Turkish war crimes
[1] The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 extends the protection of civilians and prisoners of war during military occupation, even if there is no armed resistance, for the period of one year after the end of hostilities.
[5][10] The Ottoman Empire repeatedly denied the genocide was happening,[11][12] and the government of Turkey has continued these denials, arguing that those who died were victims of inter-ethnic fighting, famine, or disease during World War I; these claims are rejected by most historians.
[26] Avedian holds that the existence of the Armenian Republic was considered as the "greatest threat" for the continuation of Turkish state, and that for this reason, they "fulfilled the genocidal policy of its CUP predecessor".
[27] Preventing Armenians and other Christians from returning home, and therefore allowing their properties to be retained by those who had stolen them during the war, was a key factor in securing popular support for the Turkish National Movement.
[47] After occupying the city of Smyrna on 9 September 1922, Turkish forces began to systemically target local Greeks and Armenians, committing massacres against them, looting their shops and homes, and sexually assaulting women.
[57] The policy of deporting Ottoman Kurds from their indigenous lands began during World War I under the orders of Talaat Pasha, and continued after the founding of the Republic of Turkey.
[60] Although many Kurds were loyal to the empire (with some even supporting the persecution of Christian minorities by the CUP), Turkish authorities nevertheless feared the possibility that they would collaborate with Armenians and Russians to establish their own Kurdish state.
[66] In mid-1930, during the Ararat rebellion,[67] the Turkish Armed Forces committed large-scale massacres against Kurdish villages in Ağrı Province that showed support for the rebels, killing between 4,500[68] to 15,000 people, many of them civilians.
[91] In 1995, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that it was common practice for Turkish soldiers to kill Kurdish civilians and take pictures of their corpses with weapons they carried only for staging the events.
[100][101][102] In 2017, the Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) documented eleven cases since 2016 in which people have been abducted by men identifying themselves as police officers, then forced into transit vans.
[103] Human Rights Watch and Amnesty both released reports of widespread torture and rape of prisoners in Turkey spanning multiple decades, with Kurdish women – particularly those accused of helping the PKK – being frequent targets of sexual violence.
[107] Human Rights Watch documented many instances where the Turkish military forcibly evacuated villages, destroying houses and equipment to prevent the return of the inhabitants.
Additionally, the report stated that the government's disproportionate restrictions on movement and other arbitrary measures were resembling collective punishment, a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
[117][118] The Turkish policy of violently forcing a third of the island's Greek population from their homes in the occupied North, preventing their return, and settling Turks from mainland Turkey is considered an example of ethnic cleansing.
[129] Article Four of the Treaty of Guarantee gives the right to guarantors of Cyprus (Turkey, Greece, and the United Kingdom) to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs.
[130] Turkey intervened after Greece's military junta tried to create a union with Cyprus by force,[131][132] and the Council of Europe supported the legality of the first wave of the Turkish invasion that occurred in July 1974.
"[145] Human Rights Watch stated that Turkish border guards indiscriminately shot at refugees and asylum seekers attempting to flee the conflict zone into Turkey.
[152] The United States Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, said in an interview that Turkey "appears to be" committing war crimes in Syria, adding that there was footage showing the execution of Kurdish captives.
"[156] In addition, U.S. drones appeared to show Turkish-backed forces targeting civilians during their assault on Kurdish areas in Syria, these actions reported as possible war crimes.
[175][176][177][178] In late 2019, Turkey conducted an offensive into the northeast of Syria with the stated goal of expelling the SDF (claiming they had ties to the PKK) and resettling millions of Syrian refugees.
[158] The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic have reported repeated instances of Kurdish women and girls being subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence by the Turkish-backed SNA.
[187] Multiple videos emerged during Operation Olive Branch that showed what appeared to be Turkish-backed Syrian rebels mutilating the corpses of dead People's Defense Units (YPG) militants.
[189][190] In November 2019, Turkish-backed forces were accused of committing war crimes after mobile phone footage surfaced showing them desecrating the bodies of dead Kurdish fighters.
Smuggled artifacts then arrive in the Turkish cities of Izmir, Mersin and Antalya, where representatives of international criminal groups produce fake documents on the origin of the antiquities.
[194] Later on, reports emerged in 2019 that following the Operation Olive Branch, more than 16,000 artifacts such as glass, pottery and mosaics mostly from Afrin District, were looted and smuggled to Turkey by Syrian rebels.
Turkey carried out more than 100 attacks between October 2019 and January 2024 on oil fields, gas facilities and power stations in the Kurdish-held Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
[198][199][200] Since mid-2014, both the PKK and international media have accused Turkey of supporting and collaborating with the Islamic State (IS),[201][202][203] an Sunni Islamist terrorist group known for committing numerous crimes against humanity.
[206][207] When the Islamic State kidnapped 49 Turkish diplomats from Mosul in June 2014, a columnist said that Turkey was now "paying the price of its collaboration with terrorists", in reference to the Islamist factions in the Syrian National Army.
Among those receiving care was one of the top deputies of Islamic State chieftain Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Ahmet el-H, who was treated in a private hospital in Sanliurfa in August 2014.
[138][139] Trafficking in Persons Reports mentioned that Turkey provided support (operational, equipment and financial) to armed groups in Syria which recruit and use child soldiers.
