Turquía
Erdoğan’s Air Force Lays Waste to Rojava Amidst Global Silence
Source: The Kurdish Center for Studies – Dr. Hawzhin Azeez – 17 Jan 2024
A Kurdish woman mourns at the funeral of victims killed during the Turkish bombing and invasion of Serê Kaniyê in 2019. Many now worry the process will be repeated elsewhere in Rojava following the current bombardment.
Erdoğan’s regime in Turkey has continued its reign of terror on the Kurdish region of Rojava, which is governed by the DAANES (Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria). Ankara’s litany of weekly war crimes for the past several months involves ceaseless bombardments, airstrikes, and drone attacks across a wide range of civilian sites. To understand the reasoning behind their aerial terror, one only needs to look at the recent history and neo-Ottomanist foreign policy objectives of Turkey when it comes to the Kurdish areas of northern Syria.
For instance, the Turkish military has already annexed large swaths of the Kurdish territories in the region, including utilizing their jihadist mercenary allies to occupy Afrin in 2018 and Serê Kaniyê and Girê Spi in 2019. Both invasions ethnically cleansed the regions of Kurds by more than 80% resulting in close to a million people being internally displaced.
Back in October 2023, when the bombardments commenced at unprecedented levels, refugee camps of internally displaced people were also attacked, causing mass terror and uncertainty. But this also coincides with Turkey’s previous playbook, where they sow fear amongst Kurdish civilians in the hope that they will flee the region. Since October, Turkey has commenced a comprehensive round of repeated bombardments targeting essential infrastructure such as water, gas, and electricity stations. The objective is to displace civilians, cause a mass exodus, and create conditions that make life unbearable in the region.
In the past 72 hours, a number of villages and civilian locations, including barns and food depots, have been targeted by Turkish airstrikes. As a result, journalists, activists, and civilians across the region shared horrifying images of injured civilians, destroyed warehouses, and repeated attacks on non-military locations, including the illegal double-tap policy of re-striking a site that had been previously attacked as emergency crews scrambled to put out the fires and treat any wounded.
In the village of Karbatli, in the Darbasiyah district, the family home of a civilian named Khaled Heso was bombed, resulting in his children Rojan and Jan, along with his wife Ahlam being injured. Meanwhile, the Kurdish journalist Hoshang Hassan released exclusive footage of the Turkish bombardments against electric stations in Amuda. Showing that Turkey is most interested in striking the necessities of life: food, water, electricity, and shelter (homes).
The Rojava Information Center (RIC) released an exclusive video detailing the Turkish bombardments since October, highlighting the repeat targeting of civilians and their land, homes, and properties during the bombardments. During the Christmas period, another round of massive bombardments occurred, in which Turkish airstrikes hit a number of civilian infrastructures, including factories, medical centers, industrial warehouses, and more. In the most recent cascade of unprovoked strikes, 11 civilians were killed, with dozens more injured.
Turkey also specifically targeted crucial gas and electrical facilities around Suwaydiyah. This electrical station, according to the RIC produces 47% of the Jazire canton’s total electrical supply. More importantly, it is the only station providing electricity to emergency lines for essential medical services and the area’s only local gas bottling plant. Displaying the sinister nature of the strikes, Turkey wants the Kurdish population thirsty, hungry, cold, and in the dark, but without fuel to flee. Then, following the Turkish drone strikes, the ambulances and hospitals lack fuel to treat any of the wounded.
Farhad Shami, the media representative of the SDF released a press statement on behalf of the SDF General Command, in which he stated that: “Over the past two days, the Turkish occupation has targeted, using warplanes and UAV’s key energy and electricity facilities, as well as grain storage warehouses and silos and firefighting crews. These aggressions have extended to the homes of civilians, their farms, and the sources of their daily sustenance, impacting major roads and city outskirts and causing extensive destruction. Consequently, these attacks have disrupted the delivery of essential services, including power, electricity, water, and other necessities, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.”
Shami went on to state that:
“These direct attacks and barbaric terrorist aggression clearly and explicitly prove the hostility of the Turkish occupation state to all forms of life in the region, they constitute blatant and deliberate war crimes aimed at instilling fear, and inflicting suffering on their daily existence.”
Likewise, the media representative for the YPG, Siyamend Ali published a number of videos on his media page, which included images of the Turkish warplanes bombing journalists and media crews in the city of Kobanê, as well as recordings of Turkish drones targeting the French Lafarge Cement Company in the Chelabiya district east of Kobanê. The video shows a second “double tap” strike as firefighting crews attempt to douse the fires—a common tactic of Turkey at this point, which is against international law.
Meanwhile, another local journalist, Jamal Bali, stated that after a full day of bombardments by the Turkish state on service facilities across the region, “most of the region’s residents are now without water and electricity” during a harsh and cold winter.
For their part, the Kongra Star Women’s Movement released a report that highlighted the bombardments over the last 48 hours across the Amuda district. In Kobanê alone, wheat warehouses, orchards, fire crews, electricity transfer stations, and livestock barns have been targeted by ongoing strikes. Meanwhile, five electrical service stations were also bombed again around Kobanê.
A political cartoon by Dijwar Ibrahim, depicting the US and EU as an ostrich with its head buried in the sand as Erdoğan destroys Rojava.
Human rights advocates have weighed in on the ongoing Turkish bombardments as well. Nadine Maenza, an American advocate for international religious freedom and a former chair at USCIRF, has questioned why the US government allows Turkey to continue to engage in war crimes against the Kurds, when such attacks benefit Iran, Assad, and ISIS while, according to her, running counter to US goals for peace and stability in the region. Maenza went on to condemn the Turkish assault on Rojava and its explicit targeting of civilian infrastructure and she has called for the international community to stand firm against ongoing Turkish war crimes against the Kurds.
Additionally, scholars such as Gerald Walker, an expert in global diplomacy and international relations, have argued that Turkey’s “attacks seem to be part of a strategy to displace the local population, furthering a policy of Turkification and extending Turkish control over this Syrian territory.” However, as Walker points out, while Turkey is attempting to gain further Syrian territory, these territories are explicitly Kurdish-dominated areas of the country. Turkey’s Syria policy is driven solely by its exterminationst aspirations towards the Kurds. This is despite the fact that the PYD and the SDF have not fired a single bullet or rocket towards the Turkish border. Rather it seems the repeated military losses that Turkey’s allied jihadists in Syria suffered at the hands of the Kurds continue to prompt Ankara’s resentful and vengeful anti-Kurdish policies across the Kurdish regions in northern Syria and Iraq (Western and Southern Kurdistan, respectively).
Other activists called for the urgent implementation of a No-Fly Zone in the region or for the US-led coalition to provide the Kurds with air defense systems and the necessary technology to protect themselves against the ceaseless Turkish bombardments.
In light of the total absence of international outcry about Turkey’s unhindered and unrestrained violence towards Rojava, it appears unlikely that such war crimes will cease anytime soon. As the world reels from the war in Gaza and South Africa’s ICJ case is played out across TV screens, the same international media outraged by Israel’s bombing of Palestinians, remains silent and apathetic as Turkey bombs Kurds and attempts to raze Rojava to the ground.
Stop Turkey’s war and occupation policies in North and East Syria
Stop war against humanity in North and East Syria
Stop Turkey’s war and occupation policies
The undersigned express our solidarity with the Kurdish movement made up of children, young people, women, diverse identities and the Kurdish people in struggle for their rights to autonomy and self-determination. And through our personal and collective voice we want to let the world know what is happening in Kurdish territory right now.
ACT NOW: Add your name here.
Current Situation
Since the 4th of October 2023, Turkish army forces have systematically been bombarding villages, towns and general infrastructure in the districts of Derik, Rimelan, Tirbesipi, Qamishlo, Amude, Hasake, Til Temir, Dirbesi, Manbij, Ain Issa, Kobane, Tal Rifat, Shehba, Shera and Sherawa, covering a geographical area of approximately 900 kms by 52 kms of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
Turkish warplanes, armed drones (UAVs), artillery and mortars have been targeting civilian settlements and vehicles, electric power stations, gas stations, water resources and energy supplies, oil fields, health centres and hospitals (including two hospitals specialising in Covid-19 patients), cement factories, crop fields, granaries and food companies, as well as the M4 highway and the surroundings of refugee camps in the regions of Hasake, Derik, Sheba and Sherawa that are inhabited by ten thousands of internally displaced persons. These attacks have been carried out from Turkish army bases inside Turkey, as well as from areas within North Syria that are under Turkish occupation since 2016, such as Jerablus, Afrin, Gire Sipi and Serekaniye.
During the first three days of the current attacks at least 16 people lost their lives, and dozens have been injured. About two million people have been left without electricity, sufficient energy or water supplies and have no access to healthcare. In a press statement the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria announced that the bombardments targeting the electricity infrastructure alone have so far caused material losses of 56 million US dollars.
We are facing a new dimension of Turkey’s invasive war that is aimed at occupying, “ethnically cleansing”, and destroying more areas of North Syria. The latest attacks have been announced by the Turkish government with the declared aim of wiping out “all infrastructure, superstructure, and energy facilities” in order to destroy all basis of life in North and East Syria and to depopulate the region. These attacks are targeting the lives and the security of more than six million people of different cultures and believes –such as Kurds, Arabs, Suryoye, Circassian, Turkmen, Ezidi, Christians, Muslim and others– living together on common land, and fulfilling their vital needs within the structures of Democratic Autonomy. Despite ongoing airstrikes, tens of thousands of residents of the cities and regions under attack are out on the streets condemning the attacks and declaring their determination to continue their common resistance against war and occupation –for a life of dignity, peace and freedom.
The latest Turkish attacks add to the systematic drone warfare, airstrikes and military operations carried out by Turkish army forces in the Kurdish regions on Syrian and Iraqi territory. Since 2020, the lives of community workers, journalists, politicians, members of the Autonomous Administration, the women’s movement and the self-defence forces have been deliberately targeted. Just between January 2022 and September 2023, due to about 190 Turkish drone strikes 163 people lost their lives and 218 were severely injured. Among them there are dozens of members of the YPG-YPJ and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who have fought against Islamic State (ISIS) to defend humanity. Therefore, it does not seem to be a coincidence that the Turkish army started its massive air strike operation exactly at a time when SDF carried out large-scale operations to prevent the resurgence of ISIS.
Although all these attacks by the Turkish army on Syrian territory involve clear violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes and thus are contributing to deepen the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the whole Middle East, neither the UN nor other international bodies, states or forces have yet adequately condemned these crimes or taken any effective steps to stop them.
Therefore we call the international community and all concerned bodies to take urgent action to prevent further crimes against humanity and to stop Turkey’s war and occupation policies.
We call urgently all the sensitive and committed people in the world to
- Counteract Turkey’s disinformation policies and media censorship by providing and spreading information from sources in the targeted region itself.
We demand international organisation and governments to
- Establish a No-Flight-Zone for the Turkish Air Force, including armed and unarmed UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) over Syrian and Iraqi airspace.
From all over the world we demand urgently that
- The Turkish Government stops its war attacks, politics of occupation, and systematic killings of women’s rights defenders and people living in any part of Kurdistan, especially in the territories of North and East Syria, and North Iraq.
- Turkey ends its occupation and genocidal practices on Syrian territories such as in the regions of Jerablus, Afrin, Gire Sipi and Serekaniye.
- In accordance with international law, war crimes and crimes against humanity should be prosecuted, including genocide and feminicide committed by president Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
The great powers of the world do not view the autonomy of the Kurdish people in a favourable light, because it threatens their interests and ways of exercising power. The great world powers do not want to see the example of millions of Kurdish people being propagated. They do not want the world to know about the Kurdish people who meet in more than four thousand local assemblies to decide themselves over the course of their lives. In these assemblies, women exercise full political, economic and social rights. The same Kurdish people are out to defend themselves with weapons in their hands. They exercise justice through popular committees, and their means of production are collectively owned. None of them renounces their faith, their language, their beliefs or customs. They live together with others, accept their differences and organise themselves accordingly. In other words, the world powers (governments, nation-states, corporations, the powers that be) cannot respect, and even less let live and flourish a Kurdish society that is struggling for a world in which many worlds fit.
ACT NOW: Add your name here.
(Cover photo: Ozan Kose / AFP – Getty Images)
For further information see:
Rojava-NES | Statement to Civil Society and Global Public Opinion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtCcCiXPTmA
Summary Report: Turkey’s Aerial Assaults on North and East Syria: 5-6 October 2023 by Rojava Information Centre
https://drive.google.com/file/d/139wYAKziKPPWhCiv1WoorXXKW-hJ7j7T/view
Turkish Warplanes and Drones Target Northeast Syria, 6 October 2023 by AANES
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Frew4-zt8N2dRHR2eXMEI9_V8Koj_E4u/view
Turkey’s Drone War in North and East Syria, 20 June 2023 by Kongra Star
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sv_laS41rdJfFsTxO5QA_KuQ8S1EjZfG/view
Published by RIC also:
Women Defend Rojava:
English: https://womendefendrojava.net/en/
Spanish: https://womendefendrojava.net/es/
Published today by Kongra Star:
