More than 60 Syrians illegally transferred to Turkey for alleged YPG links: HRW

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkish-backed forces in Syria have illegally transferred “at least 63” people to Turkey to face trial and possible life imprisonment over their alleged links with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday.

The arrests of those transferred, who are Kurds and Arabs, took place in northeast Syria at the end of 2019, on charges including “undermining the unity and territorial integrity of the state, membership in a terrorist organization, and murder”, based on “unsubstantiated claims” of links to the YPG, the rights group said.

Turkey considers the YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), to be the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Ankara has designated the PKK, an armed group that has fought a decades-long war for greater cultural and political rights for Kurds in Turkey, as a terrorist organization.

“Turkish authorities, as an occupying power, are required to respect people’s rights under the law of occupation in northeastern Syria, including the prohibition on arbitrary detention and on the transfer of people to their territory,” Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

“Instead, they are violating their obligations by arresting these Syrian men and carting them off to Turkey to face the most dubious and vaguest of charges connected to alleged activity in Syria,” Page said.

The arrested were transferred to detention facilities in Turkey where they were charged “the Turkish Penal Code, even though the alleged crimes took place in Syria,” HRW reported.

“They’re with the party, but they don’t hold arms, they’re guard facilities, they’re workers, they’re administrative employees,” one relative of the detainees said, as reported by HRW. “All of them [are] like that. There’s nothing to add, there’s nothing to hide”.

The detainees are not able to call their families unless their phone number is registered in Turkey, HRW said.
Relatives of a number of the detainees were contacted by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, asking them for money to return their relatives – but “only one of the detainees’ families was able to negotiate and pay a US$10,000 fee to secure his release,” the human rights group added.

In October 2019, the Turkish army and its Syrian proxies launched Operation Peace Spring against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria, claiming the force posed a threat to Turkish national security. The YPG makes up a significant portion of the SDF.

Turkey’s Syrian proxies have been accused by local and international rights groups of committing abuses and human rights violations. Some Kurdish officials have even claimed there are former Islamic State (ISIS) militants in the militias’ ranks.

Eighteen organizations signed a letter to European human rights officials in July 2020 detailing abuses committed by Turkey and Turkish-backed groups in northern Syria, accusing Ankara and its Syrian proxies of committing "war crimes, crimes against humanity, as well as crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide."