WATCH: Turkey separates Afrin from Syrian territories with concrete border wall
Duha Ibesh, a roughly 30-year-old woman from the region, said they were expelled from their village in the Afrin countryside where the wall construction vehicles destroyed their olive tree fields and the Turkish army demolished many civilian’s houses to facilitate the building of the wall.
“We have been expelled from our village Jilbire and moved to another village nearby, and we are not allowed to return,” she said. “We are watching it from here.”
Last week, the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the main council that rules northern Syria, accused the Turkish state of building a concrete wall around the city of Afrin to isolate it from its surroundings.
Turkey invaded parts of northwestern Syria, including al-Bab and Afrin, in 2016 and 2018 respectively in an attempt to crush Kurdish aspirations of autonomy in the region. This led to the displacement of 140,000 Kurds from the latter in what critics describe as a sustained campaign of demographic change.
Sinam Mohamad, an SDC representative in the United States, told Kurdistan 24 Ankara plans “to isolate the area of Afrin from its Syrian environment in preparation for its annexation to Turkey.”
Mohamad related the situation of Afrin to the Iskenderun district which Turkey annexed in the 1930s, suggesting that the Syrian government is out of the game due to agreements between Turkey and Russia.
Turkey is “taking advantage of international silence and the silence of the Syrian government,” she added, noting the actions are a violation of human rights and international law.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany
(Additional reporting by Kurdistan 24 correspondent Akram Saleh from Afrin countryside)