Turkish Pres Recep Tayyip Erdogan / Credit: Times of Israel
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Turkey has cut off access to electricity and water for more than a million people in north-east Syria through airstrikes against the separatist Kurdish-held Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), BBC News reported on Tuesday, November 19. The situation is all the more critical as the region has been struck by a drought.
The AANES is controlled by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebel group which has long fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey. However, the Turkish government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers the AANES to be a “terror state” next to the Turkish-Syrian border.
Erdogan ordered more than 100 attacks on oil fields, gas facilities, and power stations in the AANES between October 2019 and January 2024, BBC News reports.
Turkey has said the attacks were against “sources of income and capabilities” of “Kurdish terrorist groups,” namely the PKK, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
“The attacks have added to the humanitarian crisis in a region reeling from a years-long civil war and four years of extreme drought exacerbated by climate change,” BBC News noted in its report.
For its part, the AANES has stated that Turkey of seeking to “destroy our people’s existence,” BBC News said.
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