Northern Syria: Replacement of Kurdish Landmarks in Afrin, Turkification in Al-Bab

Source:STJ Projects Date:01Sep2024

On 20 January 2018, Türkiye launched a wide-scale military operation codenamed Operation Olive Branch in the Syrian region of Afrin. The incursion involved approximately 25,000 fighters from the opposition’s Syrian National Army (SNA), lasted 58 days, and ended with the attackers taking control of the overwhelmingly Kurdish area. The operation thus added Afrin to the extensive list of cities and regions under Turkish influence and occupation in northwest Syria, from Jarabulus passing through al-Bab, al-Rai, Marea, and A’zaz.

Since then,  Türkiye has begun—through the Syrian opposition factions, local councils, and affiliated political bodies—a process of changing the landmarks of those areas under its control, with the greater impact observed in the Afrin region in northwest Syria. After Türkiye established dominance over Afrin in March 2018, the region has been subject to one of the largest demographic change operations witnessed in the Syrian conflict. The vast majority of Afrin’s local Kurdish population was displaced, and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs), from areas like Damascus and Homs countryside, were settled in their place.

However, Afrin was not the only region to suffer such critical changes, as the remaining areas under Turkish control underwent similar alterations, whereby Turkification also greatly impacted many aspects of their cultural identities.

According to local sources contacted by Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) for the purpose of this report, changes in Afrin affected most public facilities, squares, roundabouts, and buildings of departments considered as governmental. In this context, prominent landmarks that indicated Afrin’s Kurdish[ness] were replaced with Islamic or Turkish ones, or others related to the 2018 Olive Branch Operation.

The same sources stressed that these replacements began from the earliest days of Türkiye’s control over the region, by targeting the key landmarks that became iconic of Afrin after 2011, including Kawa al-Hadad (Kawa the Blacksmith) roundabout. The statue welcomed those coming to the region by the main road from Aleppo, passing through A’zaz to Afrin. Notably, the road had been cut off since the beginning of the Syrian conflict due to military operations in Aleppo’s northern countryside between Syrian government forces and the opposition forces then known as the Free Syrian Army.

In this brief report, STJ captures four instances of destruction or Turkification of Kurdish landmarks and structures in Afrin—Kawa al-Hadad Roundabout, Newroz Roundabout, al-Saray Square, and Kurdish-named shops. This is based on interviews conducted by STJ researchers with three local sources in Afrin, one of whom resided in Afrin until 2022, and the other two still residing there, in addition to one testimony taken from a source in al-Bab that touches on the city’s Turkification as well.