Written by Carlotta Gall
In a tent camp on the top of a hill above the city of Afrin, 300 Syrian families struggle to stay warm in the rain and mud. Displaced three times since they fled their farms near Damascus seven years ago, they survive on meager handouts and send children out to find food.
“The situation is very bad, the rain is coming into the tent,” said Bushra Sulaiman al-Hamdo, 65, lifting the sheet to show the soaked earth where her bedridden husband lay. “There is not enough food, there is no aid organization, there is no drinking water.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey was widely criticized by the United Nations and Western leaders three years ago when he ordered Turkish troops to cross the Syrian border into Afrin, an action seen as opportunistic and destabilizing. Thousands of Kurdish families fled the Turkish invasion, along with Kurdish fighters. In their place came hundreds of thousands of Syrians from other areas, who have increased the population, seized houses and camped on agricultural land.
Another Turkish intervention in 2019, further east from Syria, received even more disgrace amid allegations of human rights violations under Turkey’s supervision.
But as the end of the decade-long Syrian civil war still confuses the world, Turkey has emerged as the only international force on the ground protecting some five million displaced and vulnerable civilians. Today, Turkish soldiers are all that stands between them and a possible slaughter at the hands of the forces of President Bashar Assad and his Russian allies.
Turkish officials recently escorted journalists on a rare visit to Afrin, a district in northwestern Syria, where Turkey has created its own de facto safe zone along the border. The Turks were eager to show off their achievements in infrastructure, education, and health services.
But they also did not hide the continuing situation of the Syrians under their charge, who despite their obvious difficulties made it clear that they were happy that the Turks were there, at least for now.
“Here, at least I can stay alive,” said Amar Muhammad, 35, a porter in the Afrin market. A former rebel fighter from Damascus, he said he risked death or arrest by the Syrian government. “There, he would be dead. There, I was thinking the whole time, ‘Will they arrest me?’ “
The Turkish intervention in Afrin was not disinterested. Turkey always had its own interests in mind. His main goal was to eradicate the Kurdish forces that he considers a security threat and to provide a space for residual rebel forces fighting Assad, a loathed rival. Syrians who settled around Afrin have fled Syrian government forces.
Muhammad and his cousin Muhammad Amar were among the rebel fighters evacuated in a bus convoy from the Damascus suburb of Ghouta and brought to Afrin under a peace agreement concluded between Russia and Turkey three years ago.
“We were forcibly displaced,” Muhammad said. Turned out of the opportunity to join the Turkish-backed security forces, they were demobilized and abandoned to make a living as they could. “I swear to God some people go to bed hungry. We don’t know how we are surviving. “
Turkey has created its own administration, trained and incorporated friendly Syrian militias into a military police force, and created compliant local Syrian councils to run things. The city has been connected to the Turkish electricity grid, ending years of blackouts; uses mobile phones and Turkish currency; and has registered 500 Syrian companies for cross-border trade.
“Our main goal is to make her life more normal,” said Orhan Akturk, deputy governor of the contiguous Turkish province of Hatay, who is also responsible for Afrin. “Keep schools open and hospitals running so people can get back to life.”
But Turkey is also in Syria so that the Syrians do not end up in Turkey. Erdogan, already the host of the world’s largest Syrian refugee community (3.6 million Syrians are registered within Turkey), has long called for the establishment of a no-fly zone, or a protected safe zone. internationally, in northern Syria.
As it is, your strengths have carved it out for themselves. While the UN provides much of the assistance to Syrians, Turkey has forced many international aid groups to maintain tighter control.
Turkey first intervened in Syria in 2016 in a joint operation with the United States Army against the Islamic State group, then in Afrin in 2018 and again in 2019, after then-President Donald Trump abruptly withdrew US forces from the region.
Erdogan’s deal with Trump allowed Russia and the Syrian government to regain balance in northeastern Syria, which was disastrous for the opposition. But then Ankara took an unexpected position against a Russian and Syrian government offensive last year in Idlib province, showing that the Turkish army was not only willing but able to defend the line.
Establishing a red line in Idlib turned Turkey from a bad actor in the region to a good one, or at least one that shares mutual interests with Washington, said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based organization involved. . in defense of Syria.
He called on the Biden administration to restart military communication with Turkey and provide it with logistical and intelligence support to bolster its defense of the part of Idlib that is still in rebel hands.
“Northwest Syria and Idlib is key to the whole,” he said. With 4 million people, 1 million of them children, crammed into a shrinking space, Idlib represents both a humanitarian and a strategic need, he said. “Idlib alone, if attacked, would double the number of refugees in Europe.”
The control of the Turks, while welcomed by many Syrians who have fled the Assad government, is not indisputable. Turkey’s task in Afrin, in fact, has since been hit by persistent terrorist attacks (134 in two and a half years), including four car bombs in the region this month. The security forces have frustrated hundreds more, Akturk said.
The Turkish police chief in Afrin said that 99% of the attacks were the work of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist movement, and its affiliate in Syria, the YPG, which is allied with US forces in the fight against the Islamic State.
The recent car bombs were hidden in trucks brought in from the Kurdish-controlled Manbij area by unwitting traders, one of whom lost his own son in an explosion in the Afrin industrial zone, Akturk said.
Turkey will raise the issue of US support for the Kurdish militia as a priority with the Biden administration, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said last week.
In Afrin, the Turks have handled security like any NATO force, surrounding their administration building with high concrete walls and sealing off a “green zone” that encompasses the main shopping street in the center of the city.
Said Sulaiman, the leader of the local council, asked for more help than Turkey can provide. “We need more international support and more non-governmental organizations to help,” he said.
Yet for millions, Turkey offers the only opportunity.
Syrian students are busy learning the Turkish language and looking for ways to get to Turkey to study or work, said Nour Hallak, a Syrian activist who lives in the Turkish-controlled part of Aleppo province. “It’s something that makes me laugh and cry at the same time,” he said. “The Turkish language is spreading, it is the people’s choice.”
For the families in the tent camp above the city, seeking protection in Turkey was their only option.
“If we hadn’t been afraid, we wouldn’t have come here,” said Jarir Sulaiman, one of a group of elders leaning on sticks outside his communal tent.
Once a wealthy landowner, he said the Syrian government had cut down his olive groves after taking control of his village, Khiara, south of Damascus. He ruled out going home while Assad remained in power.
“We will not return to our villages until Turkey provides us with protection,” he said. “Without the Turks we cannot survive.”
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She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.