Newspaper: What Turkish mercenaries committed in Afrin remind of ISIS’ practices against Yazidis

The Israeli Jerusalem newspaper published a report, in which it spoke about the crimes of the Turkish mercenaries in Afrin, Syria, and said: “Shocking scenes similar to ISIS crimes against women were found in the Kurdish area of ​​Afrin in Syria last week.”

Turkey's mercenaries committed widespread human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing, attacks on the Yazidi minority, and the abduction of women and children.

Turkey, a member of NATO, has been accused of human rights violations throughout the areas it occupies in northern Syria, and it has supported groups described by a U.S. official as “jihadist mercenaries”, who committed ethnic cleansing in Afrin, as well as near Girê Spî / Tel Abyad which was invaded by Turkey in October 2019.

More than 300,000 people, most of them Kurds, were displaced in ethnic cleansing that reminds us of the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s, and Turkey and its mercenaries systematically resettled most Arab refugees in the Kurds’ homes, with the hope of fueling tensions between the Kurds and Arabs.

This is the same language and approach that ISIS used in its operations in 2014, where tens of thousands of ISIS mercenaries came to Syria via Turkey, then hundreds of them fled to Turkey when the U.S.-led coalition and the partner forces defeated ISIS in 2019, and the United States also found ISIS's leader hiding a few kilometers away from the Turkish border in Idlib which is controlled by Ankara.

Reports stated that targeting Kurdish women and Yazidi minorities by Turkey's mercenaries in Afrin reminds us of ISIS's thought represented by ​​kidnapping and enslaving the minority’s women, as ISIS enslaved thousands of Yazidi women in 2014 in Senjar, and they were sold in the markets, raped and are still being raped by ISIS mercenaries, about 3,000 of them are missing, as ISIS kidnapped them in Senjar, and some of them were smuggled to Turkey and even to Idlib.

According to the reports, the group illegally held the women in a secret prison, and the Kurds called on the United Nations and the international community to investigate these crimes. Other reports confirm that the number of the Kurdish population in Afrin which is 90% has decreased to about 30%, and hundreds of women have been kidnapped, which appears to be a systematic campaign to kidnap the Kurdish and minorities’ women.

According to the newspaper, what Turkey is doing is more like creating a new Gaza in northern and eastern Syria, and ironically, Turkey condemns Israel's treatment of the Palestinians while Turkey commits worse crimes against the Kurds in northern Syria.

The violations committed by al-Hamzat mercenaries in Afrin were revealed only because they clashed with other groups, and the Turkish-backed groups supported settlers from other parts of Syria by allowing them to take over the Kurds’ homes, which is part of Ankara's goal to settle the situations of the most extremist groups loyal to it and housing them in the predominantly Kurdish regions.

The main reason for the kidnapping of women is the creation of a kind of extremist entity similar to ISIS, so that women cannot walk alone or leave their homes without fear of abuse and kidnapping. In addition, the slow ethnic cleansing of the remaining minorities through harassment, aggression and kidnapping is part of an approach in the Middle East, where ethnic and religious components have been targeted by right extremist groups through bombing and intimidation.

The horrific video showing the women in the secret prison in Afrin is the top of the devastation that inflicted Afrin city.

Turkey's mercenaries are vying to destroy the country torn by the war in recent years, while the Kurds seek to protect their communities in Afrin and eastern Syria.

It seems that the ethnic cleansing in Afrin will continue until the area is completely emptied of its indigenous population, as the Yazidi shrines have been destroyed and desecrated, similar to what ISIS mercenaries have done in Iraq, and women will continue to be targeted as well since there are no strong groups defending women's rights in the regions of the Turkish occupation.

Harassment and sexual assault of women as a weapon of war is one of the fundamental violations of human rights that the Nobel Prize sought to highlight in 2018, and two years later, not much has been done to reinforce this message, as women are still being kidnapped and captured in secret prisons and “black sites” in Afrin.

D.H