In a rare video report published on the Investigative Journal, Mr. Mahmoud Khalaf, a former fighter in Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) revealed to journalist Lindsey Snell that the army he once believed has raped and abused women in Syria.
“Raping of women in Afrin is a norm, for the Free Syrian Army,” Khalaf told Lindsey with his face covered with a black mask in a video interview she conducted in Syria during Turkey’s launch of operation olive branch on the city of Afrin in January 2018.
“A Free Syrian Army soldier saw a lady returning from the market and followed her home. He asked her father to marry her when she refused, he threatened to kill him. He brought a so-called sheikh to perform the marriage. It was just a tool to justify raping the girl every day. We cannot call them the Free Syrian Army, we can call them thieves or mercenaries,” Khalaf added.
Hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced as Turkey’s military and the militias they support looted and pillaged the city.
“Turkey launched the airstrikes while the FSA conducted the ground operation, I was one of the fighters who went to Afrin. The Turks told us we would be fighting the Kurdistan’s Worker’s Party (PKK ) and ISIS but after we entered, we realized it wasn’t true, “ Khalaf confessed.
Mrs. Snell interviewed Mr. Ahmet Yayla, the former head of the Turkish counter-terrorism police who had served in the North-Western region of Syria for several years in 2014.
“There we no ISIS fighters in Afrin, Turkey knew that. It was just a cover. Erdogan ordered the Turkish military because he did not want the People Protection Unit, (YPG) in Afrin. Turkey and the militias they used like the Free Syrian Army looted Afrin,” Yayla confirmed.
Erdogan’s repeated interventions in Syria have been condemned by politicians and world leaders who view his actions as criminal, unethical, and illegal attempts to expand his grip on the region by occupying more territory in war-stricken countries like Syria and Libya---another country witnessing a Turkish military intervention and a flux of Syrian mercenaries supported by Turkish president Erdogan.
The video includes a comment from Mrs. Julie Ward a British politician and a former member of the European Parliament explained Erdogan’s motives. Ward had travelled to Turkey, Northern-Kurdistan, and Rojava several times. She had also been detained in Turkey in 2016 when she travelled there to attend a conference on human rights in a country where 200 journalists are jailed on fabricated charges.
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“The attack on Afrin which has now been replicated in other places is definitely part of Erdogan’s expansionist kind of ambitions. Afrin was a very successful and peaceful city, to target a place like that, to force mass evacuations, and kill civilians who were fleeing for their lives, and populate the city with his kind of people is really a form of ethnic cleansing, ” Ward clarified.
Women have joined the Syrian-Kurdish Resistance fighting since 2011. The group called the Women’s Protection Unit (YPG) consisting mostly of Kurdish women has more than twenty-four thousand members.
“When the FSA occupies land, they don’t protect people, instead, they steal, and abuse women,” said Afshin a female soldier and member of the unit.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria back in March accused Turkish-backed rebels of targeting almost every “aspect of Kurdish women’s lives” in areas under their control.
The use of rape in Syria has become a widespread tactic used by multiple actors as a tool to discourage dissent and cause maximum terror and humiliation
The U.N. first declared that rape was being used as a weapon of war in Syria in 2012. They treated 38,000 victims in 2013.
Fear of rape is often cited by female refugees as a primary reason for their flight from Syria. To protect their daughters, many families force them to marry earlier.
In 69 percent of communities, early marriage is reported as a concern with some women in Syria married twice by the age of 18
Mrs. Snell spoke with Mr. Kamel Akef, the spokesman of the Diplomatic Relations Center of the Democratic Society Movement, which was founded to organize the community and establish a democratic society after the revolt started in Syria in 2011.
“Turkey plays a dirty game, their plan is not to occupy on area, they want to take over all the areas that were under the Ottoman Empire rule,” he commented.
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