Turkey unlawfully arrests and transfers tens from a Syrian Kurdish city, HRW says

Shafaq News/ Turkey and the Syrian National Army have arrested and illegally transferred at least 63 Syrian nationals from northeast Syria to Turkey; Human Rights Watch reported earlier today, Wednesday.

The international organizations said that the arrestees were transferred to Turkey to face serious charges that might lead to life sentences.

"Turkish authorities, as an occupying power, are required to respect people’s rights under the law of occupation in northeastern Syria, including the prohibition on arbitrary detention and the transfer of people to their territory," said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Instead, they are violating their obligations by arresting these Syrian men and carting them off to Turkey to face the most dubious and vaguest of charges connected to alleged activity in Syria."

Turkish authorities and an armed group affiliated with the Turkish-backed anti-government group, the Syrian National Army, arrested the Syrian nationals in October 2019 in Ras al-Ayn, in northeast Syria of the Kurdish Majority. 

Human Rights Watch was able to obtain and review about 4,700 pages of official Turkish case file documents pertaining to the arrest of the 63 Syrian nationals in Syria.

 The documents include transfer and interrogation records, bills of indictment, and police and medical reports obtained from lawyers and the Kurdish Committee for Human Rights-Observer, a group helping the detainees. Human Rights Watch also interviewed six immediate relatives of eight of the detainees, five of whose papers were included among the case files, as well as two of the detainees’ lawyers.

Other evidence and published reports from other groups suggest that the actual number of Syrians illegally transferred to Turkey could be almost 200.

 Reports in pro-government Turkish news sources refer to recently detained Syrian nationals who have been transferred to Turkey, indicating that the practice persists. 

The official Turkish files in these cases show that the charges include undermining the unity and territorial integrity of the state, membership in a terrorist organization, and murder.

 The charges are based mainly on unsubstantiated claims that the detainees have links with the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish-led Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northeast Syria. 

Turkey is an occupying power in parts of Northeast Syria that it invaded in October 2019, as it exercises effective control in the area without the consent of the Syrian government in Damascus. 

Documents obtained by Human Rights Watch show that the detainees were arrested in Syria and transferred to Turkey in violation of Turkey’s obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as an occupying power in northeast Syria.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power … are prohibited, regardless of their motive.” The prohibition applies irrespective of whether those subject to forcible transfer or deportation are civilians or fighters.