Turkish of Afrin four years on | Nearly 7,500 kidnappings and arrests and 2,300 other violations by Turkish forces and their proxy factions

Draw Media 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented the death of 639 Kurdish civilians in Afrin, including 95 children and 86 women in explosions of IEDs and car bombs, airstrikes and ground bombardment by Turkish forces and executions, while some died under torture in prisons run by Turkish-backed factions.

Also, SOHR has documented, since the beginning of the Turkish occupation of Afrin until the evening of March 17, 2022, the kidnapping and arrest of over 7,497 Kurdish civilians from Afrin, 1,300 of whom remained imprisoned, while the rest have been released, after most of them paid large ransoms which factions of the Turkish-backed “National Army” required.

According to SOHR statistics, over 4,180 families from different Syrian provinces were settled in Afrin, after having been forced to displace from their land, as a part of Turkey’s plan to change the demography of Afrin. Under Russian-Turkish agreements, Afrin was handed over to the Turks in return for allowing the Syrian regime to capture eastern Ghouta. The Syrian Observatory has been all along warning against the Turkish plan of systematic demographic change in Afrin since the first day of the Turkish occupation, where over half of the population of Afrin canton has been forced to displace from their homes, while thousands of families from other provinces have been settled in the canton instead; all of this has taken place in full view of the international community which seemed to be indifferent and kept silent.