Settlers in the north: Eugene Kontorovich, Erielle Azerrad, ‘Settlers in Syria: Turkey’s Population Transfers and the Geneva Conventions’, Emory International Law Review, 40, 2026, pp. 535-564 | settler colonial studies blog

Settlers in the north: Eugene Kontorovich, Erielle Azerrad, ‘Settlers in Syria: Turkey’s Population Transfers and the Geneva Conventions’, Emory International Law Review, 40, 2026, pp. 535-564

23Jun26

Abstract: This Article is the first work of legal scholarship to examine Turkish population transfers in northern Syria, which constitute perhaps the most aggressive movement of settler populations into occupied territory in current times. In particular, it examines the lawfulness of such movements under Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from “deport[ing] or transfer[ring] parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” In a series of major military operations beginning in 2018, Turkey has seized nearly 3,000 square miles of territory in two sectors in northern Syria and established control. While it receives scant attention in the Western press or in legal academia, Ankara continues to maintain its occupation of what it terms as “buffers” or security zones, apparently indefinitely. During its occupation of these areas, Turkey has overseen the movement of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people from within its borders into the occupied areas, significantly changing the delicate demographic balance there. The migrants are primarily Syrian Arab refugees previously residing in Turkey, internally displaced persons from elsewhere in Syria, and families of Turkishbacked Syrian National Army (SNA) fighters. But Turkey apparently has steered them to entirely different areas of Syria from those where they originate. This appears to be deliberate, using the Sunni Arab settlers to displace the local Kurdish populations and disrupt ethnic composition of formerly Kurdishmajority regions. Many of the migrants take over houses abandoned by Kurds, while in some cases Turkey or private Arab foundations have financed the construction of entirely new communities for the migrants in the occupied territories.

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