A vigil, now in its fifth day, is being held on top of the Tishreen (Tişrîn) Dam, northern Syria, in order to protect the dam from Turkish aggression and to support the resistance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who have been repelling attacks by the Turkish-affiliated Syrian National Army (SNA). Hundreds of Kurdish, Arab and other civilians from different regions of North and East Syria have made their way to the Tishreen Dam to take part.
Hundreds of people started their journey to the dam on 8 January. In the afternoon of the same day, when they were in the vicinity of the dam, the car convoy was targeted by a Turkish drone attack. Three civilians were killed and 15 injured in the attack. However, the demonstrators continued on to the dam, being undeterred by Turkey’s attempt to stop them with a drone attack.
Since then, people have been staying at the dam day and night. As a result of the Turkish drone attacks, there has been extensive damage to the dam and those who are at the vigil have started cleaning up what is left of the shelling. While holding pieces of the shells, one of the protesters says: “This (the dam) is public property, we are here today to protect public property”.
While hundreds of people are currently at the dam, more are on their way, as a new convoy of civilians from the Jazeera (Cizîr) district arrived at the dam yesterday. The Turkish military has continued to indiscriminately fire artillery and bomb the surroundings of the dam with heavy weapons.
On 8 January, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) declared that the Turkish attacks had posed a serious threat to the dam. The danger goes far beyond the lack of energy. While it is true that most of the places around the dam, such as Tabqa (Tebqa) and Kobani (Kobanê), are supplied by the dam, this is only a small part of the main problem.
As the AANES has stated, the collapse of the dam will cause a “human and natural” crisis from Tabqa to Iraqi towns on the other side of the border, with many villages and thousands of hectares of agricultural land submerged. It would cause a regional catastrophe, which is why the people of northeastern Syria are continuing their vigil and expressing their support for the SDF, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) and the Manbij (Minbic) Military Council (MMC), who have been repelling attacks by the SNA since the beginning of December.
