The city of Jindires, in Syria, has registered this Tuesday large demonstrations in protest of the murder, the previous night, of four members of a Kurdish family who were celebrating Nouruz, the Kurdish and Persian New Year. According to local sources, militiamen from the extremist Sunni group Ahrar al Sharkiya, made up of Syrian Arabs and protected by the Turkish occupation forces, insulted and stoned a family who had lit a bonfire, as dictated by Kurdish tradition. The fight ended in a bloody way when the Islamists returned with automatic rifles to break up the celebration.
The event, which also left three injured, occurred in the town of Atmeh, fifteen kilometers from Jindiris and near the Turkish border, in the Afrin district. Several demonstrators in Jinderis, waving Kurdistan flags, drove to Atmeh, fifteen kilometers away, for the burial of the victims. There, according to the US agency AP, the Kurdish demonstrators would have shouted in favor of the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, to take Jinderis and its region, to the detriment of the militias directly aligned with Turkey.
Afrin – the only area of ??Syria where there was already a Kurdish population a century ago – was the target of the second incursion of the Turkish army into the neighboring country, five years ago. It would not have been possible without the green light from Moscow, which in turn would not have occurred without the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) taking over in favor of maintaining its cooperation with the US occupation of north-east Syria, where are the main oil deposits.
In this way, the militants of the Syrian branch of the PKK, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) were evacuated from Afrin and, with them, tens of thousands of Kurds left their homes. These were shortly occupied by Syrian Arabs displaced from the areas retaken by the Syrian Arab Army from Bashar al-Assad, in the center of the country.
Since then, however, many families have been returning, as shown by the incidents last night, which also show that living together is not easy. Although relations with forces directly supported by Turkey have improved, they remain appalling with Ahrar al-Sharkiya, a militia also accused of killing a charismatic Kurdish political leader during Turkey’s third incursion into northern Syria.
The stagnation in northern Syria is fueled by uncertainty stemming from the Turkish elections on May 14. The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyiper Erdogan, would like an interview with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad before that date, as an electoral shock. Not surprisingly, his own voters are the ones who blame the 3.5 million Syrian refugees for sinking wages. However, despite Russian and Iranian pressure, Assad said last week in Moscow that he does not care about the Turkish elections and that there will be no meeting with Erdogan without a firm Turkish withdrawal agreement from Syria.
Furthermore, the prospect of an opposition victory could further hasten that outcome. National Alliance candidate Kemal Kiliçdaroglu has vowed to return “the Syrian brothers” to his country in less than two years. Something that will require some sort of arrangement with Bashar al-Assad.
The tensions of yesterday and today in northwestern Syria are not unrelated to the consequences of last month’s earthquake, which left hundreds dead in the Jindiris area alone. Precisely yesterday, a conference supported by the European Union pledged close to seven billion euros for Turkey and “for Syria”, without further clarification. One billion from the EU budget and the rest of member countries and international financial organizations. The recognized death toll in Turkey already exceeds the barrier of 50,000.
In a significant move, the head of the opposition, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu (CHP), visited yesterday in Ankara the national headquarters of the HDP, the Kurdish Batasunos, who have seen dozens of their mayors removed in recent years by court decision, ” for links with terrorist organizations”, that is, with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Likewise, his leader of his ranks, Selahattin Demirtas, who has been imprisoned since the end of 2016, is a citizen of Kiliçdaroglu, also of Alevi confession and Zaza language, distantly related to some Kurdish dialects and Persian.
The CHP’s visit, which does not contain any commitment beyond “seeking a solution to the Kurdish problem in parliament”, seeks the HDP’s tactical vote. As happened in many large cities in the last municipal elections, something that allowed Erdogan’s AKP to be ousted from the mayoralty of Istanbul or Ankara. The CHP, heir to General Atatürk’s single party, is a testimonial in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, where Erdogan’s HDP and AKP split the vote 60/40.
It should be said that the celebration of Nowruz was strictly prohibited in Turkey until 2000. Although tolerated since then, the governor of Istanbul, among others, continues to deny permission to celebrate it in the central places chosen by the organizers, which gives rise to dozens of arrests, as happened again last Friday.
The Nouroz -which means New Year- is celebrated by the Kurds spread over four states in the region, as well as by the Persians, the Azerbaijanis, the Turkmen, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks and even the Afghans.
