Press Releases

02/26/2020

Turkish occupation of Northern Syria: Several places are cut off from water supply

Hundreds of thousands of people in the Ras Al Ain region are without clean drinking water (Press Release)

"Clearly, Turkey will do anything to consolidate its power in Northern Syria and to fight the autonomous self-administration of the civilian population living there.“ Picture: arta.fm.

The Turkish occupying power has cut off the water supply to the city of Al Hasaka and other villages in northeastern Syria – as reported by the independent local radio station arta.fm and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (Great Britain) and confirmed by local contact persons of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP). According to the reports, Turkish soldiers and their Syrian-Islamist allies managed to capture a water treatment plant in the Ras Al Ain region (Kurdish: Sare Kaniye) and to expel its staff. As a result, the supply of drinking water to the population in the affected region was interrupted.


The city of Al Hasakeh alone is home to more than 200,000 people of Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian/Aramaean and Armenian descent and of Muslim, Christian and Yazidi faith. "They have to get along without clean drinking water now," explained Dr. Kamal Sido, Middle East Consultant of the STP. "Clearly, Turkey will do anything to consolidate its power in Northern Syria and to fight the autonomous self-administration of the civilian population living there. The Turkish occupying power is not interested in protecting the people – as the government in Ankara claims it does, and as NATO and also the German government are demanding. "A state that is interested in the fate of the civilian population would not turn off the drinking water supply of hundreds of thousands of people in order to enforce political goals or geopolitical interests," Sido emphasized. "With this policy, Turkey is ignoring international humanitarian law."


The German Federal Government was right to condemn the attacks by Assad and Putin on the Islamist-controlled province of Idlib, where the Syrian civilian population is suffering. "Berlin is still protecting Erdogan and his policy – despite the massive human rights violations and war crimes committed by the NATO state against the minorities in northern Syria," the Middle East Consultant criticized, stating that German government must accept the accusation that it is not pursuing a value-oriented policy towards Erdogan and his radical Islamist allies. According to Sido, this policy is not in the interest of Germany and the people here: "A large majority of Germans do not consider Erdogan a reliable political partner."

 

Header image: arta.fm