The three-day scandalous “International Forum on Ethnic Cleansing and Demographic Change in Afrin” that was launched on Sunday was held in the Syrian town of Amuda, located in the Al-Hasakah governorate, which is within close proximity to Turkey’s border.
Former co-leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Salih Muslim and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Polat Can, as well as over 60 academicians, politicians, military officials and bureaucrats from France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and the U.S., were among the participants of the forum. The Turkish Interior Ministry has offered a bounty of nearly $1 million for Muslim, listing him as a most-wanted terrorist.
Former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who played an active role in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s illegal independence referendum in 2017, attended the forum.
“We must stand against Turkish occupation,” said Kouchner, adding: “The beginning of peace is a suffering in itself because you have to confront your enemy and converse it at the same time.”
The former foreign minister emphasized that Turkey’s activities in Syria’s north were “illegal.”
“We must stand against violent practices of Turkish occupation. We repeat our promise once again that we will always be with the people of Rojava,” Kouchner said.
Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20, 2018 in Syria’s northwestern region of Afrin to eradicate the area of terrorists belonging to the PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), following Turkey’s seven-month Euphrates Shield Operation which succeeded in clearing large swathes of Syrian territory from Daesh.
David L. Phillips, who is the head of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University and a former senior adviser to the U.S. Department of State, also addressed the forum.
Phillips said he stood by those who were trying to form a “Kurdish state,” and called on the West and particularly the European Union to “intervene.”
Many so-called PKK leaders from various cantons also took the stand to ask for support from the West during the forum organized by the Rojava Center for Strategic Studies.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. The PKK has been conducting armed violence in the southeastern part of Turkey since 1984. More than 40,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the three-decade long conflict.
The forum was protected by the U.S. army. Guests from the West who were transported from Iraq by the U.S. Air Force were protected by the Pentagon’s forces.
Some of the participants, including Kouchner, visited PKK terrorists stationed in Amude and al-Malikiyah. They then visited schools and churches opened in the area by missionaries, as well as a cemetery while accompanied by PKK terrorists.
Raqqa Local Council President Fayez al-Ghada said the Westerners speaking at the forum were the spokespersons of terror because they disregarded more than two million civilians displaced by the PKK.
“It is a limited approach for the Westerners discussing Afrin to refuse to see that al-Hasakah, Kobani, Qamishli, Ras al-Ayn, Tell Abyad, Manbij, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor were evacuated by the PKK. This forum is an international crime,” Ghada said.
U.S. special representative for Syria James Jeffrey scandalously claimed on Monday that the Astana and Sochi talks were “rather strange” and unsuccessful.
“Our suggestion, and I think I would reflect the views of many of the other major UN countries that are concerned and interested in Syria, is that we do not continue with this rather strange Sochi/Astana initiative, for them to take over the job of putting together a constitutional committee and presenting it on a platter to [UN Syria envoy Staffan] de Mistura. They tried and they failed, or at least up to this point they failed. And if they are still failing by the 14th, the U.S. view, as we indicated in Heather’s [Nauert] comment or Heather’s press release on Thursday, is let’s pull the plug on Astana,” Jeffrey said at a U.S. Department of State briefing on Monday.
Russia, Turkey and Iran failed to make any concrete progress in setting up a Syrian constitutional committee at a meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana on Thursday, the office of U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said last week.
However, Astana talks between Turkey, Russia and Iran delivered a ceasefire in Syria in January 2017, so it cannot be said that the meetings have not yielded any results.
Sochi talks have also been successful. Following a meeting on Sept. 17 between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two sides agreed to set up a demilitarized zone in the last opposition-held stronghold of Idlib.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
When Jeffrey was asked whether he had personally ever spoken to YPG/PYD terrorists, he replied: “I talk to whoever I need to talk to to accomplish my job.”
Jeffrey also claimed that 50 groups had left Manbij, which is still under PKK occupation, however he did not specify which organizations had left. He also said that such areas were “quite secure.”
