Mick Hartley

Turkish human rights abuses in Syria:

The United Nations Human Rights Council has published its latest biannual report on Syria, documenting abuses by all the parties in the nine-year-long conflict. The allegations leveled against Turkey and its Sunni rebel allies suggest they are engaging in gross violations of international humanitarian law.

Syria remains a human rights inferno where abuses committed in government-held territory are rivaled by those witnessed in areas held by the jihadi opposition and the Turkish army, the United Nations revealed today.

Based on investigations carried out from Jan. 1 to July 1 of this year, the latest report of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria makes for grim reading. The horrors inflicted by the Syrian government on its citizens are well known and are among the underlying causes of Syria’s bloody, nine-year-long civil conflict.

Torture, arbitrary detentions, targeting of civilians and enforced disappearances continue to be the norm in government-controlled Syria. Prison conditions remain dire. Inmates are confined to tiny cells drenched in feces, urine and vomit and are forced to survive on a loaf of bread and four olives per day. Some said they ate the olive pits “in order to get extra nutrition.”

Abuses occurring under Turkish occupation are, however, only just starting to be formally documented by the UN, with potential legal consequences for Ankara. The main perpetrators are brigades and factions operating under the military arm of the Istanbul-based Syrian opposition called the Syrian National Army, who are accused of organized extortion, looting, property expropriation, rape, kidnapping and murder. Some of the worst offenses were recorded in Afrin, the Kurdish majority enclave that was invaded by Turkish forces in January 2018…

Sexual violence is rife. “On two occasions, in an apparent effort to humiliate, extract confessions and instill fear within male detainees, Syrian National Army military police officers forced male detainees to witness the rape of a minor. On the first day, the minor was threatened with being raped in front of the men, but the rape did not proceed. The following day, the same minor was gang-raped, as the male detainees were beaten and forced to watch in an act that amounts to torture,” stated the report. The incident occurred in Afrin.

Rights groups and international jurists following Syria welcomed the UN’s scrutiny of Turkey.

“Claims of egregious human rights violations targeting nearly every aspect of civilian life in Afrin have been reported since the start of the Turkish invasion in January 2018, but for two and a half years, the international community has paid little attention,” said Meghan Bodette, a Washington-based independent researcher who founded the Missing Afrin Women Project, a website dedicated to tracking missing women in the Turkish-occupied zone. Bodette told Al-Monitor, “This Commission of Inquiry report marks the first time that the United Nations has put forward such strong evidence of war crimes committed by occupying forces there — in particular, evidence of torture, and sexual and gender-based violence. It will hopefully serve as a much-needed first step toward accountability.”

By failing to intervene, specifically in cases where Turkish forces were present when the abuses took place, Turkey “may have violated” its human rights treaties obligations, the UN said, using typically cautious language.

With those words, legal experts contended, the UN is effectively suggesting that Turkey participated in violations of international humanitarian law.

The United Nations Human Rights Council report can be accessed here:

Syrians continue to be killed, suffer severe hardships and grave rights violations, despite a relative reduction in largescale hostilities since the 5 March ceasefire, according to the latest findings of the UN Syrian Commission of Inquiry.

The Commission of Inquiry's 25-page report released today documents continuing violations and abuses by nearly every conflict actor controlling territory in Syria. It also highlights an increase in patterns of targeted abuses such as assassinations, sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls, and looting or appropriation of private property, with sectarian undertones. Civilian suffering is a constant and personal feature of this crisis.

Following the July release of a special investigation into Idlib and surrounding areas, the present report focuses on violations happening away from the epicentres of large-scale hostilities during the first half of 2020.

Nearly a decade into the conflict, enforced disappearance and deprivation of liberty continue to be instrumentalized by almost all parties to instil fear and supress dissent among the civilian population or simply as extortion for financial gain. The report documents a multitude of detention-related violations by Government forces, the Syrian National Army (SNA), the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and other parties to the conflict….