Al Zone Media.
All Right, hello, welcome to the podcast it could happen here. Podcasts for Me and Cheren talk about vegetables or terrible things, depending on the week. It's me, it's uine and today it's a terrible thing. It's not a vegetable or a sa animal. How are you, Cherene, how are you doing?
I'm good. That's honestly a great premise just for a show in general, Like we talk about either food or something terrible.
Yeah, like and you never know, you know, just yeah, it's just in your playlist. And then is it a fucking artichoke? Is it genocide?
You don't know?
You have to find out.
Yeah, the only way is by listening.
Yeah, but hi, I'm good, Thanks for having me.
Good. I'm glad to hear it, Shreen.
So, what I wanted to talk about today is what is happening in Turkey?
Why are they like this? What is going on?
Specifically? I want to talk about some of these attacks on Syria and refugees in Turkey. The people may have seen, they may not have seen. I see them in my timeline, but maybe that's because of the people I follow. I think to start off with to understand what's happening in Turkey. You have to understand the relations between Turkey and Syria. Since the Civil War began in Syria, which is more
than a decade ago now, thirteen odd years ago. So from the start of the war, Turkey has backed Antio sad factions, right, so those are the rebels in Syria.
This is a big change.
In two thousand and eight, A Sadden Herd again's family went on holiday together.
Really yeah.
Yeah, they went into a southern Turkey and a little little beach holiday together.
Disturbing.
Yeah, yeah, what a time. Yeah, just to do to racking by the beach.
But unfortunately they're no longer holiday and together. They might be holding again soon as we'll see.
Yeah, that's what it sounds like.
Yeah, they are becoming tight again, and again referenced their family holiday in his most recent comments on really yeah, it's like our relations have been familial.
I like that at all.
Yeah, yeah, you know what'd be going on holiday with Marshal Lasad just as a moral principle.
I think it's just crazy to be because you're right they I feel like we're very open about supporting the anti Assad forces and so to be like suddenly, why can't we have diplomatic friendliness, Like, come on, it's just like the weirdest plot to us to.
Be Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it comes from anti migrant sentiment in Turkey, which I want to get into. I think it's so like we are witnessing this global crackdown on migration, on refugees. We see it in Europe, we see it here at southern border, we see it here in Turkey, We're seeing it in North Africa. We're seeing it all over.
So this is hasn't always been the case.
At the start of the war, Turkey thrope and it's bordereds to to Syrian refugees, right, They built camps to houses. They were strong backers of the revolution. They spent forty million dollars carrying to their refugees. The Nationally Intelligence Organization, the MIT, actually trained parts of the FSA, the Free Syrian Army, and then later they brought together the s NA. There will be many acronyms, right, like every civil war loves a three letter acronym, and the Syrian war is no different.
But they were really open, they were really public about being like we welcomed the refugees. I remember that was like, I don't know, as a Syrian, I was like, oh, that's nice.
It was nice, nice thing to do.
Like I mean, like at the time, no one gave a shit for the most part, so to have like a country out loud be like we welcome the refugees, come over here will help. And now they have the largest population of Syrian refugees like in the world. I don't know if you're gonna mention this coming up, but I feel like the only thing that changed, not the only thing, one of the only things. The main thing that changed is that no one in Turkey thought it would last as long.
Yeah no, yeah, absolutely not.
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll get into that because the nature of their legal residence there is very temporary. Yeah, okay. So Turkey has used the SNA as Syrian National Army Right, which is it's more explicitly Turkish backed faction, as a directly linked proxy force. They've used it in their operations against the STF. So the Syrian Democratic Forces another acronym for you, the organization which includes the yepige right, their YPG. The YPG the other elements of the military forces of the
autonomous areas North and East Syria, sometimes called Rishaba. They have also used the SNA outside of Syria, right in Azerbaijan, Libya and Nizia, like just as a private military right as a mercenary army more or less, and you'll you'll hear them refer to sometimes as mercenaries, certainly like when they're being used outside of Syria, it's hard to argue that they're not, and other times, like when they're being
used in Syria. A lot of these folks were previously parts of other groups that have kind of been repackaged and bundled up together by Turkey, and there are still many factions within these like broadly speaking Turkish supported Arab rebel forces in Syria. There are some Kurdish groups as well, but not so many, and there are some Turkic groups that are not Arab. So these property forces are really
vital to the Turkey strategy in Syria. I wanted to get a sense of how numerous the redirected or re recruited jahades were from other groups, so I reached out to Zagros Hiwa. People are not familiar with Zagros. He is a spokesperson of the Kurdistan Communities Union's Foreign Relations Commission.
If you're not familiar with the Kurdistan Communities Union, it's the umbrella organization for the several democratic confederalist political parties North, South, East and West Kurdistan which are inspired by the ideology of Abdullah Asient. So we're going to hear more from Zagoros next week. I have a number of questions about the ongoing Turkish bombing there in the in the Kandil Mountains in the in the north of the kur Stan
a thonomous region of Iraq. But we're going to drop a little quote here where he talks about the interactions at the SDF and the EPIGAY and the other other units right hPG have had with the Turkish Army's Arab Syrian elements. When you hear Zagros here talking about DASH, what he's talking about is the so called Islamic State, the Islamic State of Iraq and the levant Right. It's just the Arabic acronym of the same organization. So if you went aware that's what he's talking about.
The invading Turkish Army is that many jihadists have been incorporated into the Turkish Army. They are acting as units with the Turkish or separate units with the Turkish Army. They have been embedded with the with natal second largest army. I can say these Jajadists are ex DAJH members, x
Nostra Front members, x Alkaider members. They are from many nationalities, according to p K officials Patriotic Union of Kdistan officials, they say that they have learned the names of three hundreds of these DATJ members in the Turkish Army ranks.
So also.
Underground Kdistan Freedom guerrillas themselves have observations about the inclusion of jihadist members in the ranks of the Turkish Army and many of the close range classes blanket point classes with the Turkish Army. Kurdistan Freedom Guerrillas here some of the soldiers speaking Arabic, shouting yearning in Arabic.
To understand further what's going on in Turkey, I think you need to understand the phenomenon of Turkish ultra nationalism and social Darwinism. This is not just endemic in Turkey, but also in European countries with a large Turkish diaspora. The most extreme and concerning example of this is a
group called the Gray Wolves. The gray Wolves are the militant street wing of the Nationalist Movement Party in Turkey, and they've been involved in political violence there since the nineteen sixties, with their primary target being curved Greeks, Alavis, Arabs, Christians, Jews and Armenians. These are all minority ethnic groups.
I guess.
To understand this further, you have to be able to differentiate between race, state, and nation. Right, which is getting into things that I lecture about. But the idea of a race is like affective biological link, right, This isn't born out necessarily, but the idea of a shared biology. The idea of a nation. A nation is an imagined community, right, which which are can have many races. It could have a state aligned to it or not. Right, So the
Turkish nation doesn't necessarily align with the Turkish date. There are like other groups within the Turkish state. You have Turkish citizenship, but do not see themselves as nationally or ethnically Turkish. For what the gray Wolves believe is the superiority of a Turkish race, and they strive for a monoethnic Sunni Islamic Turkish nation. They are pan Turkic organizations, so they want to join together all the Turkic peoples
in one kind of renewed Turkish empire. Right after clap to the Soviet Union, they called for this revived empire that would unite Turkic people. They like many of these extremely right wing violent organizations have their roots in anti communism right in the Cold War, and specifically and something called Operation Gladio, which was a sort of anti communist guerrilla training supported by the CIA and other groups. They began as government condoned and a sort of sort of
deniable government force to use against the left right. I'm not going to be able, like I can't detil everythink the Gray Wolves are down and this isn't what that episode it's about. I do want to explain one incident. It's maybe one of the most heenous things that they're known for, and it's called the Marush massacre.
Are you familiar with this? Sharene, No, I'm not. Actually Okay, a little little history for you.
So in December nineteen seventy eight in Karaman Mirash Karaman Marash in Mirash you'll hear those two terms used both right, like Karaman I think means hero in Turkish. There was a battle there in the early part of twentieth century. I think it was in the First World War, and so they added like hero to the start of the town. But Alavi people don't tend to use that when they talk about the massacre because it seems a little weird to be like a great town where this horrible massare occurred.
So you're here both it's mrs, but s has a little diacritical mark, so it's ah noise. The massacre starts in seven, nineteen seventy eight, when an anti Soviet movie is being shown in a movie theater in town and someone through as a bomb in to the theater. Right Communist brouts were blamed for this. It's a little unclear if it really was them or someone who who wanted to start some drama by pretending to be them, if
that makes sense, right. So many Alavis Alaviz are a group of Kurd Are you familiar?
And Sharen, I was actually just trying to hy myself because I'm really not familiar with this sect because I know it's completely separate from Sunni Islam, is Shia Islam. Is it more like Sufiism? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I thought.
They're like a twelve Sufiist with thinncrectic elements from like uh like veneration of nature, and they have this sort of idea of sainthood. Right, I probably used a lot of words that people aren't super familiar with. So can you explain to Sufism and then Sunni and Shia maybe.
So maybe you're familiar with the two different main sects of Islam, which are Sunni and Shira. The main difference between the two, if you want to really boil it down, is who they believe the successor should have been to the prophet Muhamma. The shi has believe that his cousin and his son in law Ali should have been the successor, versus the Sunnis don't believe he needed a successor at all, and it was more just like passing down his teachings.
There's a lot of history behind that, and there's a lot of drama and violence, but that's like the most simple way to put it, and it kind of grew from there. The Sufism sect, on the other hand, is a little different. It's described as a contemplative school of Islam that aims to develop an individual's consciousness of God through chanting, recitation, of litanies, music and physical movement. Maybe you know or you've seen the Sufi like whirling dervishes.
It's basically a form of like physical active meditation for them. So it definitely differs from both Sunni and Sushia Islam. It's more in a way spiritual. Is that is that a decent summary?
Not me? Yeah, I think I think you've done a great job.
And Sufi's are like broadly Sunni, I guess, and Alavites are like there are twelves and seven is which is like to do with the amount of people you think are the the imam's successes to Ali, which we don't need to go into I don't think a very great depth, but I guess Alavites would would fall into the twelve A camp in not traditional twelve Shia.
That's what the V you're saying, the V al yes.
As opposed to Ala whites, right, another.
Ship al whites is very different? Yeah, yes, Like I feel like it's very confusing because they sound so similar. But Ala Whites they're they're considered disbelievers by the classical like Sunni and Shia theologies, they're their own separate group. It's like a religious sect that like kind of splintered off from early Shiahism in the ninth century.
And they are the sector which the Asad family yes belongs and many other military families in Bathistsiria belonged, right.
Yeah.
When the bar this party like led by half, said Bashar's dad, when he took power, the Alo Whites in the military sect or the Alo white sect in the military were really supportive of that regime. And I feel like it's a big reason why he gained popularity and was able to like overthrow the government.
Yeah yeah, Okay, So that's how little breakdown of Islam. I know, it's good.
There's just so much like like little details that I know I will miss, and it's just it's so much more complicated. But yeah, there's just many sects that stem all from the one religious book of the Quran, and then shit happens. I don't know what else is.
Well, maybe we'll explain it in another day for people they do think, like I went to school at a very woke time in the United Kingdom's history, you could do Islam as your like religious studies. Wait really yeah, yeah, it's because Tony Blair in the Woknesse that's crazy. Yeah, I know, it's cool. It's really good.
I lent, well, so what did what did I miss? You tell me?
No, I'm not, I'm not. I'm not here to fucking no, I'm serious. I am absolutely not here to tell you what you go right round. I think you did an excellent job. Shia comes from like the party of Ali, right, That's what the word means.
And I think that's the main reason why Sufism is more associated with Sunni Islam. F I'm being honest, because that's like the main tenet of being Shia is that you believe that Ali was the successor, and so I think anything that is not that usually is more under the Sunni umbrella.
Yeah, I think sometimes you'll see it like as a third like Sufism is the own thing. Yeah, Germany, like more Muslims in the world are Sunni than Shiah. I'm not going to do a thing that people do where they go around naming the governments which are one or another, and like, I don't think that's very useful. So let's
go back to nineteen seventy eight in Mirash. Right, these Alavis, for reasons that we have just explained, are perceived A they are Curdie right, so they're not Turkic, and B they are perceived to be heretical by people with the more conventional Sunni Islam, or some people, I should say so. The day after this bomb, guys of a left wing cafe in town is bombed and two leftist teachers are murdered on their way home from school. Later, at their
funeral it's attacked by a mob of Turkish nationalists. Right later that week, exes start appearing on the doors of the Alavi homes in this area of town, which is predominantly Alavi right. They made announcements to the mosques saying that communists and Alavis are burning your mosques. You should attack them and kill them well. And on the twenty thirty December, crowd stoked buying comprised of the Gray Wolves
rampaid through all the neighborhoods. Children, women and men were murdered in their homes and their bodies were thrown in the street. Women were raped and injured, people removed from the hospital beds and murdered children were burned alive in the furnaces of their own home homes. Estimates of the amount of people who were murdered vary from like one hundred and eleven, which is the official government number, to one hundred and fifty, which is sort in the British
Alabi society. Five hundred and fifty something houses were burned to destroy nearly three hundred businesses were looted.
Writer as is Tunk, my oppointing st I got that wrong.
I'll try my best, who's written a book about the massacre, believes that the Alavis were killed for refusing to assimilate to the Turkish language and culture, and he adds occurs to not the only victims of the attack, progressive and leftist Turks who had opposed the official policies of Ancro Walls included. The trials for this massacre actually continued until nineteen ninety one. So it happened in nineteen seventy eight, Right,
it's a long time. A total of eight hundred and four people were put on trial, which kind of shows you the scale of the mob.
That you have.
Was it mostly the gray Wolves?
Yeah, So it comes out of the MHP, which is this Turkish nationalist party, and it's generally attributed to the gray Wolves as like causality, Right, and when you get these massive crowd violence things. It's not like everyone's a card carrying member necessarily. You'll hear people say that they consider there to be like state or organizational complicity beyond it. It wasn't a spontaneous thing, right, and that that's an
allegation that's sometimes made. Twenty nine people were sentenced to life in prison for this by nineteen ninety one.
Out of eight hundred and four or twenty nine percent.
Yeah, and all of them were released in nineteen ninety two. Okay, it's part of an anti terrorism law. Now it's a good time streams. You know who will not commute your life sentence? Oh my god, they won't do it.
Well, whatever it is.
Yeah, all right, we're back.
We're moving on from massacres thankfully.
So we're talking about the Gray Wolves, right, that's where they come from.
Today. The party that they were sort of founded.
By their m HP is allied with the Eerligan's Party and they've continued their violence and particularly they've begun to focus on Kurdish people. Right last year, groups of them in the diaspora could be found in Belgium attacking kurd So they found to be celebrating the Kurdish New Year Right celebrating the year often with fire outside. It's pretty fucking easy to see who's doing it right, and they
were attacked. You could see videos of this if you scroll far enough back on my Twitter timeline you'll see I've shared some of them. Twenty fifteen, they protested and burned Chinese flags and attacked people who looked Asian, to include Korean folks and folks who certainly were not Chinese, in response to the Chinese government span on Turkic wigas fasting during the month of Ramadan. They also opposed Russia due to its collaboration with a SAD and its attacks
on Syrian Turkmen. Some Gray Wolves had gone over to Syria to fight, and they're fighting against a SAD right with Turkmen units. I guess perhaps their most fam famous like incident in the war was in twenty fifteen when they shut down a Russian plane was shut down and the pirate parachute out and then they machine gunned him while he was parachuting down. WHOA, Yeah, so they pretty strongly opposed to the Russian support of the Assad rasion.
Yeah, I mean, there are one of the many reasons why I really get frustrated with all these different sects that are like anti Assad and I am also anti Sad. But then they make it so complicated because they're terrible people, and so it's not just the rebels and these citizens of their own country trying to stand up against their government. It becomes this larger political clusterfuck that gets hard to keep track of. And I think that's why it's gone
on for this long. It's not simple. It's not just like government versus people anymore. It's just too many elements.
Right that you have people fighting within their revolution and the government constantly exploiting those divisions, right.
Yeah.
So yeah, as I said, the Wolves have significant support in the Turkish Jasper and they represent the largest right wing movement in Germany, which is pretty impressive when you consider like Germany. Yeah, like Germany is not known for not having much right wing Go ahead, Green, you're looking.
I can see there's a question inside you.
I'm just okay, because so the Gray Wolves believe in the superiority of the Turkish race. Correct, that's correct, And you're saying that they are also big in Germany. I feel like Germany for a time also considered themselves to be the.
True sine. There are some things that they share. Yeah, it does feel a little bit on the nose, doesn't it. Yeah it does, Yeah, it does if it makes a difference. In Austria, the gray wolf salute is banned. Oh whoa, we're going to get into the gray wolf salute. Imagine making a little wolf with your hands. Right, you're right, that's they took that. That's like a shadow puppet. Yes, yeah, really fuck that up. That's not fair. Yeah no, yeah, you're no longer you do. We're going to learn about
the solution. So far, I not familiar. Your big finger and your little pinky finger up in the air. Your other two fingers are touching your thumb.
It's almost like the six to six rocker sign, like yeah, but yeah, it's not it's such a shadow puppet. I feel like I've done that as a kid. That's not fair. They can't take a shadow puppet. Whatever they've done.
Worse sharene's hard right youth that is coming out.
So if you weren't familiar with the Grabels before and their salute, you might have become familiar with them this week when a Turkish footballer received a two day band for flashing the salute after scoring. When the team beat Austria in Euro twenty twenty four, Turkish fans responded to the band by giving the salute on mass at the quarterfinals. So that was the next game, right, Yeah, yeah it was.
It was a scene. Like people have obviously drawn the comparison to the previous German movement, which thought one race was better than the other races, right, but seeing a whole crowd of people doing that in the stadium is disturbing. Yeah, it's concerning. They did it in a game in Germany, so the salute's not banned in Germany. And then the Turkish president Rep. Type herd Gun postponed his plans to visit asba Jahan and attended the game after the suspension
to show his support for the team. Right. He defended the player, saying he'd merely expressed his excitement after scoring. Germany was big mad about this. In their defense, they summoned the Turkish ambassadors and foreign ministry to explain what the fuck was going on? And it has resulted in considerable amounts of violence across Europe. Right, we saw in Austria, we saw in Germany, we saw in Belgium, where there
is a large Turkish and often a large Kurdish yeaspora. Right, because of the tensions between these two groups, which the football has increased, then we saw like street fighting between these two groups in predominantly migrant neighborhoods. Right. But I don't want it's episode to just be about the football or the Turkish participation in the Syrian Civil War. I want it to be about what's happening to Syrian refugees
in Turkey today. So many Turkish people have come to resent the Syrian refugees who relocated there since the started the war. Estimates range from three point one to three point five. I've seen four million, evidently, Like they have a land border, right, Turkey and Syria, So some of the people crossing will have come without being documented, whereas others will have come in the more formal process and be documented.
Right. So whatever, it's millions of refugees, I think that's what matters.
They are largely baselessly and evidently baselessly in some cases accused of causing the economic troubles and include low wages and inflation. Inflation exceeded seventy five percent in Turkey in May. They have also been blamed for the earthquake that happened, if for every twenty twenty three, which I'm not quite sure how like who or what the process exactly that they're postulating is there.
That's crazy.
Yeah, yeah, you just clear things that people generally can't make. Earthquakes happen, so across the political s and we've seen support grow for sending these refugees home. In twenty sixteen, Turkey began to accuse the SDF of ethnically cleansing Arab areas in Syria, and the UN refuted these accusations. Right, But in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, and in twenty nineteen, with the explicit approval of President Trump, the Turkish military
and its proxies attacked the SDF and seized territory inside Syria. Right, Operation Peace Spring and Olive Branch. In these areas, Turkey has attempted to resettle Arab refugees.
Right.
This is why we can't understand anti Syrian sentiment in Turkey without understanding Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war. Right, it's trying to create what it calls a safe zone, and in the safe zone, it's trying to take the refugees that It's people have decided they don't want and relocate them back into a country which is at war. Turkey has already resettled Syrian refugees in this safe zone, but obviously some of them have been in Turkey for
more than a decade. Their children have gone to school in Turkey, they speak Turkish, they've learned a new language, they've learned a new alphabet. Right, they have lives there. So not all of them are just taking the chance to, Yeah, let me get straight back to Aleppo. For very obvious reasons, people don't want to go back. Since twenty eighteen, a cost of living crisis in Turkey has been leveraged by
the right to stoke anti Syrian sentiment. Research found that in twenty twenty, only twenty three percent of Turkey citizens would accept a Syrian bride or groom into their family or consider having a Syrian as a business partner, and only thirty one percent would want to have the child educated in a class with a Syrian in it.
That is, yeah, that.
Makes me so fucking mad.
One of the things I've come across with is doesn't by any means apply to all Turkish people. I've met some very cool Turkish people who I like very much that people who are ultranationalists in Turkey. America has its fair share of bigots, right, generally, they know that it's wrong. They're like, say it with your whole chest of the certainly the anti Syrian sentiment that I've heard expressed online from Turkish people, it's not something that like it's considered shameful.
They'll just they'll just fucking say it, which is kind of wild. No, it's scary, Like, yeah, it's very scary.
Like if you've raised your child and Turkey and that's the only that's their first language essentially, or that's the only thing they know, that's just one of the most unsafe places for them to be there. Yeah, that's scary and not fair.
Yeah, And like I know, I've met lots of Kurdish people who, like, you know, they come in and to the United States right where I'm helping out the border, and I'll greet them in Kurdish. And like I was talking to a guy the other day and mc Curdish is by no means great, but it took a little class and can say some words and then also, a dude walked around the market with me every morning in
Cambusloan and just pointed at vegetables and shouted. So I'm pretty pretty good when it comes to like the eggplant spectrum. So I'll greet them in command and they will. They only speak Turkish, right, Like, it's not that they could just drop back. And I'm sure that's true for kids who would have grown up speaking Arabic in Syria if they went to school in Turkey. So that's a language, and.
It's also like not necessarily something they wanted to happen. I think that's something that really frustrates me. It's like Bashar started attacking as people and they needed somewhere to go. Turkey welcome them. Yeah, And when you resettle and you make a home somewhere, it really feels like, especially now in this world, like if you're a refugee, it feels like you're always going to be kind of displaced in one way or another. Heartbreaking.
Yeah, best you're like temporary. Yeah.
After the earthquake in twenty twenty three, which folks will remember, we did a little fundraiser for World Central Kitchen, Syrian refugees were accused of fluting a lot on social media. Turkish Twitter had trending slogans like immigrants should be deported, just straight up saying it. Syrian refugees were kicked out of like tent camps and left homeless. They faced verbal abuse,
we're trying to access services. Separate shelters were set up for Syrian refugees, like literally, like they couldn't be together, right, Resentment simmered amongst the groups. Yeah, I read some NGO reports.
One of the things they say is that like women who were refugees, especially women who run their own preferred not to drink water because they didn't want to go to the bathroom, like they were afraid and they wanted to stay in their tents, and like, well, yeah, that's something I've seen in other settings too, but like it, it's obviously that's a pretty fuck situation to be in, right, Yeah, in a hard place and you're choosing to dehydrate yourself.
NDOS later reported that refugees did not receive mobile container homes until displaced Turkish residents received them, and that refugee women in particular experience violence in these container camps, right, So that's when they're they're dropping like chipping containers for people to live in because all the houses fell down
because of the earthquake. Many Turkish refugees have a sort of temporary protected status, so that temporary protected status only allows them to live in the prob is that they arrived in, and many of those provinces are obviously border provinces. Right. Initially, many folks had come Syrian folks that come to Turkey
hoping that they could then continue right. Turkey kind of bridges between Asia and Europe, right, so they had hoped that they could go through Turkey right from east to west and then and then continue into the European Union preps and you live there. But that didn't work, right, Many of them found themselves stuck in Turkey and not even able to leave the province that they lived in.
After the earthquake, Turkey lifted those those restrictions on movement, and you saw tons of Syrian folks traveling around Turkey and being like, whoa like is Stumbul? How cool is this like having lived there for ten years? Right, but they couldn't leave their province before. For this generation of Syrian some of them, like I was reading some of their like social media. Like some folks I think meaningfully became felt more Turkish when they were able to access
so things. But other folks they went back to Syria to visit family, they were briefly allowed to do that. They weren't allowed to do that before. But it also broadened there was against them, I think it's fair to say. And in the twenty twenty three presidential election, there wasn't really an option that wasn't hostile to refugees. At Agam
was probably the least hostile, but still hostile. Neither did the TURKEYEU deals to prevent further migration westward help right, So all of this just continues to turn up the temperature. Between January and December twenty twenty three, over fifty seven thousand Syrians were deported. According to Human Rights Watch, these deportations took place with the authorities quote pressuring the border authorities to list the majority of border crossings as returnees
or voluntary. Turkey's voluntary returns are often coerced returns to quote unquote safe zones that are pits of danger and despair. That's quote from Adam Coogle, who's a Deputy Mid East North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
It's weak.
Yeah, that's pretty bleak, right, Like, oh, look, we're going to volunteer you to go back to Aleppo or a free I strean. Do you know who'll not force you to return to a country that is well decade long sivil to be best surprised, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, that's what I strike to dou Shrine. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, to hit you with a terrible ad pivot. We're back and I want to
talk about the most recent outburst of tension. There have been outburst of attension outbursts of violence against Syrian refugees before in Turkey twenty twenty one springs to mind, but recently this all came to a head in early July when a Syrian man was accused of molesting his seven year old cousin in a public toilet in central Turkey, which is a pretty fuck thing to do. The guy was arrested, the young girl was taken into protective custody
I think, along with her mother. But it didn't stop violence exploding then the town would has happened that night, cars were destroyed Syrian shops to attack and homes were set on fire. The next night, the violence spread in the border city of Gaziantep, which has like a twenty
five percent Syrian population. A man was stabbed. I've seen the videos of like teenage boys, like I don't know if they're dead or unconscious, but they're certainly not capable of responding, and mobs of people are stamping on them, kicking them, and it's pretty horrible stuff.
Yeah, the videos I've seen of the the riots and the moms are really terrifying.
Yeah, Like it's petrifying to think of like a mob of people coming for you because of who you are, where your parents came from, with nothing you can do to defend yourself. Right. Turkey's Interior minister said that four hundred and seventy four arrests have been made, and Urdigan did condemn the violence, but also blamed the opposition rhetoric,
which like the opposition to him, Yes, the opposite to him. Yeah, when he himself has said it is they're going to try and send a million more people back to Syria.
Right.
Unsurprisingly, several nights of these programs have led to anti Turkish sentiment in areas of Syria that are controlled by
Turkey and its proxy forces. Right. Indeed, there's very proxy forces in some cases turned on their Turkish backers, and you could see on social media again, I shared some of them, numerous videos last week of SNA, so that Syrian National Army fighters firing on Turkish positions, tearing down and burning Turkish flags, and even like mobs attacking Turkish civilians in a Frien, right, which is one of the cities that Turkey captured from the SDF. You can see
another Turkish occupied areas too. Demonstrators tried to storm the headquarters or Turkish backed administration. SNA fighters withdrew from their frontline positions to set up roadblocks and tack Turkish spaces. Dozens of people stayed to sit in the Al Hayya Square in Afrene. Again, these are not tensions have popped up overnight, right. This didn't just happened because mobs in Turkey attacked Syrian refugees. But this was kind of a
cork popping, if you like. And one of the things that has caused tensions to increase in recent weeks is this sort of detent.
Between Asad and Turkey.
Right, So, in response to these protests, Turkey shut off the internet, closed border crossings, and it sent more troops into the area. Masses of people were arrested and people were charged with things like desecrating national symbols of Turkey, which like again that this is not in Turkey, right, this is in Syria. Yeah, but in an area occupied by Turkey.
I think anytime a government or an occupying power like shuts off Internet, that is terrifying to me. Yeah, because you know, they're trying to do something they don't want you to see.
Yeah, totally.
Fortunately, it's twenty twenty four and like there's only so far that they can go. Like I've seen lots of videos from those protests, but yeah, they're trying to stop people organizing. They're trying to stop them and the world seeing.
It's more so the act that that power like choosing to do that is so purposeful, like a choice.
Yeah, totally, Like, yeah, everyone knows what you're going for there.
Yeah. On the fifth of July, detainees who arrested dr in protests in northern Aleppo, including a child, were forced to film themselves with a Turkey flag behind them and apologized to the Turkish government and people for burning the Turkish flag. One of the videos obtained by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights showed a child under pressure admitting to quote burning the Turkeys flag and apologizing to the Turkish people before kissing the flags. Yeah.
Again, when people kiss the flags on TV, it's not a great sign. I did see videos of some of the SNA who appear to have captured some Turkish soldiers making them kiss their flag as well, like the Syrian Revolution flag. So I want to talk about these Turkish safe zones, right, so called safe zones, I guess they're anything but safe. They've been seized through military incursions and their rife with corruption in human rights abuses, both by
Turkish back forces and Tokish forces directly. And you'll be familiar with some of this stuff from what Israel does in Palestine, specifically the destruction and theft of ancient olive orchids.
You can see it like listed on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights if you go to like they organize the areas by the name of the Turkish mission, so like Operation Peace Spring Area or Euphrates Shield or Operation Olive Branch is a real fucking on the nose name, and you can see like ten olive trees were cut down and sold for firewood, or like people reselling homes that were sees from civilians.
Right.
Wow.
And I've spoken to people who have left a free in my time in KURDISTWN and Syrian Kurdistan and in the United States, and I've spoken to people who were there as part of the SDF and fly backwards, and like a lot of them have confirmed the same stuff, right, destruction and property theft of homes and houses, and then there's evidence of extortion. There's evidence of corruption in these areas today, right, sexual violence, even torture. So it's pretty bad.
There are a ton of links that will be on our sources page if you want to read more. I don't want to sort of traumatize you all on your way to work here. I'll just traumatize Serene. Yeah, you're working, it's another day at work.
Yeah, it's a normal day.
Most of the protests seem to have died down now, but the situation doesn't really seem to have become any more stable. In Turkey, just like many other countries, politicians have rented a right response to an economic crisis and blame refugees for problems caused by capitalism. Reports of abuse of Syrian refugees caught crossing the border of Rife, and some of their data appears to be leaked in the
last few days. I can't confirm this, but I've seen this from a few places right that data from a registry of refugees has been leaked, which would obviously be very concerning. Like if we look at things like the Marash massacre, we look at like the totality of this
sentiment and the people doing it. Tensions in the turkeysh occupied areas of Syria remain high, with people there strongly opposed to the Turkish oppression, seizure and sale of their landed homes, and the potential of at a time between the two countries. This week, Agan said, we will extend our invitation to a sad With this invitation, we want to restore Turkey Syria relations to the same level as in the past. Our invitation may be extended at any time.
That's a readout of an interview by Turkish media that's obviously translated.
That's so vague.
It's like, at what point in the past.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I think it's the correct number of relations to have with the side is non yeah, and so any more than that is bad. There are also reports that Turkey is going to open crossings between the territory it is controlling and regime territory. Right.
There are protests about that isaw in a Leppo.
Syria has said that normalization can only happen after Turkey agrees to pull out the troops that it has. Turkey is opposed to this because it doesn't want the SDF, which it believes to be an extension of the he KK, which it considers to be a terrorist group, to have territory along its border, right, And the FDF still does already have territory long its border, right, Like Cami Shlow where I was, you can go on top of a
torp building and look across the border. But that does seem to be kind of a red line for Turkey. So I don't know where that leaves us, But.
Yeah, that does seem something that they would never want to do. So but shar really called their bluff there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which is which is kind of funny given that he's not exactly in a strong position
to negotiate. No, but maybe Turkey has given up on the revolution in Syria and it just wants to join with us AT and as long as they can both say fuck the Kurds, and that's enough for both of them, right, But like if they can both get together on a state level and be like, fuck these cords, and therefore, I guess the cost of that would be sending these refugees home for Turkey, which is I guess not considered
to be a cost by some of them. And that's millions of people, right, millions of people who, like in some cases, people are worried about having a citizenship removed, like they went there to be safe, and of course it's a violation of international law, and of course that doesn't matter because international law is as real as unicorns. But it leaves millions of people in limbo.
Right.
Urdigan said he's promised to send another million refugees back, but that's not possible without the cooperation of the regime. Really, I guess he could just pump them all into like a free or whatever. But he's founding people into a situation where people are already actively opposed to the Turkish occupation there. Right, if he pulls out his troops. He's going to have to accept that there will be Kurdish
forces on his border, which he hates. So it's a question of, like what value does he assigned the safety of these three million refugees, And it doesn't seem to be very high. And like every time when we talk about migration, that people are leaving terrible things, right, that that's why people tend to end up as refugees. But there's never been a I don't think a more pronounced global crackdown than I've seen right now. It's not like
these Syrian refugees they can't leave their province, right. I've spoken to hundreds of people who have left Turkey in the last six months year. It's very hard, it's very expensive, and lots of the people who have fled from Turkey only went there for a few months, right, and then kept moving. Every country has made it harder than it
ever was to immigrate. Like even you know that we talk about the Syrian refugee crisis in twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen, unleashing three million people, right that they need a safe
place to go. If you try and force them back to Syria, it's either going to be an absolutely terrible humanitarian disaster, or we're going to have more refugees entering the refugee system at a time when governments all around the world are indifferent at best to the survival of refugees, right, including the fucking bioding government in this country.
Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's pretty big.
Yeah, but uh, that fucking sucks, dreams.
It does fucking Suckan I will be back in two weeks to talk to you about what Turkey is doing in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of a rock where they are bombing Curtis Dan freedom gorillas. They're setting up roadblocks and again like making massive incursions into another country. So that'd be great. We can you can all look forward
to that over the weekend. Yeah, I guess I guarantee that there are refugees, probably refugees from Turkey or Syria in the town where you live, or in the nearest big town to where you live, and you can do something nice for them this weekend if you want to.
Especially if you live somewhere where it's hot as shit, you can I don't know, help out drop off water somewhere or something.
Yeah, like, and I've just been talking to Kurdish refugees who are in like the Northeast, you know, I spoke to some They're not Kurdish or Turkish, but to some refugees are in Scranton, famous for Joe Biden always talking about it, but yeah, there are folks everywhere who need your help.
You can make a difference.
I guess the fucking government isn't going to Joe Biden isn't going to Kamala Harris isn't going to either, and neither is fucking Hillary Clinton. I'm damn sure of that. So it is only you, and that doesn't need to make you desperate. You can do something. I spoke to so many, Like another of our podcast listeners was at the border on Monday and I met them and they were lovely and we drive around it and help people and like, you just need to take that yourself.
Then, like you can do something. But the first step is.
You know, lugging off Twitter and getting out there and like I promise you, you will feel less hopeless if you start helping. Even though it's only one person, it makes a difference.
Yeah, that is something that James did tell me that I think about is because I get really overwhelmed with the idea of how many people need help in this world. And I'm just like a big softy and I really just overwhelms me, like what can I what can me little me do to help anything?
But Dreams is right.
If you change even one person's life, that's one person's whole life. That's a big deal. And so I think it has to start there. And if there are many more of you doing the same thing, then that's how actual change happens. Because yeah, our government is useless. But yeah, listen to Dames Dreams is wise and British.
Please, I listen to it because I'm British, because that will lead you down some dark paths in terms of gender ideology.
I mean maybe I meant that you sound wise.
Because you're British.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I got get for me.
But just be nice to people and they take by someone fucking lunch this weekend if you have the money, If not, make them lunch, you know, make some rice. It's cheap, And yeah, you can make a difference. No one fucking else will. If you want to talk about being a leftist, that's great, But like, I have so much more respect for people who want to do stuff, so to do stuff, and the rest will sort itself out. Like you don't have to argue with people about the
miniture of ideology. It doesn't matter, Like helping people matters. Making the world better matters.
Do that. It's Friday.
Hopefully you can use your weekend to do something nice for someone