afrinpost – Exclusive
Our reporter in Afrin stated that “Mohammed Hajji” (24 years old) arrived from Idlib to the occupied city of Afrin after a long deportation journey that lasted for more than 45 days he spent in detention, as the young man, “Muhammad Hajji,” from the village of Bablit, from the Arab “Abboud” family, was detained in the prisons of “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” in Idlib.
The Turkish authorities, as part of the policy of forcibly deporting the Syrians, arrested “Hajji” and deported him on September 7, 2022 to the deportation camps on the Turkish-Syrian border, where he stayed for six days. He was then handed over through the Bab al-Hawa crossing to the militants of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, where he was detained for about a month and a half.
“Hajji” was living with his entire family in Istanbul, where he worked as a barber, and thus returned to Afrin alone without them, the reporter added.
It is noteworthy that the Turkish authorities follow a policy of forcible deportation of Syrians, arresting them for the slightest pretext, transferring them to camps on the border, and forcing them to sign voluntary return forms, and those who refuse to sign are severely beaten.
In a report issued on October 24, 2022, Human Rights Watch accused the Turkish authorities of arbitrarily arresting, detaining and deporting hundreds of Syrian refugee men and boys to Syria between February and July 2022. The organization quoted deported Syrians that Turkish officials arrested them from their homes, workplaces and on the streets, and detained them in bad conditions, they beat and abused most of them, forced them to sign voluntary return forms, took them to the border crossing points with northern Syria, and forced them to cross at gunpoint.
