Mr. Chair,

First, as the representative of a neighboring country witnessing daily the pain endured and the bravery displayed by the Syrian people for over ten years now, and providing care for and hosting 9 million Syrians, I would like to salute Omar and Waad for their courageous and powerful testimonies.

I also thank Prof. Claus Kreß and Catherine Marchi-Uhel of IIIM for their briefings.
I wish also to thank you personally for spearheading the organization of this timely meeting. It is critical that we keep the topic of accountability high on the agenda of the Security Council.

Mr. Chair,

For more than a decade now, Syrian people have suffered greatly in their unrelenting quest for freedom and dignity. They have endured unspeakable pain and loss due to the atrocities of the regime. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed. The Syrian regime has abducted, besieged, bombarded, tortured, sexually abused, and forcefully disappeared the people of Syria. They have been denied food and medicine, and their children have been recruited as child soldiers. Tens of thousands more have perished and continue to languish in prisons without due process.

Throughout the conflict, the regime has also resorted to chemical weapons in the war it waged against its own people. The audacity of the Assad regime clearly demonstrates the grave consequences of impunity.

Such war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot and should not go unpunished. We must utilize all available avenues to pursue accountability for the use of chemical weapons and therefore welcome IIIM’s expanding work.

Mr. Chair,

You have underlined that the Security Council needs to acknowledge the prevailing accountability gap in Syria. For over a decade, it has failed to do so. Despite well-known disagreements within the Council, Syrian people’s call for justice and accountability did not fall on deaf ears.

The creation of the IIIM by the General Assembly demonstrated the membership’s unwavering commitment to ensuring accountability for crimes committed in Syria. After all, it is the collective legal and moral obligation of the entire membership to protect Syrian civilians against the atrocities of the regime, and to hold the perpetrators accountable.

There can be no lasting peace without accountability and transitional justice. This is also the only way to foster reconciliation among Syrians, to prevent the re-occurrence of such crimes in the future and allow for a genuine political transition to a new Syria. This will also enable the return of Syrians to their homes in a voluntary, safe and dignified manner.

As a co-sponsor of the General Assembly resolution which established the IIIM, Türkiye welcomes the impressive progress of IIIM’s operations across all aspects of its mandate, despite many challenges.

We also applaud the cooperation between the IIIM and the OPCW as well as civil society. Collaboration with civil society has proven crucial for the effective implementation of the Mechanism’s mandate. Indeed, civil society actors remain main agents for documenting the most serious crimes committed by the regime and terrorist organizations. We commend their bravery and express our appreciation to the Netherlands and Switzerland for their support to the Lausanne Platform.

Together with OPCW, IIIM plays a key role in ensuring that these crimes will not go unpunished, and that impunity does not take root in the post-conflict Syria. The landmark ruling of the Koblenz Court in February which sentenced a former intelligence agent of the Syrian regime on charges of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, is an important step in the right direction. We also recognize the importance of the Caesar photos which documented the systematic nature of torture in Assad prisons, the subsequent trials in Koblenz, and the ongoing investigation in France.

However, the road ahead to justice for atrocities committed in Syria will be both long and arduous. We will need to be steadfast in our commitment to ensure comprehensive and impartial accountability for years to come.

Mr. Chair,

In September, the UN published the first official death toll since 2014. Therein, more than 350 thousand individuals killed in Syria are identified. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights declared that this is a conservative estimate indicating the minimum verifiable number of deceased. Despite this fact, these Syrians were identified by their full name, their place and date of death. It is only right that we accord them the dignity in death that the Syrian regime took from them in life and recognize the unjust and unwarranted deaths of many more innocent Syrian civilians.

The onus is upon all of us to hold the regime to account. Türkiye will continue to fight for accountability in Syria and work towards achieving a political settlement in accordance with the Security Council Resolution 2254.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.