Northern Syria: Displaced Kurds Demand the Return of Their Property

According to the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), the return of displaced Kurds to Northern Syria remains difficult. Since the violent dissolution of Kurdish autonomy in Northern Syria, displaced Kurds have been allowed to return to the Afrîn region—which had previously been occupied by Turkey—but their homes and property often remain occupied.

“Following the withdrawal of pro-Turkish militias from many locations in and around Afrin, many residents—especially the elderly—have returned to their ancestral homes. Nevertheless, the situation remains extremely complicated. No one knows what the future holds. Although the security situation has improved significantly, there are still isolated Turkish military outposts, as well as Turkish flags and symbols. Payments are still made in Turkish lira rather than Syrian pounds,” reports Austrian political scientist and social and cultural anthropologist Thomas Schmidinger—who has just visited Afrin and other regions of Syria—to the STP. The occupation, he says, has not ended definitively.

According to the STP, approximately 6,000 homes and dozens of properties in the Kurdish city of Afrin in northern Syria remain occupied by Sunni Arab settlers. Many of these settlers are said to hold high-ranking positions in the new regime. “Returning Kurds are reportedly required to pay between 2,000 and 6,000 U.S. dollars to have their homes cleared. Given their difficult living conditions, however, they can hardly afford these amounts. People who demand the return of their homes or property are harassed and threatened with death,” says Dr. Kamal Sido, STP’s Middle East Advisor. To draw attention to this ongoing injustice, Kurds who were expelled from Afrin in 2018 by the Turkish occupying forces and their mercenaries have launched the “My House Is Mine” campaign.

In the northern Syrian city of Aleppo as well, in neighborhoods such as Sheikh Maksud—which are predominantly inhabited by Kurds—many homes and other properties belonging to the Kurdish population have been occupied. Sido himself is affected by this. “I own a store in Aleppo that had been rented out for a long time. Since the Islamists invaded the neighborhood, it has been occupied. The person refuses to vacate the store or pay rent,” explains the human rights activist, who is originally from Afrin.

Background

Afrin has been under Turkish occupation since 2018. On January 20, 2018, Turkey launched its attack on Afrin. After about two months of defensive fighting by the Kurds, Turkey marched into Afrin on March 18, 2018, with its Islamist mercenaries and occupied the region. Approximately 400,000 people were driven out of the region or were forced to flee. According to the STP, the proportion of the Kurdish population fell from about 96 percent to less than 35 percent.

Following the fall of the Assad regime, the new Islamist regime attacked the autonomous Kurdish regions in northern Syria. Under military pressure from the new regime in Damascus and Turkey, the Kurds ceased their resistance against the regime. Most institutions that guaranteed equal status for the Kurdish and Aramaic languages alongside Arabic, as well as women’s rights and freedom of religion for all religious minorities such as Yazidis, Alawites, and Christians, were forced to disband.