Turkey have slaughtered 165 Kurdish civilians including 32 children since the start of the UN Syrian ceasefire.

Turkey have killed 165 civilians as part of their invasion of the autonomous Northern Syrian region of Rojava in spite of a UN Security Council Resolution ordering a total cease of hostilities in Syria.

According to the Media Center of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) General Command, since the ceasefire began on the 20th of January 2018, 165 civilians, including 28 women and 32 children have been killed by Turkish forces - representing about 3 civilian murders every single day.

On the 8th of March the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army captured the town of Jindires, only 13 kilometres away from the city of Afrin. A splinter group of the Free Syrian Army who were armed by the US and UK until 2017, the Turkish-Backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA) are composed of various Islamist and ISIS-aligned factions.

A former ISIS commander from the North-East of Syria told the Independent newspaper in February that ‘most of those who are fighting in Afrin against the YPG [People’s Protection Units] are Isis, though Turkey has trained them to change their assault tactics’.

‘Turkey at the beginning of its operation tried to delude people by saying that it is fighting Isis, but actually they are training Isis members and sending them to Afrin', he added.

Radicals from the so-called Syrian Free Army inside the Yazidi village of Qastel Jando near #Afrin. They are saying in the video "These are the markets of the pigs" referring to the Yazidis. Three elderly Yazidis are missing after the forces took over the village. pic.twitter.com/hxg47LFfqk

— Murad Ismael (@murad_ismael) March 9, 2018

Contrary to Turkey’s claims that they are invading Afrin in order to defeat ISIS, the US have confirmed that ‘there are no IS fighters in the [Afrin] region’. Why would there be, considering that the YPG have accepted US support (perhaps unwisely) precisely due to their commitment and efficacy in fighting ISIS and related Islamist extremists in Syria?

Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army forces are now a stones’ throw away from the regional capital of Afrin, and are looking overwhelmingly likely to unseat the libertarian, pluralistic and feminist commune of Rojava and replace it with whatever variant of 14th century Salafism is in vogue at the moment.

The NATO member Turkey, meanwhile, face not even a hand slap for their cleansing of a sovereign and peaceful Kurdish people south of their border under the demonstrably false auspices of ‘fighting terrorism’.

If the YPG and the people of Rojava were genuinely sympathetic to ISIS, the ever-entrepreneurial Erdogan would be selling them oil and getting rich off the carnage. Unfortunately for the people of Afrin, they aren’t ISIS; they are just a group of Kurds who wish to self-govern under principles of equality and liberty, and therefore the once democratic but now increasingly fascistic nation of Turkey will crush them like a bug.