Turkish ambassador Elif Comoglu Ulgen on military launch on the Turkey/Syrian border and Operation Olive Branch.
For decades Turkey has been a leading country in the common fight against international terrorism.
Turkey’s determination in this fight has been demonstrated by its role as a powerful partner in the global coalition against Daesh/Isis.
For years, the relentless armed conflicts in Syria have not only devastated the Syrian people but also provided a fertile ground for terrorist organisations such as Daesh/Isis, PKK/KCK and its Syrian subsidiary PYD/YPG.
The constant threats directed against Turkey by these organisations led Turkish Armed Forces to conduct Operation Euphrates Shield last year. Within the scope of this operation, a territory of 2 015km² was liberated from Daesh, creating a safe zone cleared of terrorism for the Syrian people.
However, the threat was not eliminated, as more than 700 attacks on Turkey have been carried out from Syrian territory within the last year alone. Therefore, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on January 20, 2018, this time in Syria’s north-western Afrin region.
The operation has a clear objective: to ensure the security of our borders and neutralise the terrorists in Afrin.
It is carried out on the basis of international law, in accordance with our right to self- defence, emanating from Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
The targets are the terrorists, their shelters, their weapons and related infrastructure. The Turkish Army is acting with utmost precaution to avoid harming civilians.
Turkey, already hosting over three million Syrians, has further intensified its humanitarian efforts substantially, setting up camps to help the civilians fleeing Afrin and Turkish humanitarian agencies are helping those who need support.
Syria’s Afrin area is being used by the PKK as a recruitment and training ground. The “Democratic Union Party” (PYD) and its YPG militia have created a de facto situation by taking control of Afrin and the surrounding areas in the name of fighting Daesh/Isis.
The reality is that they have used this threat as a pretext to expand their illegitimate and forced control of Syrian territory to establish some kind of an autonomous region and eventually an independent state structure. Turkey cannot allow this to go any further.
Those who fail to see the YPG threat in Syria are making a historic mistake.
Just like al-Qaeda, Daesh/Isis, Boko Haram, the PKK is a terrorist organisation and its PYD and YPG Syrian affiliates are no different.
The fight against the YPG in Syria and Iraq is not a distraction from the fight against Daesh/Isis. On the contrary, it serves the purpose of eliminating all forms of terrorism in the region.
Turkey will continue the mission until terrorists are wiped out and will not consent to the creation of separatist enclaves or terrorist safe havens that threaten its national security and are against the will of the Syrian people. Maintaining the territorial integrity of Syria is key to the peace efforts. Clearing terrorists means opening space for peace.
However, members of terrorist organisations and their supporters resort to perception operations involving unrealistic messages in order to distort the goals and objectives of the operation through their social media accounts and other media organs.
For the purpose of deceiving public opinion, the images of events that took place in different countries and at different times are displayed as if they occurred within the scope of the Operation Olive Branch.
Thus, allegations as to the use of chemical weapons by the Turkish Armed Forces are outrageous, as Turkey is a state party to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and has been a forerunner in the work on the elimination of all kinds of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Contrary to PKK/YPG propaganda, Operation Olive Branch is not against Kurds in Syria, but at a terrorist organisation that has fought a bloody and dirty war against Turkey, for over 30 years.
The PKK does not represent Kurds and cannot speak on their behalf.
There are millions of Kurds who reject PKK’s old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist ideology and its terrorist tactics. Furthermore, the PYD and YPG have been oppressing the people of Syria, including Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens in the name of fighting Daesh.
Their primary goal is not to fight Daesh but to establish a state structure by force and oppression. The world should wake up to this simple fact. Another disinformation is the fact that Turkey is fighting against Kurds through this operation. Which is not true.
As part of the international coalition, Turkey has fought against Daesh/Isis and co-operated with its allies in stopping, arresting and eliminating Daesh/Isis terrorists.
It expects its allies to treat the PKK, which is recognised as a terrorist organisation by the EU and the USA, and its branches in the same way.
It is deadly wrong to think that the PKK does not pose a threat to other countries and therefore should be seen as Turkey’s problem. Terrorism is terrorism and ought to be fought in a determined and consistent manner.
Turkey’s priority is to end the bloody seven-year war and work out a political transition that will lead to the establishment of a free, stable, peaceful and prosperous Syria.
Operation Olive Branch is an effort by Turkey to preserve the territorial integrity of Syria, where we continue to work towards genuine political change for the purpose of promoting peace, stability and security.
Mahmoud Patel, secretary-general and an executive member of the Kurdish Human Rights Action Group, responds.
Afrin, a district of the Syrian Republic, was an area of peace and sanity in a country racked by civil war. Since the war, Afrin’s population had almost doubled as hundreds of thousands of mostly Arab refugees sought shelter with the local Kurdish population.
Three years ago the world watched a ragtag band of men and women fighters in the Syrian town of Kobane use light armaments to hold off a vast army of Islamic State (Isis) militants with tanks, artillery and overwhelming logistical superiority.
When Kobane’s defenders (Kurds) won the battle against Isis, it was hailed as the closest one can come, in the contemporary world, to a clear confrontation of good against evil.
The misnamed “Operation Olive Branch” invasion and attack targets Kurds and seeks to undermine their political gains in Syria. The alleged “security threat” is a pretext to destroy the development of a pluralistic, gender-egalitarian and autonomous self- government that is being implemented in Afrin and Northern Syria (Rojava).
Another openly expressed aim of this invasion is to change the demographic composition of Afrin by displacing the Kurds and settling in the FSA militia and thousands of Syrian citizens currently living in Turkey.
These attacks are reminiscent of the old apartheid raids in newly independent Mozambique and Angola.
The Turkish government’s reference to Article 51 of the UN Convention does not justify its invasion of Afrin. The invasion has endangered many innocent civilians.
Afrin and its villages had been bombed by the Turkish army before the start of the “Olive Branch” operation.
During the 34 days of the Turkish state’s invasion in Afrin, 176 civilians, including 27 children and 21 women, were massacred, while 484 civilians were wounded, among them 60 children and 71 women. Afrin has not conducted a single attack against Turkey.
The invasion is neither a case of “fighting terrorism” nor of “self-defence.” It is an unprovoked attack on the Kurds and their political existence, as there has been no attack from Afrin into Turkey. The Turkish state’s claim of the presence of Daesh/Isis members in Afrin is simply untrue.
The current attack against Afrin must be seen in the context of treatment of Kurdish people. In Turkey more than 100 democratically elected mayors have been imprisoned in the mainly Kurdish south-east of Turkey.
This usurpation of democracy was not approved by the Turkish parliament. Instead, President Erdogan used emergency powers to annul the 2014 local elections.
In 94 municipalities (out of 103 in the region), the powers of the mayor, municipal assembly and board have been taken over by a state- appointed “trustee”.
A total of 106 Kurdish co-mayors have been arrested, with thousands of councillors. Tens of thousands of municipal employees have been sacked.
Many detained mayors face long jail sentences - prosecutors have demanded 230 years’ imprisonment for Gultan Kisanak, co-mayor of the city of Diyarbakir and an outstanding champion of women’s rights in Turkey.
“Without local democracy, there can be no democracy,” she says. In Turkey, 500 academics who signed the Academics for Peace petition in January 2016 have been fired, some subject to travel bans and having their passports revoked, preventing them from working in Turkey or abroad, with a 148 trials scheduled through to May 2018. Journalists have been arrested and detained.
These attacks, along with the arrests of HDP MPs, reflect the increased repression by the Turkish state, which has devastated the mainly Kurdish region since the end of the peace process in 2015.
Turkey’s breach of the Geneva Conventions placed restrictions on the behaviour of belligerent parties during the conduct of military operations.
The 4th Geneva Convention and its Additional Protocols also protect civilians and their properties, as well as public properties, such as schools, universities, hospitals, places of worship, bridges, farms and factories.
These principles are based on the distinction between military and non-military targets in Article 48 of Protocol I of 1977.
International humanitarian law has provided general and special protection for civilian objects. In flagrant disregard of international law, Turkey is targeting innocent civilians and the destruction of cultural objects. The Turkish army also attacked the infrastructure in Afrin, including dams and factories, constituting a gross violation of international law.
Turkey’s breach of international law is not merely the opinion of solidarity groups; the Council of Europe has through the European Court of Human Rights condemned Turkey 2812 times since 1959.
Religious extremists who surround the current Turkish government know that Rojava does not threaten them militarily.
It threatens them by providing an alternative vision of what life in the region could be. Above all, they feel it is critical to send the message to women across the Middle East that if they rise up for their rights, let alone rise up in arms, the likely result is that they will be maimed and killed, and none of the major powers will raise an objection.
There is a word for such a strategy. It’s called “terrorism” - a calculated effort to cause terror.
The Kurdish Human Rights Action Group (KHRAG) in South Africa calls on Turkey to immediately stop its war in Afrin.
Turkey should not try to delegitimise people’s rightful claims to self-determination by branding them terrorists, and should seek a political solution through dialogue based on dignity, human rights and not the barrel of the gun.