For Turkey, “the detainees (in Syria) should be recovered by the States of which they have citizenship”, recalled Hakan Fidan. The Turkish minister underlines the “fact that they were kept there for an indefinite period, without trial”, adding that the detainees “were kept by the PKK”, a Kurdish organization considered terrorist to which Ankara equates the YPG, the People’s Protection Units active in Syria.
To respond to Turkey’s security concerns, “we want the Syrian government to take over the security of the camps and prisons (in the northeast), and if this is not possible, Turkey is ready to help,” says Hakan. Fidan. “We must work together on the future of these camps, they cannot be there forever,” recognizes Belgian Minister Bernard Quintin.
In mid-December, the director of the Coordination Body for Threat Analysis (Ocam) Gert Vercauteren launched an appeal to the future government, via an interview in the daily Le Soir, to repatriate all Belgian fighters from ISIS detained in Syria. Without the prospect of an on-site trial, the Belgian state will have to resolve to “recapture” its 13 known ex-combatants who are detained in Syrian Kurdistan.
This number does not include women and children linked to jihadists from Belgium, who are in refugee camps in the same region. Several repatriations of children and their mothers have already taken place in 2021 and 2022.
Belgium
