Kurds in Syria: "We will pull the Turkish troops into the swamp"

Brett McGurk does not have to shit. For more than three years, the lawyer and diplomat officiated as US Special Representative for the fight against the terrorist organization "Islamic State" (IS). At the end of 2018 he threw the job - in protest at the decision of US President Donald Trump to withdraw the approximately 2,000 US troops stationed in Syria.

This decision has not been implemented to date - yet McGurk criticizes the Syrian policy of the US government and its allies in the region. In an essay in the journal "Foreign Affairs" he raises serious allegations against the NATO partner Turkey. During the offensive against the Kurdish canton of Afrin in northern Syria in early 2018, the Turkish military under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan together with Islamist allies from Syria displaced more than 150,000 Kurds and then settled Arabs and Turkmen from other parts of Syria.

Erdogan's goal is the Islamization and Turkification of Afrin

"This operation was not a response to a real danger, but a product of Erdogan's ambitions to postpone Turkey's borders, which in his view were unfairly pulled out of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923," writes McGurk.

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This confirms a long-time high-ranking US official, who met Erdogan himself several times in person, what the Kurds and international human rights groups have long been saying:

• The Turkish leader is planning a long-term occupation of northern Syria and a change in the demography of the border area.
• The Kurds are to be expelled from the border with Turkey and replaced by Arabs and Turkmen loyal to Ankara.

In August 2016, Turkish army units entered the area between the cities of Asa and Jaabarab in the so-called Operation "Shield Euphrates". Thus, the military made a breach between the two Kurdish cantons Afrin and Kobane. In January 2018 Erdogan then gave orders to conquer Afrin:

• Within two months, the Turkish military and allied Syrian militia conquered Afrin.
• In view of the military inferiority, the Kurdish self-government and its YPG militia decided in March 2018 to fight without a fight from Afrin.

Since then, the Turkish occupiers prevent independent reporting from the area. In order to get information, journalists rely on reports from local people who have not fled so far and pass on their impressions at great risk.

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Power distribution in northern Syria

Satellite images also show that the conquerors have since destroyed several shrines of the Alawites and Yazidis and desecrated cemeteries. Several historic places of worship have since been converted into military posts. The expulsion of religious minorities and the handling of their cultural heritage are an indication that the occupiers want to islamize the area in the long term. This is also evident in everyday life:

• The new rulers include many Islamist militias who were brought to Afrin from other parts of the country now controlled by the Assad regime.
• At least one of them, the "Brigade of the Merciful," now functions as a police force in Afrin.
• It seeks to enforce its Sharia interpretation in public life - and demands that women only veil and leave home with a male relative.
• In the meantime, the occupiers had also hung placards in the city, asking women to completely disguise themselves. After protests by the residents, the posters were hung up again.

Earlier today images of da'wa posters were posted on a Facebook group. The text urges inhabitants to wear hijabs (specifically not just covering the head) / pray / etc. Note the sign saying Afrin above the third sign. (1/6) pic.twitter.com/Aee9NXxcU8

At the same time, Ankara is aiming for the Turkification of Afrin:

• The Turkish flag is part of the streetscape and most schools are taught Turkish.
• The Kurdish language and identity of the region, however, is being eradicated more and more.
• Places lose their Kurdish name, Kurdish is no longer taught.
• In March, Afrin's local government, which was used by Turkey, also banned celebrations for the Kurdish New Year festival in Nowruz.

All this serves only one purpose in the estimation of the Kurds: to drive out the last remaining Kurds from Afrin.

Aisha Issa Hesso is one of those who fled the Turkish army in March 2018. As co-chair of the PYD, she is considered an enemy of the state in Ankara. The PYD is the most important political representation of the Kurds in Syria. Turkey regards them as part of the Kurdish terror organization PKK.

Christoph Sydow / SPIEGEL ONLINE

Aisha Issa Hesso: "The more we are attacked, the more bitterly we resist"

Together with her colleagues, Hesso tries to coordinate the resistance against the occupation. First and foremost, it is about somehow maintaining the remnants of Kurdish self-government that existed in Afrin a year ago in the refugee camps. The majority of the refugees from Afrin live in tents or simple dwellings in Shehba, an area under Kurdish control, constrained between the Turkish occupation zone in the north and the Syrian regime in the south.

Remembering the fate of Alexandretta

In addition, the People's Defense Units (YPG), the military arm of the PYD, but also provide military resistance. In recent weeks, the attacks on Turkish soldiers and Arab militia in Afrin piled up. "The more we are attacked, the more bitter we resist," says Hesso.

"We will pull the Turkish troops into the swamp," the politician describes her strategy. The goal is to make the occupation of Afrin so expensive for Erdogan that he eventually decides to retreat. The Kurds insist that the bad economic situation in Turkey plays into their hands in the long term.

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Like McGurk, Hesso has no doubt that Erdogan would prefer to incorporate the area into Turkey. Just as Turkey once did with the region west of Afrin.

The area around the city Iskenderun, once known as Alexandretta, had belonged to the French Mandate Syria until 1938, but was then left to Turkey by France. Until then, Turks in the area were just one of many minorities, after the Anschluss Ankara changed the demographics of the area and turkized the region, which today is called Hatay.

The Kurds of Afrin absolutely want to escape this fate.