Free Republic

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday lashed out at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the two exchanged accusations over Palestinian and Kurdish civilians killed by the two countries respective armies. “The most moral army in the world will not be lectured by those who have indiscriminately bombed civilian populations for years,” Netanyahu said, seemingly referring to Ankara’s decades-long military campaign against Kurds in Turkey and now those in Syria. “Apparently, this is how April Fool’s Day is celebrated in Ankara,” a statement by the Israeli PM’s office on Facebook read.

A mother looking for her 14-year-old girl who was abducted in Afrin under invasion, stated that dozens of girls are held captive and raped by Turkish forces and allied gangs. The Turkish state and gangs are committing a war crime against women and girls in Afrin which is under their invasion. A mother who revealed the savagery while looking for her 14-year-old missing girl says; “What was done in Shengal is being done here now. The whole world must see this vileness.” Invasion attacks of the Turkish state and jihadist gangs derived from ISIS and Al-Qaeda against Afrin Canton of...

The Afrin Liberation Congress, held under Turkey's auspices following the capture of the region of Afrin in Syria by Turkish and Free Syrian Army forces, has announced that the region will be governed as part of the Turkish province of Antakya, independent news site T24 said. The region will also establish a 450-person police force, the congress decided, and a governor and local governor will be appointed by Turkey’s central government. Around 100 individuals from the region took part in the congress in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, and elected a 35-person assembly made up of 24 Kurds, eight Arabs, one...

France has offered to mediate in the conflict in northern Syria, where Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish fighters in January. Ankara is battling to drive out the Kurdish YPG militia, which it sees as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). President Emmanuel Macron met members of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, including the YPG. Mr Macron expressed hopes for dialogue between Turkey and the militia. His office said he had "paid tribute to the sacrifices and the determining role" of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group. France...

Two days after the Turkish military and allied jihadist forces took control of the Kurdish city of Afrin in northwestern Syria, Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists launched a major attack on Syrian regime forces in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. The ISIS terrorists killed at least 25 soldiers and seized a large oil field. Around the same time, ISIS militants captured a strategic district in the suburb of Syria's capital, Damascus, where they killed more than 60 government troops. These two recent advances signal a possible return by the extremist group that only months ago was thought to be largely...

The Egyptian Parliament issued a warning that methods of annihilation and exile Turkey utilizes in Afrin are reminiscent of the Armenian Genocide. The Egyptian Parliamentary committee on the matters of Arab countries issued a statement and stressed that the invasion of Afrin is “an ethnic cleansing”. The statement warned against an ethnic cleansing against Kurds in Rojava and Southern Kurdistan and stressed that Turkey’s attacks against Afrin and Shengal are attacks against the independence of Syria and Iraq. The statement also pointed out the massacres and exile involved in the invasion of Afrin and said the events are reminiscent of...

Rebels threaten historic diversity in province where Jews once visited Kurdish, Yazidi neighbors. Kurds often say they have “no friends but the mountains.” However, after the Turkish and Syrian rebel offensive took over most of the Kurdish area of Afrin in northern Syria in the last two months, they’ve been saying even the mountains cannot protect them against Turkish warplanes. Kamal Sido, the Middle East department director for the Society for Threatened Peoples, is in Israel this week seeking to raise awareness of suffering in Afrin. He describes in detail the suffering which Kurds, displaced by the conflict, now face....

Humanitarian agencies are struggling to meet the health and aid needs of the civilian population of Afrin as the number of people recently displaced due to Turkey’s offensive climbs to an estimated 167,000. Concerns have also been raised for the security of the thousands who remain in the canton.“Children, women, and men have undertaken harrowing journeys to flee Afrin and need urgent health assistance. Our staff have met civilians who reported walking for 36 hours to reach safer areas,” said Elizabeth Hoff, representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Syria.People arriving at shelters have described “running in the face...

Yazidis, a historically persecuted non-Muslim people in the Middle East, are yet again fleeing for their lives — this time from Turkey-backed jihadists invading Afrin in northern Syria. Murad Ismael, executive director of Yazda, a relief organization for Yazidi victims of genocide, has alerted the world to the deadly threat posed by Turkish airstrikes many times on his social media accounts and on March 12 wrote on Twitter: "We are evaluating what to do when the [whole] city falls, including an option to ask our people to leave the region altogether. We cannot have our people in Afrin under Al...

Tens of thousands of Kurds turned an annual cultural festival into a rare mass political protest on Wednesday against the government's two-month-old military campaign against Kurdish forces in neighbouring Syria. At a rally to mark the spring festival of Newroz in the southern city of Diyarbakir, demonstrators said Ankara risked provoking violence at home if it pressed on with its Syria offensive. The event was the first major public demonstration against the campaign in Syria, in which the Turkish army has battled Kurdish forces, the YPG, or Kurdistan Workers Party. It fell just days after Turkish forces stormed the Syrian...

The Platform for Afrin issued a call for a march to protest NATO on March 27 in Brussels. The Platform for Afrin issued a written statement to call for a central march and rally to be held in Brussels on March 27. The statement starts with, “Tens of thousands of people will join the NATO protest in Brussels on March 27 and stop the massacres and the genocide,” and continued with: “ERDOĞAN CAN BE STOPPED THROUGH RESISTANCE” “The fascist Turkish state carries out massacres and invasion attacks in Afrin using all the opportunities and weapons NATO offers, as well as...

The claim: Soon after the Turkish military launched an offensive into the Afrin region of northern Syria, the Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wrote: "Over the last year alone, more than 700 attacks have been launched from the Afrin area under PYD/YPG [the Kurdish Democratic Union Party and its armed wing, the People's Protection Units] control against Turkish cities." Reality Check verdict: The number of incidents publicly reported in that area and period, checked against multiple sources, appears to be far lower than 700 - Reality Check could find only 26. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) told Reality...

YEREVAN, MARCH 20, ARMENPRESS. The Turkish operation in Syria code-named “Olive Branch” is an act of disrespect towards the territorial integrity of sovereign state of Syria, since the Turkish troops freely invaded the Syrian territories and carries out military operations under the pretext of fight against terrorism, ARMENPRESS reports turkologist, Dean of YSU Faculty of Oriental Studies Ruben Melkonyan said during a press conference on March 20.“Erdoğan’s steps have domestic and external components. The external component is, naturally, increasing Turkey’s influence in the region and the reinforcement of its position as a key regional power. Turkey tries to show that in...

Press StatementHeather NauertDepartment Spokesperson Washington, DC March 19, 2018 The United States is deeply concerned over reports from Afrin City over the last 48 hours. It appears the majority of the population of the city, which is predominantly Kurdish, evacuated under threat of attack from Turkish military forces and Turkish backed opposition forces. This adds to the already concerning humanitarian situation in the area, with United Nations agencies reporting a displaced population in or from Afrin district in the hundreds of thousands, who now require immediate shelter and other assistance to meet basic needs. We are also concerned over reports...

In a joint statement from the YPG and the Autonomous Administration in Afrin, it was promised that ‘the resistance in Afrin will continue until every inch of Afrin is liberated, and the people of Afrin will return their villages’. The Kurdish led administration also claimed that they have asked civilians to leave in order to avoid atrocities now that the conflict has reached a new stage. “We would like to declare that our war against the Turkish occupation and the Takfiri forces calling themselves the Free Army has entered a new stage, the transition from direct confrontation war to hit-and-run...

Aleppo Province – The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: Afrin area is witnessing Turkish aerial, artillery and rocket shelling, which did not calm down all last night, where the shelling targeted areas in Afrin city, its outskirts and its vicinity, in conjunction with ongoing displacement of citizens towards the towns of Nubl and Al-Zahraa, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights learned that the number of people displaced from Afrin city exceeded 150 thousand citizens who has been displaced since Wednesday night, the 14th of March 2018, towards the towns of Nubl and Al-Zahraa in the northern countryside of...

AFRIN – Afrin ‘s people have been forced to leave their homes due to shelling of the Turkish occupation army by warplanes and heavy artillery thousends of the people are still in Afin city . Amid continuing shelling .The aircraft and artillery of the Turkish occupation army  has been continuing  to target civilians and public facilities, especially  Afrin ‘s hospitals on the 57th day of Resistance to the Age , so the people who are subjected to massacres and genocide to flee their homes.Today, thousands of  Afrin ‘s residents headed to al-Shabba canton in order to preserve their lives...

Senior Kurdish officials on Friday evening say that Afrin’s hospital was hit by Turkish air strikes and that dozens of civilians were killed in heavy air strikes amidst reports that the Turkish army is closing in on Afrin, a Kurdish majority town. “Afrin hospital was the only medical facility under service. It has been hit by 3 missiles. 15 bodies has been identified, many more are scattered all over the place. We are waiting for more details," Aldar Xelil, a senior Kurdish official told the Region. “The Turkish army has bombarded the only hospital in Afrin, there are reports of...

TurkeyÂ’s ill-advised war in SyriaÂ’s Afrin enclave has further exposed how the Islamist regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his nationalist partners are mobilizing ChinaÂ’s Muslims, especially the Uyghurs, for their proxy battles to advance political and religious goals. The clandestine web of networks that was set up by TurkeyÂ’s National Intelligence Organization (MÄ°T) among Uyghurs and other Muslim groups from Central Asian countries involves not only transporting and facilitating jihadist fighters from ChinaÂ’s Xinxiang region, some of the fiercest and most battle-hardened militants who can only be compared to RussianÂ’s Chechens on the field, but also mobilization of...

The PKK threatens to move the battle into Turkey, saying that the battle of Afrin is the beginning real revolution Kurdistan in Turkey and calls Kurdish youth to join the resistance against the Turkish occupation army in every a place.