Afrin Human Rights Organization Spokesperson İbrahim Şêxo announced that the gangs seized the olive trees in the districts and villages, moreover they cut down 280 thousand olive trees and burned more than 20 thousand trees. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) also reported that the invading Turkish state looted olive oil stores and the oils have been smuggled.

Some traders explained that they face difficulty in finding oil on the market since the Turkish state does not allow products of Afrin to be sold in Syria, while the oil produced in the region is sold in foreign markets with Turkish labels.

TURKISH COMPANIES STEAL OLIVES IN AFRIN

Ibrahim Şêxo pointed out that in harvest season in 2018, 70 thousand tons of olive oil of Afrin were packaged in Turkey and sold to European countries by the invading Turkish state through its gangs. Spanish Publico Newspaper published a news that confirms the information given by Şêxo, and it was stated that the Turkish state sold the olive oils it smuggled in Afrin to the foreign market by stamping it as "Turkish good". Sexo added that in Afrin a company called 'Kerim Kurdi' has worked with Turkey’s intelligence and smuggled olive oil of Afrin to Turkey under the name of fictitious companies. He stated that merchants have to pay high fees to smugglers in order to smuggle olives from Afrin to the Syrian market.

According to the available data, while there are 18 million olive trees in Afrin, hundreds of thousands of trees were cut off or burned down after the occupation of the region by the Turkish state. The remaining ones were seized by the invaders, and the olive tree owners who could produce were held to ransom.