Operation Peace Spring, a military offensive launched by Turkey in northeastern Syria on October 9, promises to create yet another humanitarian crisis. This Turkish military operation against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), composed primarily of Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian militias, came on the heels of the United States announcing the withdrawal of American troops in the region. The SDF is led by the People’s Protection Units, a Kurdish militia abbreviated as YPG. The U.S. considered the SDF as its key ally in the fight against ISIS. Turkey, on the other hand, considers the group a terrorist organization with links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), with whom it has a troubled and bloody past.
The Trump administration’s October 6 decision to withdraw its troops was seen as a “green light” for Turkey’s operation to expel the SDF from the Syria-Turkey border region, creating a 30 km-deep safe zone inside northern Syria, where it plans to resettle the 3 million Syrian refugees it is currently hosting.
Many people often ask us, “Why do you insist on holding on to the past? You have an independent country now, move on, get busy building.” We don’t hold on to the past because we want to. The past won’t let go of us.
Generations later, we experience trauma on top of trauma because the original crime was never acknowledged by the perpetrator. It is also not lost on us that the country that gave its tacit consent to this latest episode has been dragging its heels on recognizing the Genocide for decades. We were right not to let go because we knew that history would repeat itself.
And yet, that is no consolation. Although Armenians across the world participated in Kurdish solidarity protests this past weekend, feelings of helplessness and futility are crippling. When our forefathers were being slaughtered, we wanted the world to stand up and stop it. But weary from war, no Great Power was willing to put troops on the line to take the Armenian Mandate, to protect the survivors in a new country that the Paris Peace Conference had promised them. Turkey consolidated its gains in a land emptied of Armenians. Is that the legacy we want to leave to the grandchildren of today’s Kurdish survivors?