Afrinpost – Special
The religious file is one of the most important element of Turkish soft power to penetrate societies, and if hard power is a tool for controlling land and occupation, then soft power is the way to stabilize and consolidate the occupation and turn it into a reality and a culture. Building mosques is one of the most important features of Turkish soft power to exploit religion.
Afrinpost correspondent reported that the Turkish occupation authorities, with the support of the “Turkish Religion Endowment”, started building two mosques in the villages of Abudan and Sharqan, in Bulbul / Bulbul sub-district.
In a related context, the occupation authorities announced the distribution of diesel fuel to all institutes for memorizing the Holy Qur’an in Bulbula district, the number of which exceeds 18 institutes, and the quantity distributed reached 5,700 liters.
These measures fall within the context of exploiting the religious factor, and target settlers brought in from Syrian areas through deportation.
It is noteworthy that the occupation authorities deliberately let charities in and adopted a plan to build mosques since the first days of announcing the occupation of the Kurdish region of Afrin, and on 13/9/2018 the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency published that the Presidency of Religious Affairs spent an amount of 321 thousand Turkish liras on the restoration of three mosques in Afrin and Jenderes, and opened them, and that the Presidency of Religious Affairs conducted a staffing competition to select religious employees, and 102 people succeeded, and 73 of them started their work.
Thousands of religious books were distributed under the pretext of filling the religious void caused by the war, such as the books of the Alif Baa, the Holy Qur’an, and the Prophet’s biography, as well as the interpretation of the Qur’an in the Kurdish language, and many stationery materials were distributed to students in the region.
It is clear from the wording of the news that it targets propaganda through the exploitation of religion. As for the talk about “bridging the religious void resulting from the war,” it is a superficial argument and the agency does not acknowledge that its government is the cause of the war.
The irony is that the mosque projects are built on seized lands, and they are funded by various Muslim Brotherhood associations, such as the Beyaz Eller Association. The Kuwaiti Sheikh Abdullah Al-Nouri Association, the Egyptian White Hearts Association, the Human Appeal Society, the International Mercy Society and the Living in Dignity Society – Palestine 48, and Qatari associations such as Qatar Al-Khair Qatar and from Bahrain such as the Merciful Among them Society and the Reform Society, in addition to the Syrian associations. Coordination takes place with Turkish institutions such as the Turkish Religious Endowment, the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), and the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Society (IHH). Among the villages in which the mosques are built are Ekdam, Qatma, Qastal Kishk in Sharran sub-district, Tal Hamo, Hamilike, Tal Tawil in Jenderes district, and Al-Dhaherin Mosque in Afrin.
In the opening of the mosque of Hamilike village, the head of the Endowments and Religious Affairs Authority said that the project included about 15 mosques and prayer areas between construction, restoration and contribution, and the authority looks forward to complete its efforts in equipping twelve mosques in the next phase in cooperation and coordination with the fatwa and endowment departments in the region.
In the village of Basufan in Sherawa district, the Islamic militia “Failaq al-Sham” supervised the construction of a mosque after seizing a land in the Yazidi Kurdish village.
According to local sources, the villagers objected to the construction process, but the group continued construction and did not take the residents’ objections into account.
The Turkish occupation authorities settled families brought in from the different Syrian conflict areas, and settled them in the homes of the displaced people from the village, as only 10% of the village’s residents remained in their homes.
The main purpose of the Turkish occupation authorities is to redraw the cultural and religious map in the Kurdish region of Afrin, by adopting a policy of building mosques and religious educational courses, occupying pulpits, ideological school curricula, appointing preachers and imams of mosques, and involving in drafting Friday sermons, to promote a particular religious model legitimizing and glorifying the occupation. Occupying minds, changing the region’s culture, spreading extremist ideology in the name of education and building mosques in the Yazidi village of Basufan, armed men from “Failaq al-Sham” militia seized the house of a Kurdish citizen and turned it into a mosque. While it seized a plot of land to build a mosque on.
On 2/14/2020, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated that Abd al-Karim Qassum, leader of the militia of the 112th Brigade (Ahfad ar-Rasul), had sacked the imam of the Baadina village because of his talk of thefts and looting, and in Afrin, a gunman from the Ahrar al-Sharqiya militia entered Osama bin Zaid mosque and interrupted the sermon because of talking about thefts, and said that they do not steal, and what they take is booty.
