ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkey and forces it backs in Syria are building a settlement for Arabs and Turks in the northern district of Afrin, local sources have told Rudaw. Video footage submitted to Rudaw by an Afrin district local that requested to remain anonymous shows settlement camps in Shader village, located almost 13 kilometers east of the town of Jindires. A local source has told Rudaw that the Turkish Ihsan Relief and Development Foundation has built 247 housing units for the settlement. “The settlement project is being built on land in Sheikh Muhammad mountain -- where Newroz celebrations were held before the occupation,” a 54 year old local source from north of Jindires told Rudaw on Tuesday. “I witnessed first-hand the concrete construction work on the settlement site.” “Dozens of trees were bulldozed on land belonging to the village of Hajj Hasanah, north of the city of Jindires, the land was leveled, and settlement work began on it,” another local source in his 40s from the area said. Turkey, backing Syrian militia groups, launched Operation Olive Branch against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin in January 2018. Their forces entered the city of Afrin on March 18. The YPG withdrew in order to avoid conflict in the heavily populated centre and Turkey announced it had full control over the region on March 24. Turkey’s goal was to push the YPG back from its southern border. Ankara believes the YPG is the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group which has fought a decades-long war with the Turkish state for greater political and cultural rights for Kurds. Soon after the operation was launched, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they would “show no mercy to those who try to harm our future and freedom.” By the time Ankara had seized control of Afrin city, some 150,000 people were displaced from their homes, most of them Kurds who fled to Kurdish-controlled areas in northeast Syria known as Rojava. Afrin is now administered by groups backed by Turkey who have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Photographs quickly emerged in March 2018 of militiamen looting Kurdish homes and businesses and pulling down a statue of Kawa the Blacksmith – a core figure in Kurdish folklore. Observers accused the militias of ethnic cleansing after homes were commandeered by fighters, residents intimidated or kidnapped for ransom, and displaced families blocked from returning. The United Nations documented abuses of arbitrary arrest, detention, and pillaging. A 51-year-old source from the town of Jalamah, East of Jindires, who lives abroad but chose to remain anonymous for the safety of his family back in the town told Rudaw of the situation in the town as he had been briefed. “More than three months ago, settlers were brought to a land of around 13 hectares called Gola Jalamah,” said the source. “We used to use this land for our animals in the spring, and also as a football court for our local teams in summer.” “They started building a settlement and people of the town expressed their discontent with the decision and protested it, which led to the cancelation of the project,” he added. Under Turkish rule in Afrin, the Kurdish population has dramatically decreased, according to a report published by the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria (Yaketi), a political party independent of the two main Kurdish coalitions in Rojava on the anniversary of Turkish occupation of Afrin on March 18. “Before the occupation, the amount of Kurds in Jindires was more than 98 percent,” independent Kurdish politician and scholar Waleed Sheikho said. “After the occupation, the Kurdish population around the town has been reduced to 30 percent, and 25 percent in the center of the town.” Since Turkish forces entered Afrin city three years ago, 161 civilians have been killed, including 29 children and 18 women, according to Yaketi. The European Parliament on March 11 called on “Turkey to withdraw its troops from Northern Syria which it is illegally occupying outside of any UN mandate.”
