TOUGH TIMES FOR TURKS ON BORDER WITH SYRIA
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 25 April 2012 14.02 BST
Traders and members of religious minorities bank on Bashar al-Assad
restoring stability in neighbouring country
Syrian families at the Reyhanli refugee camp in Antakya protest against
the Syrian leadership last month. Christians, Alevis and Alawites
in Turkey say Syria under Bashar al-Assad offered a haven for them
‘if things become ugly in Turkey’. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty
Images The car park of the central bus station in the Turkish border
city Antakya, a once-bustling junction of cars and coaches to and
from Syria, was almost empty. Four men sat around a low table,
playing cards. “That’s what we do all day now,” one of them said.
A previously flourishing border trade, which topped $2.5bn (£1.6bn)
two years ago, has been decimated by the violence in Syria and Turkey’s
hardening stance against the Assad regime. Local businesses in Antakya
are starting to feel the pinch.
Mustafa Gunsas, who works in the small ticket office of a local bus
company, described the slump. “We have 10 service buses and each used
to be full,” he said. “Now there are maybe two or three passengers in
every service bus [to the main station from where coaches leave]. I
lost all my tips. We used to eat chicken every day at home, but now
we can barely make ends meet.”
Mehmet, the owner of a textile shop across the street, said he had had
to fire all of his four employees. “Business dropped by 95%. There
used to be many Syrians who came for a day or two to shop here,
but that has stopped.” He paused. “Many of us want Bashar [al-Assad]
to stay, and stability to return to Syria. We were better off before.”
They are not the only Turks who quietly express support for the regime
in Damascus. Religious minorities including Christians, Alevis (a
Turkish Muslim sect) and Alawites (their Arabic-speaking counterparts)
are increasingly anxious that the government’s active support for
Syria’s armed opposition could have a distinctly negative upshot.
Cemil Mityasoglu, a Christian wholesale market trader from Antakya,
summed it up: “For many Alevis and Christians, Syria seemed like a
safe haven. For them it was reassuring to live so close to the Syrian
border, knowing that they could always go there if things became ugly
in Turkey.”
Turkey’s 20 million Alevis share some belief systems with Syria’s
Alawites, who count the ruling Assad family among their number.
Sympathy for Assad is not hard to find in the border Alevi and Alawite
communities near Antakya.
Ipek Arat, 36, in the town of Samandagi, works in a silk retailing
business that her father founded in 1952. She said she actively
followed the events in Syria on Facebook. “Here, people support Bashar
al-Assad. [The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is making
a big mistake.”
She criticised Turkey’s double standards: “Just as Turkey does not
want Syria or Iraq to support the PKK, the Syrian government does
not want Turkey to support the armed opposition. I think there is no
difference between the two positions.”
Ayhan Aslan, a district elder, also criticised Turkey’s AKP government
for its Syria policy. “We are the minority here. Who will protect us
if sectarian violence comes across the border? Certainly none of the
western governments who wish for Assad to be overthrown.”
Some minorities even report being on the receiving end of violence
at the hands of Syria’s opposition. Ferit, a Christian Arab born in
Turkey, was returning from his wife’s home town of Aleppo in December
when the family’s car was attacked just before the border crossing.
“They hit our car with iron bars, smashed the wing mirror on the
driver’s side, and damaged the wing.” The dents and large scratches
are still clearly visible.
Pointing at a house hidden in another orange grove just across the
road, he says: “They are Armenians. Further down, there are Alevi
families, some of our neighbours are Sunni.” Ferit frowns. “We all live
side to side here, why are they trying to pit us against each other?”
A few streets down, Ferit’s schoolfriend Ahmet was sitting in his
garden, chatting with his parents-in-law, Ibrahim and Meryem, who are
from Homs. At the end of February they fled their house in Hamidiyeh,
a predominantly Christian neighbourhood, to live with relatives in
Tartous, and two weeks ago, they joined their daughter Rana, their
three granddaughters and their son-in-law Ahmet in Samandagi.
“Armed men of the opposition have destroyed all 12 churches in the
neighbourhood of Hamidiyeh,” said Ahmet, a master tailor. He added
that many houses had been severely damaged, while others had been
vacated by people fleeing from the violent conflict in the city.
“In some cases, opposition members allowed people to take their
possessions,” Rana said. “But the insurgents live in the houses now,
fighting against the army.”
Asked if he had recognised any of the armed men, Ibrahim shook his
head. “Their faces were covered. Some of them wore bandanas that said:
‘There is no God except Allah.'”
Meryem said she has been threatened for not wearing a headscarf. “They
told us: ‘We will cover you up, too’ and ‘It will be your turn [after
the Alevis].’ We are very scared.”
Elsewhere it is pure economics that is worrying frontier Turks. Salih
Ceylan, an employee in a car rental company, said that the
deteriorating security situation in the border region now prevented
many people in Antakya and the surrounding villages going to Syria
to buy staples such as sugar, meat and tea, all of which are much
cheaper in the neighbouring country.
“A very large percentage of the people here live off smuggling, and
the Turkish government turned a blind eye. There is no industry in
Antakya, what else should people do?”
Yussuf Demiroglu, who has been running a fresh fruit and vegetable
export business with his brother for 10 years, said business had
dropped by 60% over the past year. “We used to sell about 200 tonnes
of fruit to Middle Eastern markets each day. Now we hardly sell this
much in four days.” To prevent further loss through rot, they have
to sell at cheaper prices.
Asked if any Syrian refugees have come to work for him, he said: “Yes,
but I turned them away. Most of the shop owners here are Alevi. They
do not want Sunni Syrians to work here.”
Taxi companies who used to circulate daily between Antakya and Aleppo
have been hard hit by the conflict. Ali Yurur, the owner of Yurur
Turizm, a cross-border taxi company, had already been forced to sell
one car out of his 20-strong fleet, and was about to sell another.
“Work dropped by 80%,” he explained. “I had to fire four employees,
five drivers are left. Turkish cars are now forbidden to cross into
Syria after four in the afternoon for security reasons.” A recently
installed border tax on every vehicle that crosses the Turkish border
more than four times a month adds to the financial pressure.
Yurur said many drivers were scared to work. “One of our drivers was
stopped by armed men in Idlib province. When he drove away they broke
the window of his car, but he got away unharmed.” Other drivers told
similar stories. A 45-year-old Turkish lorry driver, Suphi Ezer, was
recently shot at in Syria. “But while we are afraid to go, we need
to work,” one driver added. “How else would we put bread on the table?”
Another lorry driver, Ahmet Yilmaz, on his way to transport tomatoes
and peppers from Jordan to Romania, was less optimistic about the
success of the Syrian revolution and feared that Turkish involvement
had started to fuel strong anti-Turkish sentiment inside Syria.
Standing next to his truck at the Cilvegozu border crossing, he
pointed out 10 bullet holes on the body of his vehicle. “I have
driven through Syria for the past eight years, and had never had any
problems. Yesterday, on the road just after Hama, Syrian soldiers
opened fire on my truck.” He added that all armed opposition fighters
had vanished from the areas he had driven through. “Soldiers seem
to be in control of the roads and towns again. There are numerous
checkpoints everywhere.” He paused. “But this was my last trip into
Syria. I will definitely not go through there again.”