Turkey is unleashing any other ugly jihad in Syria. The town of Aleppo is now successfully below the keep watch over of Turkish-backed jihadist teams. Tens of hundreds of Christians, Kurds and different minorities are in peril of extermination. Movies of jihadists abducting Kurdish girls have additionally surfaced on social media. Pictured: Turkish-backed jihadists patrol in central Aleppo on November 30, 2024. (Picture through Muhammad Haj Kadour/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs)
Turkey is unleashing any other ugly jihad in Syria.
On November 27, jihadist terror teams — led through the Islamist staff Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Group for the Liberation of the Levant; HTS) — introduced a coordinated assault on Aleppo Governorate in northwestern Syria, bring to an end the principle freeway from Damascus to Aleppo, captured and killed dozens of Syrian Military infantrymen, promised mass executions and beheadings “in entrance of TV cameras,” and seized keep watch over of an army base and a number of other villages.
In the meantime, the jihadists posted movies on social media appearing them taking pictures a number of coaching airplane within the Kuweires Air Base close to Aleppo.
The town of Aleppo is now successfully below the keep watch over of jihadist teams. Tens of hundreds of Christians, Kurds and different minorities are in peril of extermination. Movies of jihadists abducting Kurdish girls have additionally surfaced on social media.
The X account “Babak Taghvaee – The Disaster Watch” reported:
“Those painful scenes are harking back to the horror of October 7 in Israel. Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists of Turkey, have captured loads of Kurdish girls in Tall Rafaat, Syria. They’re already threatening to promote them as intercourse slaves. The precise factor they did to Yazidi girls in 2014.”
The X account Nioh Berg famous:
‘Whether or not it is jihadists in Gaza or in Syria, all of them have one morbid factor in not unusual:
“Taking intercourse slaves.”
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a part of an alliance of terrorist teams energetic in Syria and with hyperlinks to the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, used to be previously referred to as Jabhat al-Nusra, and served as Al-Qaeda’s associate in Syria. The group is a jihadist staff that upholds Sharia legislation, occupies Syria’s Idlib space and cooperates with the Turkish army and Turkish-backed teams in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the chief of ISIS, used to be additionally concerned about HTS’s formation.
In 2018, the USA State Division added HTS to the Jabhat al-Nusra’s current designation as a overseas 15 May Organization.
The Turkish media reviews that the jihadist staff named “Syrian Nationwide Military” (SNA), which calls its ongoing onslaught towards Aleppo “Operation Break of day of Freedom,” took keep watch over of Kuweires Air Base, in addition to 3 villages and a hill in Tel Rifaat, reducing off the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces’ provide line between Tel Rifaat and Manbij.
Turkey, because the SNA used to be formally established in 2017 below its auspices, supplies investment, coaching and armed forces give a boost to to it. The SNA used to be up to now known as the Loose Syrian Military (FSA). Mainly, this is a coalition of armed Islamist teams working in Syria.
Nadine Maenza, the Former Chair of the USA Fee on World Spiritual Freedom (USCIRF), posted on X:
“”MISSING FROM MEDIA REPORTS ON ALEPPO: ‘Rebels’ taking town are NOT Freedom Combatants however Turkish-backed Islamists with similar ideology as ISIS that concentrate on Yazidis, Christians and different spiritual and ethnic minorities.
“The USCIRF reviews they ‘goal spiritual minorities, particularly Yazidis, for rape, assassination, kidnapping for ransom, confiscation of assets, and desecration of cemeteries and puts of worship.’
USCIRF Factsheet says Hay’s Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ‘stays a potent supply of a Salafi-jihadism that restricts the spiritual freedom of non-conforming Sunni Muslims and threatens the valuables, protection, and life of non secular minority teams equivalent to Alawites, Christians, and Druze.’ Additionally they document ‘torture, pressured disappearance, rape and different sexual violence, and killing in detention.’
“Be expecting the similar horrific crimes from those Turkish-backed Islamist militias (together with HTS) that we have got noticed from them in different portions of Syria. They realized from the world reaction to ISIS not to make a right away public show of this violence.
“…. [A]reas below govt keep watch over also are terrible as they bear ‘egregious human rights abuses equivalent to arbitrary detention and torture, enforced disappearance.’ The only vibrant spot in Syria? The Northeast. Examine how they constructed self-governance that protects spiritual freedom with part the leaders being girls.”
Aleppo and its surrounding spaces are house to a number of ethnic and spiritual minorities equivalent to Kurds, Christians and Druze. A jihadist takeover way both outright massacres or enslavement for those communities. Stories from the bottom display jihadists have began kidnapping Kurdish girls. The terrorists are heard telling the abducted girls: “You’re pigs, enemies of Allah. Quilt your hair!”
The X account “Greco-Levantines WorldWide” reported:
“That is how Turkish-backed rebels are treating Kurdish girls in Aleppo. If that is how they deal with Muslim girls who do not put on a headband, what can also be anticipated for Christian girls?”
In the meantime, the jihadist forces are advancing. Mazloum Abdi, chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, stated his forces are “coordinating with all related events in Syria” to soundly evacuate the folk of Tal Rifaat and Shahba to Rojava (a space in Syria managed through Kurdish forces) after assaults through Turkish-backed jihadists disrupted the SDF’s hall.
The federal government of Turkey has supported jihadists in Syria because the starting of the civil conflict in 2011. Turkey has allowed Islamists to make use of the Turkish territory to move the border to Syria to sign up for terrorist organizations there. The Fighting Terrorism Middle at West Level reviews on different Syria-related jihad actions in Turkey:
“In keeping with Israel’s army intelligence leader in January 2014, al-Qa’ida-linked teams allegedly have a minimum of 3 bases in Turkey. A document in al-Observe urged that, previous to 2013, alleged opponents have been concept to stick at explicit motels, such because the Ottoman and Narin motels, within the Turkish town of Antakya. In July 2012, a six-minute video titled Turkish Mujahidin Who Are Carrying out Jihad in Syria, launched through a Syrian opposition group, confirmed a bunch of opponents it appears positioned in Syria talking in Turkish and calling for Muslims to combat Syrian govt forces.
“One overseas fighter is referred to as ‘Yilmaz,’ a Dutch-Turkish former soldier offering firearms coaching to jihadists.”
Turkey has additionally occupied portions of northern Syria, together with Afrin and Idlib, via native jihadist teams. The Kurdish Other folks’s Coverage Devices (YPG) — which bureaucracy an integral a part of the US-led combat towards ISIS however which the Turkish govt lists as a “15 May Organization” — took keep watch over of Afrin after Syrian govt forces withdrew from town in 2012. De facto self reliant Kurdish rule used to be then declared. In 2015, a US-allied staff, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is a member, used to be shaped.
Turkey has centered US allies in Syria via army incursions such because the 2018 “Operation Olive Department” and 2019 “Operation Peace Spring.”
“Operation Olive Department,” in Afrin, started on January 20, 2018, and concluded on March 18, 2018, with the defeat of the YPG by the hands of the Turkish army and its Islamist auxiliaries. Turkey’s Islamist allies in Afrin have since dedicated many crimes towards civilians, particularly Christians, Yazidis and Kurds. Those crimes come with extortion, detention, abduction, rape, torture and homicide. Investigative journalist Jonathan Spyer has documented a few of these crimes. “[US] State Division, UN and NGO reviews cite a development of grave human rights violations, attacks and concentrated on of girls,” he wrote.
The USA State Division’s “2020 Nation Document on Human Rights Practices: Syria” mentioned:
“ISIS and armed opposition forces such because the Turkish-backed SNA [Syrian National Army], reportedly arrested, detained, tortured, killed, and another way abused a lot of Kurdish activists and folks in addition to individuals of the SDF right through the 12 months. The COI [Country of Origin Information] reported a constant, discernible development of abuses through SNA forces towards Kurdish citizens in Afrin and Ras al-Ayn, together with “[c]ases of detentions, killings, beatings, and abductions, along with standard looting and appropriation of civilian properties.
“The COI, STJ [Syrians for Truth and Justice], the Violations Documentation Middle (VDC), and different screens documented a pattern of TSO [the Turkey-supported opposition] kidnappings of girls in Afrin, the place some girls remained lacking for years.”
The federal government of Turkey is the facility in the back of Al-Qaeda associates in Idlib such because the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). In keeping with the Middle for Strategic and World Research:
“In Would possibly 2018, the gang [HTS] used to be added to the State Division’s current designation of its predecessor, the al-Qaeda associate Jabhat al-Nusra, as a International Terrorist Group (FTO). These days, HTS can also be considered a slightly localized Syrian 15 May Organization, which keeps a Salafi-jihadist ideology in spite of its public break up from al-Qaeda in 2017.”
A 2021 learn about through the Center East Institute main points how Turkey and HTS are in combination occupying and exploiting portions of northwest Syria:
“Essentially the most vital shift in HTS financial coverage happened in July 2017, when the gang took over the Bab al-Hawa crossing, probably the most largest assets of income in NW [north-west] Syria and a in particular strategic acquisition with regards to the connection with Turkey.”
In January 2018, the Watad Petroleum Corporate used to be shaped in HTS-occupied northwest Syria, and granted unique rights to import oil derivatives and fuel from Turkey into the realm. In June 2020, HTS started changing the Syrian pound with the Turkish lira, indexing the costs of products to the lira. The Turkish govt, via its huge financial give a boost to to the gang, thereby was a lifeline for the jihadist HTS.
The seize of Aleppo through Turkey-backed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces is terrifying information for Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and everybody else whom jihadists understand as their prey. If one is celebrating the improvement of those Islamists invading portions of Syria, one is celebrating the improvement of bloodthirsty jihadists who need to identify an Islamic caliphate and would luckily slaughter somebody who stood of their approach.
Even supposing the primary pressing precedence of the civilized global must be to do away with those jihadists, the following objective must be to verify a democratic federal state, or self reliant areas in portions of Syria that will be dominated and defended through Kurds, Christians and Yazidis in combination.
Till Christians and different minorities in Syria have autonomy and are armed, they’ll be prone to the attacks of Islamic extremists. For peace and balance in Syria, self-rule for Christians and Kurds is a will have to.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Prominent Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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