Tell Abyad District
Tell Abyad District ( ar, منطقة تل أبيض, Manṭiqat Tall Abyaḍ; ku, Devera Girê Spî) is a district of the Raqqa Governorate in northern Syria. The administrative centre is the city of Tell Abyad. Parts of the district are currently ...
of
Raqqa Governorate
Raqqa Governorate ( ar, مُحافظة الرقة, Muḥāfaẓat ar-Raqqah) is one of the fourteen governorates of Syria. It is situated in the north of the country and covers an area of 19,618 km2. The capital is Raqqa. The Islamic State ...
in Syria. Suluk is close to the border with Turkey. The population of the town is predominantly Arab.
History
In the early 13th century, during Ayyubid rule, the medieval geographer
Yaqut al-Hamawi
Yāqūt Shihāb al-Dīn ibn-ʿAbdullāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (1179–1229) ( ar, ياقوت الحموي الرومي) was a Muslim scholar of Byzantine Greek ancestry active during the late Abbasid period (12th-13th centuries). He is known for ...
noted that Suluk was "a town of Syria".
Syrian civil war
In June 2015, Suluk was taken over by the Kurdish
People's Protection Units
The People's Defense Units (YPG), (YPG) ; ar, وحدات حماية الشعب, Waḥdāt Ḥimāyat aš-Šaʽb) also called People's Protection Units, is a mainly- Kurdish militia in Syria and the primary component of the Syrian Democra ...
(YPG) in the course of their
Tell Abyad offensive
The Tell Abyad offensive or Martyr Rubar Qamışlo operation was a military operation that began in late May 2015 in the northern Raqqa Governorate, during the Syrian Civil War. It was conducted by the Kurdish-majority People's Protection Units ...
. Kurdish YPG forces were accused of expelling the entire population of the town (35,000 people), although they allowed only 10,000 of them to return, Furthermore, Amnesty International accused YPG of "razing" nearby villages, and "ethnic cleansing" of Arabs. They have denied the Amnesty report, calling it "biased, unprofessional and politicized" as it made no mention of the human rights violations by the Islamic State.
On 27 February 2016, fighters of the
Islamic State
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
attacked Suluk, the village Hammam at‑Turkuman and Tall Abyad. At this point, the towns were not directly at the front to ISIL-held territory anymore and the jihadists were able to expel the Kurdish
People's Protection Units
The People's Defense Units (YPG), (YPG) ; ar, وحدات حماية الشعب, Waḥdāt Ḥimāyat aš-Šaʽb) also called People's Protection Units, is a mainly- Kurdish militia in Syria and the primary component of the Syrian Democra ...
in this surprise attack from Suluk and Hammam at-Turkuman. Kurdish security forces soon were able to encircle the attackers and recaptured the villages on March 3, 2016. One day before the recapture, IS jihadists executed 15 civilians with the charge of "Refusing to corporate with IS and helping the YPG earlier".
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 70 fighters from the
Islamic State
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
and 20 Kurdish fighters were killed during the clashes.
A spokesman of the YPG, Redur Xelil, accused Turkey of supporting the terrorists because some of them infiltrated from the Turkish border to the north. Turkey denied the accusations.
During the Turkish offensive in north-east Syria in October 2019, Suluk was captured by Turkey and the Syrian National Army.