Afrin
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Arabic عفرين, DMG ʿAfrīn Kurdish عەفرين Efrin Afrin |
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| Coordinates | 36 ° 31 ′ N , 36 ° 52 ′ E | ||
| Basic data | |||
| Country | Syria | ||
| Aleppo | |||
| ISO 3166-2 | SY-HL | ||
| height | 240 m | ||
| Residents | 36,562 (2004) | ||
 Afrin in the fertile valley of the river of the same name from the south. The strip of trees consists of pomegranates .
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Afrin ( Kurdish عەفرين Afrin or Afrin; Arabic عفرين, DMG ʿAfrīn ) is a city and seat of the Afrin district it administers in the Aleppo governorate in northwest Syria , which is predominantly inhabited by Kurds .
location
The district borders in the north on the Turkish province of Kilis and in the west on the Turkish province of Hatay ( Kurdish خەتای Xetay , the geographical name for the country southwest of the Euphrates). The Afrin district includes the Kurd Dagh ( Kurdish چیایێ کورمێنج Çiyayê Kurmenc , Arabic جبل الأكراد Jebel al-ʾĀkrād '"Mountain of the Kurds" or "Kurden Mountain"'), which extends to the west as far as the Turkish border and is bordered in the south and east by the Afrin River, the district extending over the river in this direction. Afrin has an area of 2033 km² and consists of seven municipalities: the city of Afrin in the center, Dschindires , Scharan, Mobetan / Mahbatli, Rajo, Bulbul, Maydana and Schiyê, with a total of 366 villages or hamlets such as B. Katma , Kastall , Qîbar and Rajo . The name Afrîn means "(blessed) creation" in Kurdish.
The city of Afrin is located on two different road connections, each 55 kilometers northeast of Aleppo in the wide Afrin river valley , over which two bridges lead within the village. The central square is the bus stop, the old residential area extends over the hill rising north of it.
history
The late Hittite settlement hill Tell Ain Dara from the 10th to 8th centuries BC is located eight kilometers south of the city . At the time of the Ottoman Empire , the Afrin region belonged to the former Kurdish province of Kilis , which is now in Turkey. After the border agreement between France and Turkey in the 1920s, Afrin first came to the League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon , from which independent Syria emerged in 1946.
Today's market center in Afrin was founded in the 19th century. The population in 1929 was 800 and rose to around 7,000 by 1968. For 2003, 44,121 inhabitants are given.
On March 21, 1986 Kurds rioted against the government, in which the police killed three people, including a young girl, during a Nouruz celebration . When the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, was arrested in 1999 , clashes and rioting broke out between angry young people and the police. In the course of the Syrian civil war , the Kurdish party PYD took control of Afrin in June 2012 .
Under the name Operation Olive Branch , Turkey launched a military offensive in the Afrin region in January 2018 after Russia opened the airspace to attacks by the Turkish Air Force. The Turkish armed forces occupy the city on March 18, 2018, together with militias of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Kurdish fighters of the YPG and SDF , who had previously fought against the Turkish troops in the area, apparently gave up the city of Afrin without a fight and withdrew.
population
In 2000, according to two different sources, about 200,000 or 450,000 people lived in the Afrin district. In 2004, the general Syrian census counted 36,562 inhabitants for the urban area of Afrin. Although the Syrian government has encouraged the settlement of Arabs since the 1970s, the Kurds continued to form the majority of the population. There were also some scattered Arab Bedouins and Roma . In the early 1920s, many Kurds from southeastern Turkey fled to the region that had previously been inhabited by Kurds. Many Afrin residents now live abroad. Due to high unemployment and rural exodus, many Kurds have fled to the metropolises of Aleppo and Damascus in recent decades , where they sometimes settled in the slums.
In June 2015, the online magazine Al-Monitor estimated around 700,000 inhabitants in the region. Many of them are Kurdish refugees who fled Aleppo due to the Syrian civil war.
Most of the residents in the Afrin region are Sunni Muslims. There was before the Civil War about 7500 to 10,000 Yazidis who here Zawaštrī be mentioned. Just a few centuries ago, more Kurds committed to Yezidism than today. There are also a few Kurdish Alevi villages.
There are pilgrimage sites in several remote places in the region, which are mostly visited by Sunnis, but also by other religious communities with the exception of the Yazidis. The most famous holy place in popular belief is Nebi Huri . Another local Islamic saint is ayḫ Rāšid, whose tomb ( Qubba ) is known as Ziyārat Ḥanān ( Ziyārat , "pilgrimages to holy tombs") and is located seven kilometers northeast of Afrin on a hill.
Before the occupation of the city by Turkish troops and militias allied with them on March 18, 2018, the bulk of the population fled. Since then, the Turkish rulers have been targeting Arabs, including Syrian Palestinians , and Syrian Turkmens, in the houses left behind by the Kurds who have fled their homes . Turkish President Erdoğan sees Arabs as the rightful owners of Afrin, to whom he wants to return the city, as he said several times during Operation Olive Branch.
language
Kurds in the Afrin region speak Kurmanji , the main Indo-European dialect of the Kurdish language. Because of some regional peculiarities, their dialect is also called Efrînî (i.e. Afrinian) within the western dialect of Kurmanji . Characteristic of the Afrini is the pronunciation of û as above , the e as a and a as ɔ: . In addition, “she” and “he” (3rd person, singular and plural) are not only called “ewan, wana, wî, wê”, but also “gendio” and “gêndih”. "Gêndih" (plural: "Gêndiyan") is only used in the nominative case and mostly as a form of politeness. The Afrini dialect is also spoken in the Antep and Urfa regions .
Climate and Agriculture
There is a dry Mediterranean climate, with annual rainfall of over 500 to 600 millimeters mainly in the winter months. Even in dry years the rain is sufficient for the cultivation of winter crops, summer crops require artificial irrigation. The average temperature in January is 6–10 ° C. Snow can fall during the winter months, but freezing temperatures are rare. The average maximum temperature in July and August is 30–33 ° C.
In the Afrin Valley, intensive agriculture is practiced on deep red soils and with irrigation by diesel pumps from the groundwater, mainly wheat , cotton , citrus fruits , pomegranates , melons , grapes and figs are planted. The main crops in the whole region are olive trees , of which there are said to be more than 13 million around Afrin. These also partially thrive on the adjacent, stony hills of the northern Syrian basalt plateau, which is often only covered by a thin layer of soil. Winter cereals (wheat or barley) are usually grown on non-irrigated land.
Cattle are raised in small stables at the house for self-sufficiency or for the local market. In the villages yoghurt ( living in Arabic ) and cheese (lebne) are produced in-house.
University
In August 2015, a newly founded, previously unaccredited university began teaching in Afrin. Teaching was in Kurdish, which caused controversy. Critics complain that the course content is influenced by the ideology of the PKK or PYD . After the conquest by the Turkish armed forces and their allies, the university was closed and, according to information that Amnesty International received from the local population, did not reopen until August 2018.
sons and daughters of the town
- Joseph Bakir (* 1971), Syrian painter
- Kamal Sido (* 1961), historian
- Xelîl Xemgîn , singer
- Bangîn (Hikmet Cemil), singer
- Cemíl Horo (1934–1989), singer
- Ilham Ahmed , Kurdish politician
- Ebdo Mihemed , Kurdish singer
literature
- Thomas Schmidinger : Battle for the Kurdish Mountain - Past and Present of the Afrin Region. Bahoe Books , Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-903022-84-3
Web links
- Afrin. City and region in Syria. Weblog with photos by Abdallah Osman
Individual evidence
- ^ Eugen Wirth : Syria, a geographical country study. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1971, p. 376
- ^ The governorates of Syria and all cities of more than 35,000 inhabitants. citypopulation.de, July 20, 2009
- ↑ Vicken Cheterian: Poised to Profit. Le Monde diplomatique, May 2 # 013
- ↑ Florian Rötzer: Moscow drops the Kurds in Afrin. Retrieved February 7, 2019 .
- ↑ Erdoğan: Center of the Syrian city of Afrin under Turkish control. In: sueddeutsche.de . March 18, 2018, accessed March 18, 2018 .
- ^ "Syria war: Turkish-led forces oust Kurdish fighters from heart of Afrin" BBC of March 18, 2018
- ^ The Name and the History of Afrin. REEFNET 2009 ( Memento from April 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ General Syrian Census 2004 ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ). Syria Central Bureau of Statistics
- ^ Kurds eye new corridor to Mediterranean. Al-Monitor, June 22, 2015 ( Memento from June 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ "Pro-Turkish forces pillage Afrin after taking Syrian city" france24.com of March 18, 2018
- ↑ How Turkey conducts settlement policy. Der Tagesspiegel, June 12, 2018
- ^ Alfred Hackensberger: Erdogan's Chaos in Afrin. Die Welt, June 29, 2018
- ↑ Wirth, p. 101
- ↑ Aref Gabeau: The area of the mountains of the Kurds Afrin ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Syria's first Kurdish university attracts controversy as well as students ( Memento from January 21, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Syria: Turkey must stop serious violations by allied groups and its own forces in Afrin. Retrieved October 2, 2018 .