Murmurs of kidnapping, torture, confiscation of property hang in the air, and clashes between various Turkey-backed militia, Free Syrian Army (FSA), due to disputes over controlling areas continue.

Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch and the subsequent occupation of northern Syria’s Afrin have decimated the region’s economy, according to the Center for Documenting Violations in Northern Syria, a local human rights monitor.

Before the invasion, Afrin was an agricultural and industrial centre, producing olive products— such as Aleppo soap, which is made with olive oil— as well as nearly all of Northern Syria’s textiles. Due to Afrin’s geographic location, it had to achieve a relatively high degree of economic self-sufficiency, as it could not trade with the rest of Northern Syria and was subject to a Turkish embargo. Local authorities worked to implement cooperatives in several different sectors so that all people could benefit from economic development.

According to a report from the Center for Documenting Violations in Northern Syria, pre-invasion Afrin had as many as 18 million olive trees, and in 2017 produced more than 35 tons of Aleppo soap.  Afrin’s Agriculture Committee placed the number of trees at least 14 million.

On the other side, numerous reports have noted that occupation forces systematically destroy agricultural land and prevent villagers from harvesting their crops. In early September, the Center for Documenting Violations in Northern Syria documented that thousands of trees had been burned in Rajo, including five thousand trees from the same farm. In July, local sources told ANF News that members of the Hamza Division, a major Turkey-backed Islamist militia, had burned 41 acres of agricultural land in one village in Sherawa alone. Another group, the Sultan Murad Brigade, had cut down dozens of olive trees in order to sell them to Turkey.

Other reports revealed that Turkey and its Islamist rebel allies have been seizing the olive harvest in the Afrin region.

Syrian ANHA news agency reported on September 25 that Turkish authorities and allied forces seized the olive season, and handed it over to the city councils formed by Turkey. Alongside its army, Turkey has also appointed new state employees in Afrin to regulate local affairs such as trade and agriculture.

“There is an issue in frightening proportions. The FSA gangs have seized Afrin people’s property, belongings, and olives. They are selling 70 tons (140,000 pounds) of olive products to markets. We are face to face with a Turkey trading [stolen] olives worth of millions,” HDP’s Co-leader Sezai Temelli told his party members during an Ankara meeting.

The olive harvest season has a total value of products at 200 Mn dollars, according to the pro-government YeniSafak newspaper. The total olive harvest this year was to be handed over to a Turkey-backed council in the district under the guidance of agriculture authorities from Turkey who then would sell and “give the earnings to the owners,” YeniSafak said.

Turkey’s Minister of Agriculture, Bekir Pekdemirli, admitted on November 17 that his country was seizing olive products from Afrin and selling them in markets.

“The issue with Afrin is this: We, as the government, do not want revenues to fall into the PKK’s hands. This is very clear. In other words, we want the revenues from Afrin, in one way or another, to come into our hands. This is a region in our hegemony,” Pekdemirli said during a parliamentary committee meeting on next year’s national budget.

Turkey sees YPG, the Kurdish forces in Afrin before the occupation and the backbone of the forces fighting against the Islamic State in Syria, as an extension of PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), waging a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil for the rights of Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

“So far, 600 tons of products have entered the country,” he added.

The minister did not specify if the number he provided included products other than olives nor if the revenues, either partially or in full, were returned to the region’s Kurdish producers who remained.

A recent report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council claimed that systematic looting and destruction and appropriation of property by Olive Branch forces likely constituted a war crime.

https://theregion.org/article/13238-turkish-forces-turn-on-fsa-allies-afrin