abuses accountable, including through fair and transparent trials.”
HRW has several other recommendations for Turkey. They are fully justified, of course, but after reading the report and after having followed this story since some 15 years, they seem totally absurd. Turkey really couldn’t care less. Never in its century-old history has it ever taken responsibility for its crimes, and they would start now? They have only just begun. Erdoğan wants more land, not just in Syria but in Iraq as well. And the report gives insight into what Turkey really stands for.
Genocide in Gaza
But it also gives insight into what Europe and the US stand for. We already know that Europe and the US couldn’t care less either, of course, the latter being a settler-colony and the first having a brutal history of colonialism and neo-colonialism that continues until this day. They are in cahoots with Israel now to commit a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, so what can we expect?
But one thing that caught my attention in Human Rights Watch’s report, was what happened after the US decided to pose sanctions against three factions within the SNA because of their human rights abuses, last year. In 2021 and 2023, Turkey was on the US list of countries implicated in the use of child soldiers in Syria. The report writes: “The US withholds certain types of military assistance from governments that are listed for using children in their forces or supporting militias that recruit children. However, the US government issued partial waivers on restrictions on military aid to Türkiye, citing national security.”
It all renders the recommendations to the EU and to UN member states useless. Well, they are useful because it needs to be pointed out what enormous steps have to be taken to provide safety, especially when it’s done as thoroughly as HRW has done it, but the EU and the US will laugh as hard as Turkey.
Angering Erdoğan
HRW recommends that the EU “publicly clarify that Türkiye is not a safe third country to which asylum seekers can be returned under the criteria set out in Article 38 of the EU Asylum Procedures Directive”, and that it must “publicly call on Türkiye to halt summary deportations and allow UNHCR to monitor whether detained Syrians wish to remain in Türkiye or voluntarily return to Syria.” Europe standing up to Turkey to protect the rights of refugees? It’s outright unimaginable. Europe deliberately lets refugees drown at its borders by the thousands and is very afraid Turkey will open its border to let Syrians cross into Europe, so no way the increasingly fascist leaderships in Europe will want to risk angering Erdoğan.
And what is the US gonna do? The fresh blood dripping from Biden’s hands is Palestinian, and the elections later this year will worsen the situation, whatever the outcome is. Maybe South-Africa can do something.
We must rely on international law, and at the same time, we just can’t. It’s a sham and we’ve been gaslighted into thinking it means anything at all. The recommendations will be rubbish binned, but the reality of eight years of occupation that the report describes can’t be denied. And maybe that is more important. Why? Because cynically enough, it’s exactly our sense of humanity, our morality that becomes razor sharply tuned under the atrocities we see unfold before our eyes in Syria, Kurdistan, Palestine and elsewhere. It’s not institutions but our humanity that must, and will, eventually safe us.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/fgeerdink or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan https://frederikegeerdink.com/expert-kurdistan/.
