Britain has quietly resumed arms exports to its NATO ally Turkey, whose brutal operation in Syria targets the UK’s key Kurdish allies fighting Islamic State (ISIS). Turkish-backed militias are complicit in human rights abuses and include former members of ISIS.
- Turkish-controlled network of militias known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) is committing myriad violations of human rights and international law in Syria
- Hundreds of people have been disappeared, raped and tortured by the SNA
- UK suspended arms exports to Turkey in 2019 but resumed normal licencing last December
In October 2019, Turkey undertook an invasion of the Kurdish-led autonomous regions of north and east Syria. Its jets and tanks killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurdish, Yazidi, and Christian civilians, as well as some Arabs, in a deliberate policy of forcible demographic change.
Turkey has driven out indigenous minorities to replace them with Sunni Arab militiamen and their families. Its invasion of the Afrin region of northeast Syria in 2018 reduced the Kurdish population there from 97% to just 35%.
The 2019 assault was dubbed ‘Peace Spring’ by Turkish officials and ostensibly sought to create a ‘safe zone’ by expelling the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the Syrian-Turkish border.
The SDF is Britain’s key partners on the ground in Syria in the war against the Islamic State terrorist group.
The UK government suspended new arms deals with Turkey for weapons that might be used in the invasion. But last December, the government of Boris Johnson quietly resumed normal licencing.
The UK is now arming Turkey again while its Nato ally is promoting former Islamic State militants and major human rights abuses, in north and east Syria and elsewhere.
Release of information would “prejudice relations” between the UK and Turkey.
Declassified submitted a Freedom of Information request to the UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT), seeking information on its discussions about arms for Turkey during the 2019 invasion.
But the government refused to provide the information it holds. It said: “Disclosure of the name of the company or companies… would be likely to damage the trading relationship between the UK company and their customer… This would be likely to risk future trading opportunities… [and] could possibly reveal details of commercial opportunities.”
The Foreign Office also dodged a similar request, saying the release of the information would “prejudice relations” between the UK and Turkey.
‘Myriad violations’
Turkey relies in Syria on a network of dozens of primarily Sunni Arab militias known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) which numbers at least 35,000 full-time fighters. Though independent in name, the SNA is in practice commanded, controlled, and funded by Turkey’s Ministry of Defense and National Intelligence Organisation (MIT).
Academic terrorism expert Elizabeth Tsurkov, speaking to multiple sources within the ranks of the SNA, shows that “all decisions, big and small, in the [SNA] are made by the operations room run by Turkish intelligence.”
Turkey plays SNA factions off against one another, allowing them to clash over checkpoints and loot property to prevent anyone force growing too powerful.
The UN accuses the SNA of “myriad violations of human rights and international humanitarian law”. It says the group has caused the displacement of the entire Yazidi population, and much of the Kurdish population, in the Turkish-occupied region of Sere Kanye, near the border with Turkey, and promoted murder, rape, and torture of civilians, often on an ethnic basis.
The SNA includes forces sanctioned by the US for atrocities committed against Kurds and Yazidis.
Read more: https://declassifieduk.org/uk-rearms-turkey-as-ankara-backs-war-crimes-in-occupied-syria/
Maybe Brits are just Turks in disguise.