New cross-border op. in N. Syria imminent
Amid efforts to tackle the threat of terrorism and establish safe areas for the voluntary return of Syrian refugees, President Erdoğan has indicated the possibility of another cross-border offensive in Syria’s northern region
TURKEY will soon launch a new military operation along its southern borders to combat terrorist threats in these regions, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday.
The new operation will resume efforts to create 30-kilometer (18.6-mile) wide safe zones along Turkey’s border with Syria, Erdoğan said in a televised address after a Cabinet meeting in the capital Ankara.
“We will soon take new steps regarding the incomplete portions of the project we started on the 30-kilometer deep safe zone we established along our southern border,” the president said.
“The main target of these operations will be areas that are centers of attacks on our country and safe zones,” Erdoğan noted.
He did not provide further details but said the operation would be launched as soon as military, intelligence and security forces have completed their preparations
Turkey borders Syria and Iraq to its south and has worked to eliminate existing terrorist bases and to prevent new ones that would threaten national security and the safety of locals across its borders.
Since 2016, Turkey has launched a trio of successful counterterrorism operations across its border in northern Syria to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and enable the peaceful settlement of residents – namely, Euphrates Shield in 2016, Olive Branch in 2018 and Peace Spring in 2019.
In its more than 40-year campaign against Turkey, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.
The signaling of a new operation comes amid increasingly hostile sentiment toward refugees in the country, fuelled by some parties and political figures. Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and other politicians had announced they would send back Syrian refugees if they win next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
However, the debate on migrants living in Turkey is mainly fuelled by the small farright Victory Party (ZP).
Erdoğan recently announced that Ankara is planning to build another 200,000 homes for Syrians in safe zones close to the border. “With financing from international aid groups, we’ve been working on a project to construct 200,000 homes at 13 different locations in Syria to relocate 1 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, including schools and hospitals,” Erdoğan said earlier this month.
THE PKK terrorist organization as well as its Syrian wing, the YPG, is conducting a false census, which is illegal and has no validity, the head of the Syrian Interim Government Abdurrahman Mustafa said Monday.
“We are against the so-called census of the separatist YPG/PKK,” said Mustafa, speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA).
He said the terrorist organization is carrying out “profiling” under the name of a “census” in the region east of the Euphrates River.
“The YPG/PKK’s so-called census serves its separatist aims, its plans to change the demographic structure, and its existence built on tyranny,” he said, adding it aims to make demographic changes in the geographies dominated by the Arab population according to the data to be obtained.
Noting that the local community living in the region is worried sick about the false census, he said: “The terrorist organization had previously changed the education system and imposed a curriculum against the culture of the people in the region.”
As internally displaced Syrians suffered racism at the hands of the terrorist group’s members in the region, the group confiscated the properties of Syrians who are forced to leave their native land, he noted.
“This false census once again shows the true racist face of the terrorist organization. The separatist group wants to destroy the real identity of the people of the region,” he said.
Underlining that the YPG/PKK does not represent the people of the region, Mustafa said that as they are conducting a so-called census, the terrorist group is also collecting information about the displaced people and the assets they left behind.
“Under the name of the census, the members of the group will confiscate more assets of those who had to leave the region,” he said.
As of May 7, the YPG/PKK had initiated a kind of “profiling” which they called a “census” in Syria’s Hasakah province. Moreover, it plans to carry out the so-called census in other regions in the coming days.
The terrorist group’s members in plain clothes go to people’s homes and ask questions about their religious and ethnic origins, place of birth, residential address, marital and educational status, displacement, health status and occupation.
It is noteworthy that the members also collect information about the assets and immovables left behind by locals’ relatives abroad. Some regional politicians told AA that the YPG/PKK is preparing to identify the owners of immovable properties that are not in the region and to confiscate these properties.
As part of a plan called a “social contract,” which aims for a federation, it plans to take steps such as a “census,” identifying the electors and so-called elections to seek external legitimacy.
After the “census,” the YPG/PKK is expected to demand an increase in the share of foreign aid allocated to the occupied territories. Population density is a very important criterion in the distribution planning of international aid within Syria.
Local people living in areas held by the YPG have long suffered from its atrocities, as the terrorist organization has a notorious record of human rights abuses including kidnappings, recruitment of child soldiers, torture, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Syria. The YPG has forced young people from areas under its control to join its forces within its “compulsory conscription.”
CHILD RECRUITMENTS
Meanwhile, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on Monday reported that the YPG has abducted another young girl from Basoufan village in the northern suburbs of Aleppo governorate. Silva Hamid Jafar, 18-year-old, was abducted on her way back from school for conscription, and taken to a recruitment center, the SNHR said.
“SNHR notes that the girl’s parents have not been informed of her whereabouts, and she hasn’t been allowed to contact her family, who are also forbidden from visiting her. We fear she may be forced to participate directly or indirectly in military operations,” it said in a written statement.
Moreover, the SNHR underlined that around 156 children are still conscripted by the YPG terrorist organization.
The terrorist group’s practice of abducting children and pushing them into combat zones is nothing new, as seen in the U.S. State Department’s 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report. According to the report, the YPG/PKK forcibly recruited girls as young as 12 from refugee camps located in northwestern Syria.
Moreover, a January 2020 U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report said its findings suggest the YPG/PKK is using children as fighters in Syria.
Late last year, parents of children who were kidnapped by the YPG staged a protest in front of the United Nations headquarters in Qamishli, northeastern Syria. Around 30 people gathered to demand action after several children, reportedly girls were forcefully recruited by the YPG terrorists, a group primarily backed by the United States under the guise of fighting against Daesh.
Since its foundation, the PKK has forcibly taken at least one child from families that fail to “pay taxes” in support of the group. To fill its ranks, the PKK has continuously raided villages and kidnapped young adults from the ages of 15 to 20 through violent means.