On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the illegal Turkish invasion of Afrîn on January 20, 2018, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) demands the German Federal Government to advocate for an end to the Turkish occupation of the Kurdish region in northern Syria and for the release of all illegally detained Kurds and members of other population groups.

“Shortly after the fall of the Assad dictatorship in Damascus, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Damascus and had her photo taken in front of the gates of the notorious Saidnaya prison, where many people were tortured to death. At the same time, countless people are still unlawfully detained in the prisons in the Turkish-occupied areas of northern Syria. Mrs. Baerbock did not mention these people at all. The same is true of the Federal Government’s Special Representative for Syria, Stefan Schneck, who is currently in Damascus and who trivializes the new Islamist rulers in his daily statements,” stated Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East Consultant, in Göttingen today.

The Assad regime ended on December 8 – and many prisoners who were lucky enough to survive the dictatorship’s torture chambers were released. Hundreds of abducted Kurds, including women, who have been kept detained in the notorious Marateh prison since 2018 are not so lucky. “The Kurdish people and members of other minority groups are all the more outraged by the policy of the Foreign Office in Berlin, which remains silent on the situation in Afrîn and on the atrocities committed by the Turkish army and its Islamist mercenaries,” the human rights activist stated. Marateh Prison is located in the village of Marateh (Maratah), five kilometers west of Afrîn.

The Turkish army and its Islamist mercenaries are continuing the illegal occupation of Afrin even after the overthrow of the dictatorial Assad regime. Further, Turkey continues its daily attacks on the Kurdish people in the remaining free Kurdish areas, although the UN and the international community are calling for an end to all hostilities. In 2024, the Turkish occupying power committed even more crimes in Afrîn: Kurdish schools, cultural institutes, religious sites, archaeological artifacts, and tombstones with Kurdish inscriptions were destroyed. Thousands of fruit trees – and especially olive trees, which are an important symbol of the region – were stolen, and the harvest was confiscated. Further, taxes were imposed on local farmers, which in some cases even amounted to 50 percent of production.

Turkey had started its attack on Afrîn on January 20, 2018. After the Kurdish forces managed to resist for 57 days, the Turkish army invaded Afrîn. “Turkey is committing an ethnocide in Afrîn: an attempt to wipe out the Kurdish identity,” the Middle East expert explained.