TEV-DEM calls for Turkey’s removal from occupied territories in Syria

On the 4th anniversary of the brutal attacks and occupation of the Afrin region by the Turkish state, the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) issued a statement condemning Turkey’s genocidal attacks on Afrin. TEV-DEM called on world public opinion, including the UN, to take bold and clear positions in denouncing the crimes of the Turkish occupation and its gangs and pushing them out of Syrian territory.

The statement by TEV-DEM marking the fourth anniversary of the occupation of Afrin includes the following:

“In light of the silence of the international community and a veiled agreement of the countries concerned with the Syrian issue, Afrin region was subjected four years ago to the fiercest terrorist and fascist attack launched by the Turkish fascist occupation army by air and land, with the participation of many mercenary factions. The Turkish state used seventy-two warplanes in its first raid . With the aim of occupying the region, obliterating its culture and denying its historical values, it employed multiple barbaric political and military methods to achieve its expansionist dreams and imagination.

What the Afrin region and its residents have been exposed to during 4 years of the fascist Turkish occupation with its mercenaries till this day, in violation of all international laws and norms, is increased atrocities against all human rights and moral values, as well as continuous abductions, rapes and murders on a daily basis and the imposition of a policy of surrender on the will of our people in Afrin.

The Turkish occupation state and its mercenaries have turned the Afrin region into a center of trade as a result of the looting of the people’s property, historical artifacts and natural resources and their on the world market.

What is more dangerous is the deployment of the armed factions on the Syrian lands, the assassinations in the region, imposition of ransom on the Kurds, and the policy of demographic change through the displacement of indigenous residents and settlement of terrorist families in their places. This we consider a chauvinistic, illegal and dangerous project carried out by the Turkish occupying state as a beginning of their project and schemes known as Misak-ı Millî (National Pact, a plan drafted in the Ottoman Parliament in the early 1920s that envisaged a Turkish national territory including Thrace, Rojava (northern Syria) and southern Kurdistan).

The indigenous people of Afrin live in an organized disaster, facing the scourge of mass genocide and criminal acts of physical and psychological torture as a result of arbitrary and random arrests and a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing. These acts are aimed at terrorizing people and forcing them to deny their culture or to die in front of the eyes of the international community. Even al-Shahba Camps have not been spared from these dirty policies as they face a real humanitarian catastrophe, surrounded by daily Turkish bombing and siege and famine policies imposed by the Damascus government, exploiting international silence.

We in TEV-DEM are calling on all institutions, civil society organizations and all international organizations concerned about human rights and women’s rights to fulfil their responsibilities against these immoral crimes. We appeal to international public opinion, in particular the United Nations, to take bold and clear positions in condemning and denouncing the crimes against humanity, to work to remove the Turkish occupying state and its mercenaries from all Syrian areas and to ensure the safe return of all IDPs to their homes.”