Turkey’s Warplanes Are Attacking North East Syria. We Must Stop Yet Another Invasion.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - NOVEMBER 19, 2022

Turkey’s Warplanes Are Attacking North East Syria.

We Must Stop Yet Another Invasion. 

Amidst Turkey’s renewed threats to once again invade the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES), Turkish warplanes are currently carrying out attacks on Kobane and cities along the Syria-Turkish border. Emergency Committee for Rojava (ECR) condemns the attacks as an escalation of the illegal cross-border aggressions that Turkey has routinely engaged in since its last invasion of the region. 

“How is this any different from what Putin is doing to Ukraine? Turkey is waging a criminal war of aggression that will needlessly kill, maim and displace people of North East Syria (NES) who have never posed any threat to Turkey,” said Ozlem Goner, a Kurdish steering committee member of ECR and an Associate Professor at the City University of New York. There are concerns that these attacks may be a prelude to another full-scale military operation that Turkey’s government officials have publicly threatened to launch in a bid to mobilize popular support for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary election. “The Turkish government is trying to take advantage of the last week’s suspicious bombing attack in Istanbul. It has blamed the attack on the AANES without any evidence to use it as a pretext to once again invade NES,” continued Goner. “It is outrageous that the international community remains silent, in particular the US government that works with the AANES to eradicate the remnants of ISIS.” 

Another Turkish invasion will have a devastating impact regionally and globally, creating an opportunity for an escape of tens of thousands of ISIS members currently guarded by the AANES, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, and destabilizing the only secure part of Syria. As long as the US stands idly by, it will be complicit in Turkey’s attacks as well as the ISIS resurgence they enable.

For press inquiries and for contacts on the ground in North East Syria, please contact us at press@defendrojava.org 

The non-profit, U.S.-based Emergency Committee for Rojava was formed in March 2018 after the Turkish invasion of Afrin and is supported by prominent American academics and activists. 

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