Both Kurdish forces in Syria and humanitarian organizations on the ground warned this week that militias backed by Turkey are seizing territory in northern Syria and endangering Kurdish civilians, including potentially engaging in “ethnic cleansing.”
The Syrian National Army (SNA), an amalgam of various militias supported by the Turkish government, announced a military campaign in Syrian Kurdistan this week shortly after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist outfit with ties to al-Qaeda, conducted a surprise siege of Aleppo, the second-largest city in Syria. The dictatorship of Syrian leader Bashar Assad lost control of Aleppo last week; reports on Thursday indicate it may have also lost control of the city of Hama.
The clashes between the SNA and Kurdish forces in Syrian Kurdistan do not appear to be in support of HTS. Rather, it is an operation, overtly supported by the Islamist government of Turkey, to erode Kurdish control over northern Syria. The Kurds lead the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) through their military, the People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ). The YPG and its all-female partners in the YPJ were instrumental in helping the United States dismantle the Islamic State “caliphate” in Syria in the last decade and are now warning that some Islamic State elements are taking advantage of the chaos to attempt to regroup.
The government of Islamist Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers the SDF, despite its affiliations with NATO ally America, to be a terrorist organization indistinguishable from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a U.S.-designated Marxist terrorist organization. Erdogan’s regime insists the SDF poses a national security threat to Turkey.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a non-governmental organization (NGO), reported on Tuesday that its sources on the ground had seen evidence of “ethnic cleansing” by pro-Turkish militias in Aleppo governate and areas where the SDF and SNA are fighting.
“SOHR activists reported that Turkish-backed factions carry out humanitarian crimes and violations,” the organization relayed, “in light of the cut of communication and electricity off the civilians being sieged in Al-Shuhabaa area and northern Aleppo countryside that was taken control over in the ‘Dawn of Freedom’ operation.” “Dawn of Freedom” is the SNA operation to oust Kurdish forces from the Turkish-Syrian border.
The group reported that it could confirm, based on its sources, the massacre of at least 11 people in al-Shahabaa (Shahba), part of Aleppo governate, and the mass arrest of unnamed “young men.”
The Kurdish Iraqi-based news organization Rudaw reported on Thursday that the SDF believed the pro-Turkish militants had “detailed 15,000 people” from Shahba, with whom they had lost all communication.
“Turkish-backed mercenaries have launched a large-scale kidnapping and enslavement campaign against civilians besieged in the Shahba region, north of Aleppo,” the SDF denounced in a statement. “Over 120 vehicles carrying hundreds of civilians, who were attempting to evacuate to areas in north and eastern Syria, were abducted and taken to an unknown destination near the Sheikh Najjar area.”
The SDF went on to accuse the militias of seeking the “enslavement” of the missing people, who are “facing starvation and water shortages.”
Rudaw cited a second source — local administration Sheikhmous Ahmed — who also reportedly confirmed the disappearance of 15,000 people “to an unknown place.” Ahmed added that another 100,000 people were reportedly displaced by the current conflict between the SDF and the SNA.
The SDF further warned on Thursday that it is documenting heightened Islamic State activity in the region since the pro-Turkish militias began to attack. The Kurdish outlet Bas News reported that the SDF documented attacks by Islamic State terrorists outside of Aleppo, in Homs and Deir ez-Zor. The outlet also reported, similarly, on the missing 100,000 displaced people affected by the SNA and noted that the militias are not allowing civilians from leaving Shahbah.
Bas News added the alarming detail that “Turkish-backed armed factions have seized over 120 humanitarian vehicles intended to transport civilians to safety, further complicating the crisis.”
The Turkish government has overtly invaded Syrian territory in the interest of eliminating Kurdish forces in the past five years, but Erdogan is also stridently opposed to the Assad dictatorship. In 2016, justifying another military adventure into Syria, Erdogan declared, “We entered there to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror.”
The Turkish National Defense Ministry reiterated on Thursday that the SDF was allegedly a “serious” threat to the Erdogan regime in apparent support of the SNA’s attacks. The Turkish state news outlet Anadolu Agency paraphrased a statement from the defense ministry insisting that Turkey would “not allow terrorist groups to exploit the instability in the region,” referring to the SDF.
“All necessary measures are being taken by our troops to maintain stability in the region, and close cooperation and coordination with our counterparts have continued since the very beginning of the process,” a Defense Ministry spokesman reiterated on Thursday, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet. “We emphasize once again … that we will not allow the PKK/YPG terrorist organization, which poses a serious threat to Syria’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and the security of our region, to take advantage of the instability in the region.”