The Syrian regime’s news agency SANA claimed on 17 February 2018 that the Turkish military used chemical gas in Afrin and this claim made it to some of the international media outlets as well. It was reported that six civilians suffered breathing difficulties and two of them were fatally injured in a poison gas attack “carried out by the Turkish military”.

 

However, neither SANA nor other media outlets have provided any evidence indicating that the Turkish military has ever used chemical weapons in Syria. The allegation was based on a video which showed people wearing gas masks in a hospital who bore no other indication of exposure to toxics such as convulsion, foaming at the mouth or vomiting. 

 

Moreover, unlike the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Turkish military in Afrin, earlier chemical attacks launched by the Assad regime in Syria were easily proved either with the biomedical samples taken from the victims or the soil. However, no such evidence is available regarding the alleged chemical attack of the Turkish military.

 

In addition, a US source in the White House told the Associated Press that “US thinks it is 'extremely unlikely' Turkey used chemical weapons” in Afrin while the head of Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group of the Syrian Civil War, stated that they could not confirm whether toxic gases were used. Turkish officials strongly denied the claim and described it as “black propaganda”.