Redor Khalil: "Turkey's practices are stark examples of crimes against humanity"

QAMISHLO

The works of the International Forum on Ethnic Cleansing and Demographic Change in Afrin is still ongoing, where Mr. Redor Khalil, the Official of the Public Relations of the Syrian Democratic Forces, delivered his lecture via a video he sent to the Forum because he could not attend.

The text of his lecture:

"I present my thanks and appreciation to the Center of Rojava for Strategic Studies for their efforts to hold the Forum for Afrin and all thanks and gratitude for giving us this opportunity to share with you our ideologies on what is going on in Afrin from a systematic process of demographic change that will have a very serious impact on the future of Syria in general and the future of the Kurdish people and its justice cause in particular."

It is said that the most famous statement about the end of the First World War is that the the First World War ended with the establishment of a peace that destroyed all hope for peace. It is an understatement that reflects the enormity of the war.

Ladies and gentlemen

We and you are gathered here in the city of Amuda. The news came to us moment by moment. It tells us how terrible the practices and crimes committed by the Turkish occupation army and the Turkish-backed terrorist militias against the remaining inhabitants in Afrin. The vast majority have been displaced as you have known and few remained, or more accurately had no chance of escaping from the Turkish terror. They are more like prisoners in a mass detention camp, full of space, in a simulation of the Holocaust camps opened by the Nazis to the Jews between the two World Wars. This is not strange if we remembered the Turkish President's assertion of the Nazi experience in one of his most famous statements in which he challenged the world in 2015.

The residents of Afrin are exposed at any moment to displacement, murdering, kidnapping for ransom demand, burglary of property, and eviction of homeowners in order to settle the strangers or terrorist families in their homes without fear of conscience or morals. All these express a systematic demographic change and ethnic cleansing, environmental destruction including all aspects of life in Afrin, within the framework of what is called the final solution, and in a geography that is not subjected to the political, legal and cultural influence of Turkey. It moves according to the rule of the will of power, arrogance and occupation to expand its influence within the borders of neighboring countries, benefiting from the political deals that are woven against  the will and interests of the Syrian people with all components on one hand, and international criminal experiments known and rooted in the structure of its political history, such as massacres against the Armenians, Kurds, Syriac and other components, nationalities and cultures in the countries of al-Anadol and Kurdistan on the other hand. It is the criminal offense of the Turkish state inherited from the Ottoman Empire.

It is certain to us that the perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing policies in Afrin, from the Turkish forces and the intelligence services, as well as the terrorist factions, and the hidden bodies parallel to the Turkish state, which operate above all legal considerations, have had a clear road map to implement this approach according to what we see every day of the appalling and terrible practices in Afrin amid applied international silence.

Comrades

I am confident that you will discuss the processes of demographic change and ethnic cleansing according to systematic and research bases based on the rules of data collection and satisfaction with evidence, examples and proofs. Therefore, I will focus on the political side and the impact of the Turkish state atrocities in Afrin. I will try to highlight the political and legal dimension of these terrible crimes.

It is clear to everyone that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his team have promoted on an intense daily basis through the media allegations of Turkish national security in its occupation of Afrin.

The term "national security" has been transformed into a Turkish word of the attribute to be used as an excuse in the occupation of Afrin, thus, the Turkish state led by Erdogan and in alliance with the extremist Nationalist Movement launched the propaganda that was conveyed to the public opinion that Afrin was an existential threat to Turkey and its national security and this approach was accompanied with the statements of some Western countries and Russia.

Statements that fall within the framework of pouring oil on fire, which can be summarized by the recognition of these countries of Turkey's right to protect its security and territories' safety, as if Afrin is superpower state that possesses a huge arsenal of strategic weapons and threaten the Turkish national security.

The danger to Turkish national security is a lie, and the truth is that Turkey is sick with Kurdish phobia

According to these introductions and data, the scene began to interact on both the political and the media platforms, without paying attention to the voice of reason, conscience and human rights, and without bothering to ask a simple question. What are the arguments and evidence in which the Turks based on for the marketing of the threat to national security emanating from Afrin?

From here, the abolition of the term (Turkish national security) and putting the occupation in its real path of being a terrorist path politicized under the cloak of national security relying on the Turkish propaganda war for the purpose of building political legitimacy for ethnic cleansing and demographic change in front of the public, local and international opinion, especially if we know that Afrin had an autonomous political administration that exercised its existential right to protect all its components and its people from the conflicts and daily conflicts that were surrounding it and taking place in its surroundings.

Certainly, no international or human rights party has evidence proves the involvement of the fighters of Afrin in any operation that threats the Turkish national security. In contrary, we have many organizations and local and international organizations that have many files that prove daily breaches and violations by the Turkish border guards and army against the people of Afrin. It has created instability in this semi-stable region as an island in an intertwined hell of ethnic and sectarian warfare that has served as a safe haven for the refuge of tens of thousands of the displaced from various cities and provinces who have escaped the scourge of war and security and found peace and security in Afrin.

Thus, Afrin, from a purely political point of view, seeks to protect its existence by managing its own affairs in a participatory manner with the rest of the components in the chaos that invaded the surrounding area and witnessed by the country, and was an acceptable model in Syria that can be taken as a gate leading to stability and the desired security. Therefore, it did not commit any violation, either against the local components or the right of the Turkish state, in contrast to the terrorist organizations of various denominations that were praising the Turkish borders and carrying out their terrorist activities on the border strip inside the Syrian territory, and sometimes inside the Turkish territory with knowledge and direct coordination of the Turkish intelligence service (this was revealed by several news reports of Turkish journalists, who were imprisoned).

Ladies and gentlemen

The terrorist organizations that the Turks have brought to invade Afrin are the same which many media and human rights organizations have documented their blatant violations against the local population of various components, which constitute a real existential threat not only to the Turkish state but also to the Syrians and international, local and regional security. Here, sob-ironical paradox lies, and this is what I called ignoring, or the blindness of the world to see the truth as it is.

Our forces, in cooperation with the International Alliance, were busy in chasing the remnants of terrorism in Deir ez-Zor. While we all had to focus our political and legal efforts and all our attention in the fight against terrorism, the Turkish state began its invasion against Afrin. We had to expose the paradoxes of this aggression which can only be classified as part of Turkey's frenzied attempts to prolong the life of terrorism and extend it at every opportunity. That is the blatant investment of terrorism and blackmail of the world and the repetition of previous experiences in the history of the Turkish state. The genocide and this barbaric invasion is a painful blow to the forces fighting against terrorism.

But did Turkey dare to use the trick of "national security" and invest the terrorist groups in implementing Erdogan's policy in Afrin without other political calculations? Of course not?

As you all have seen, the Russian role and some other regimes legitimized this occupation and thus gave way to this terrible violent campaign against the local population.

The European Union System which focused on the influx of refugees from the conflict zones in Syria until this argument has disappeared completely in the matter of Afrin, unlike what has been negotiated towards Idlib recently.

In this matter, the logic of the policy of force, domination and the immediate dirty interests imposed itself at the expense of Afrin's tragedy and at the expense of human rights. Thus, our political choices towards this conspiratorial political reality were the legitimate defense to protect our dignity, even with limited capabilities to NATO's military arsenal on the one hand and the Russian areal coverage on the other hand.

H/T