Europe’s Catholic Justice and Peace Network has condemned Turkey’s current intervention in Syria as a violation of international law and demanded an immediate ceasefire.
“The attack by the Turkish military forces, with the support of some radical Muslim groups, was a violation of international law,” the Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions, headed by Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, said in a statement.
“It has had unforeseeable consequences for the entire region, where various ethnic and religious minorities are now threatened. There have been many civilian casualties and deaths, while the massive devastation is to be lamented”.
The statement was issued as the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) vowed to continue its offensive in northern Syria’s Afrin province, despite threats of counter-action from the Syrian army of President Bashar al-Assad.
It said that the Pope had condemned the “demon of war” and pleaded for “a world based on peace and justice” during Vatican talks with President Erdogan on 6 February. The statement added that the Turkish operation had hit one of Syria’s “last undamaged regions”, where hundreds of thousands of refugees had found shelter since the 2011 outbreak of civil war.
“Justice and Peace Europe expresses its solidarity with the threatened and affected inhabitants of Afrin,” said the statement on behalf of 31 national church commissions. It calls for the immediate establishment of a no-fly zone, an immediate ceasefire and the establishment of humanitarian corridors for medicines.
Turkey launched “Operation Olive Branch” in January to clear Afrin of Kurdish forces, which control around a quarter of Syrian territory, and claim to have killed hundreds while creating a security zone along the 500-mile Turkish-Syrian border.
Speaking on Monday in Jordan, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said his country would welcome help from Syrian forces in confronting fighters belonging to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The YPG’s political wing, the PKK, has been designated a “terrorist” group by the United States and the European Union.
However, Mr Cavusoglu warned that Turkey would stop Syrian troops from entering mountainous Afrin, raising the prospect of full-scale war.
Hundreds of critics of the operation, which was backed in January by the Istanbul-based Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, have been arrested in Turkey, most of whose 75 million inhabitants are Sunni Muslims.
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