Category: Syria

Syrian Financial Capital’s Loss Is Turkey’s Gain

Syrian refugees are pictured at Kilis refugee camp in Gaziantep, Turkey, on Nov. 1. An estimated 150,000 Syrians are reported to be living in the Turkish border town.

Maurizio Gambarini/DPA/Landov

There is a brain drain in Syria, an exodus of the skilled and the educated as the Syrian revolt grinds into a third year.

The health care system is one casualty, as hospitals and clinics are shelled and doctors flee the country.

The business community is another — particularly in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once the country’s industrial and financial hub.

As Aleppo was dragged into the war, many in the business community fled to southern Turkey, less than a two-hour drive away. Gaziantep, a Turkish border town, has become a new hub for Syrian businessmen.

At the recent opening of a new restaurant in Gaziantep, the excitement among Syrian exiles was all about the white creamy sauce served with the spicy chicken.

Syrians flocked to the recent opening of a new restaurant in Gaziantep serving a creamy garlic sauce known as creme toum. It’s a sign that some Syrians are beginning to think about Gaziantep as more than just a temporary home.

Deborah Amos/NPR

“Garlic, very important with chicken,” insisted customer Ahmad Showah, who has longed for Syrian cuisine since he came to Turkey seven months ago. For him, the traditional Syrian sauce was part nostalgia, part identity — a powerful reminder of home.

“Garlic, eggs, oil and spices,” said restaurant owner Mohamad Serjeh, listing the ingredients of Syria’s “special” sauce as he piled plates with crispy chicken. Serjeh brought his stainless steel chicken roasters from his ruined shop in Aleppo and opened the first Syrian restaurant in this Turkish border town.

More than 150,000 Syrians now live in Gaziantep, with more arriving. So Serjeh had a full house on opening day.

“There are about 17,000 Syrians here who have the wherewithal to buy this kind of food,” Serjeh said, “so we hope for a good success.”

That’s his rough calculation of Syrian exiles with means in just one Turkish town. Official data from the Turkish banking agency shows that Syrians have deposited almost $4 billion in Turkish banks — some of the cash transferred across the border on the backs of mules, packed by Syrians in a hurry to get money out. As the war has intensified, more than 400 factories have shut down.

Fuad Barazi is among the latest arrivals in Gaziantep. He owned a furniture store, a once-prosperous family business, in Aleppo. Barazi stayed as long as he could, caring for his elderly parents while delivering humanitarian aid. But a few weeks ago, he decided he had to get out of Aleppo.

“Last few months, it was devastating — horrible, actually. The bombs very near to us, power, no water. Also, and I have a sick dad, so I had to come,” Barazi said.

For the moment, he and his family are recovering from their ordeal, and not thinking of how long to stay in Turkey. But Barazi and others like him from Syria’s business elite are wondering when they can go back and rebuild the country’s economy — and, more broadly, what kind of country will Syria become.

The answers will determine Syria’s recovery, said Soli Ozul, a Turkish political commentator.

“When the best leave, then you end up with the brutes,” Ozul said. “I just don’t know how much of that elite went out and how many of them will want to return after, at least, there is a regime change.”

For now, Aleppo’s loss is Turkey’s economic gain, certainly in Gaziantep, a city with historical links to Syria. In Ottoman times, Gaziantep was part of Aleppo province.

And once again, the Turkish border city is intertwined with Syria. The Sanko Park mall was built a few years ago to cater to Syrians who easily crossed the border to shop on weekends. Now, more than 30,000 Syrian businessmen have come to Turkey to escape the war — attracted by government policies that allow them to open factories and offices and make lucrative deals, said Barazi, the furniture store owner.

Can Aleppo recover if the business community stays in Gaziantep?

“I guess not, because the businessman plays a major role in Aleppo,” Barazi said. “Aleppo will not survive without the businessmen.”

But even Barazi can’t say yet whether he will go back to rebuild what was once Syria’s financial capital.

March 30, 2013
UN rebukes Turkey over return of Syrian refugees

Witnesses say hundreds of Syrians bussed to border after clashes between refugees, Turkish military police at Suleymansah camp.

Syrian refugees in Turkey Photo: reuters

GENEVA – The UN refugee agency criticized Turkey on Friday for sending home at least 130 Syrians without its scrutiny and urged it to investigate the riot which sparked the departures that some witnesses said were forced.

Turkey denied on Thursday it had rounded up and deported hundreds of Syrian refugees following unrest at the Suleymansah border camp, highlighting the strain the exodus from Syria’s civil war is placing on neighboring states.

The Geneva-based United Nations agency reiterated the principle that forced returns violate international law and said they could not be used as a “punishment or deterrent”.

“UNHCR was not invited by authorities during the return process to monitor the procedures. Persons under international protection who have violated the law of the host country are subject to the relevant national laws and judicial procedures,” Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said in remarks emailed to Reuters overnight.

“Return to the country of origin, even voluntarily, is also subject to standards and procedures where individuals may be placed at risk on return,” she said.

The refugees returned to areas of northern Syria held by rebels fighting President Bashar Assad. UNHCR has no direct access to the area and does not know what happened to them.

Two Syrian refugees still in the camp and a camp official have said the refugees were forcibly deported. Turkish media reports said the protest began after a boy died in a tent fire blamed on an electrical fault.

Witnesses said hundreds of Syrians were bussed to the border after clashes on Wednesday in which refugees in the Suleymansah camp, near the Turkish town of Akcakale, threw rocks at military police, who fired teargas and water cannon.

“UNHCR would encourage authorities to assess any underlying issues which may have led to the incident which erupted in the Akcakale camp on 27 March, and where necessary to consider launching a review or as needed an investigation,” Fleming said.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said 130 people, identified on camera as being “involved in the provocations”, returned to Syria voluntarily, either because they did not want to face prosecution or because of repercussions from other refugees.

“Reports that this group was expelled across the border are incorrect,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

“As required by the temporary protection status and within the framework of the ‘open door’ and ‘non-refoulement’ principle, our country does not turn back Syrians wanting to come to Turkey or forcibly evict those in our country,” it said.

More than 1.2 million Syrians fleeing violence and persecution have registered as refugees or await processing in neighboring countries and North Africa, the UNHCR says. They include 261,635 in Turkey, mostly staying in 17 camps.

The UNHCR noted “the high standard of assistance and protection extended to Syrians hosted in Turkey” and commended its government and people “for their ongoing generosity and sheltering of those in need”, Fleming said

via UN rebukes Turkey over return of Syrian refugees | JPost | Israel News.

March 30, 2013
Turkey deports 600 Syrian refugees following protest over living conditions, official says

Turkish FM denies reports of forced evacuations, says 50-60 Syrians returned voluntarily; UNHCR reports riots in Jordan refugee camp.

By Reuters and The Associated Press

Syrian refugees make their way in flooded water at a temporary refugee camp, in the eastern Lebanese town of Al-Faour near the border with Syria, January 8, 2013. Photo by AP

Turkey deported at least 600 Syrians staying at a refugee camp near the border after they clashed with Turkish military police in a protest over living conditions, a Turkish official said on Thursday in remarks disputed by the country’s foreign ministry.

“These people were involved in Wednesday’s violence, they were seen by the security cameras in the camp,” an official in the camp told Reuters by telephone. “Between 600 and 700 have been deported. The security forces are still looking at the footage, and if they see more they will deport them.”

Turkey’s foreign ministry, however, denies forcibly deporting the Syrians and said about 50-60 had returned to Syria voluntarily.

“Some people have returned since last night, the numbers are closer to 50 or 60, and yes some of these may have been involved in the provocations from Wednesday but they returned of their own free will,” foreign ministry spokesman Levent Gumrukcu said on Thursday.

The United Nations refugee agency voiced deep concern on at the reports of mass deportations of Syrians from Turkey and said it had taken up the issue with Turkish authorities.[1]

“UNHCR is very concerned with reports of a serious incident and allegations of possible deportations from Akcakale Tent City in the past 24 hours,” Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters.

Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency is reporting that a riot broke out at a refugee camp for Syrians in Jordan after some of the refugees were told they could not return home.

Ali Bibi, a UNHCR liaison officer in Jordan, says it’s unclear how many refugees were involved in Thursday’s melee at the Zaatari camp. The riot broke out after some Syrians in the camp tried to board buses to go back to their country.

He says Jordanian authorities refused to let the buses head to the border because of ongoing clashes between the rebels and President Bashar Assad’s forces in southern Syria, just across the border from Jordan.

Bibi says there were no immediate reports of injuries. He says Jordanian authorities promised to organize the refugees’ return home at another time.

In Damascus, activists say Syrian rebels are attacking army checkpoints in and around a key southern town that is a gateway to the capital. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebel attacks are under way in Dael and surrounding areas.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activists group, says regime bombardment of Dael killed at least three people on Thursday. Dael lies in the strategic Daraa province, which borders Jordan.The fighting comes as Mideast powers opposed to President Bashar Assad have stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels in coordination with the U.S. in preparation for a push on the Syrian capital.

That’s according to officials and military experts who spoke to the Associated Press in Jordan. The UN says Syria’s two-year civil war has killed more than 70,000 people.

via Turkey deports 600 Syrian refugees following protest over living conditions, official says – Middle East – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

March 29, 2013
Mortar kills 20 at Damascus university as Turkey denies expelling refugees

Mortar kills 20 at Damascus university as Turkey denies expelling refugees

Syrian rebels bring war to capital as UNHCR investigates claims that Turkey forced refugees back across border after protest

Martin Chulov in Beirut

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 March 2013 19.34 GMT

A Syrian refugee carries her children near the Turkish border. Ankara denied expelling scores of Syrian refugees after a protest. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty

A mortar strike on Damascus university killed about 20 students on Thursday, exposing the fragility of the capital’s most sensitive zone to attack.

Syrian officials blamed rebel groups for the strike, which wounded dozens more students. The opposition denied responsibility. All the victims had been in an outdoors cafeteria near the heart of the campus. It was the second consecutive day that mortars had hit the city. An attack on Wednesday struck near a hotel, causing damage but no casualties.

The presidential palace has in recent weeks also been hit by rockets and mortars fired by rebel groups, who have consolidated inroads they made earlier this year on the city’s southern and western outskirts.

The groups are a mix of Islamist-leaning and more secular brigades. The jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is also active, particularly in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp nearer the heart of the city, which it entered in January.

Throughout the first three months of the year, loyalist forces and rebel groups have fought a series of savage battles on the urban fringes, often involving rockets and mortars and air strikes from the regime side. Rebels have been trying to cut off access to Damascus airport and to use the area as staging ground for an assault on the capital, which is protected by two of the Syrian military’s most capable divisions and a large special forces unit.

Loyalist forces also command the high ground around Damascus and use mountains and ridges to shell rebel-held areas.

Central Damascus, despite resounding to the sound of regular incoming and outgoing fire, has not been a main battlezone. Despite prolific military checkpoints, life in the city has appeared more normal than in many other Syrian towns and cities, allowing officials to project an air of “business as usual”.

However, a succession of apparent suicide bombings, including an attack last week inside a mosque that killed a leading Muslim imam, are eroding trust in officials to keep the war far from the most important state institutions.

Large numbers of Damascus residents, including much of the middle class and refugees, have fled the city for Lebanon or Jordan, both of which are now groaning under the influx. Lebanon alone is believed to be hosting 350,000 children of school age. Many thousands more have not been registered by authorities.

Aid dollars have started to reach the sprawling tent cities that are housing the refugees, who number more than one million with those who have fled to Turkey included. The onset of spring, after a sharp but mercilessly short winter, has eased housing fears, but the camps remain in desperate need and often squalid.

Brawls broke out at a camp near the Jordanian border on Thursday and Turkish riot police used water cannons in a camp in Akçakale after refugees protested over the death of a child from a tent fire, in which three other people were also wounded.

The UNHCR, the UN refugee body, said it was investigating claims, denied by Turkey, that up to 60 Syrians from the camp’s 25,000 residents, had been forced to return to Syria after the disturbance.

via Mortar kills 20 at Damascus university as Turkey denies expelling refugees | World news | guardian.co.uk.

March 29, 2013
Turkey and Israel Feel the Effect as Syria’s Civil War Fuels Tensions at Borders

By SEBNEM ARSU and RICK GLADSTONE

ISTANBUL — Border tensions caused by Syria’s civil war worsened on Thursday, as Turkey threatened to prosecute or deport 130 refugees implicated in a violent protest, and Israel reported rising numbers of injured Syrians seeking medical help on the Israeli side of their disputed boundary.

The tensions, which underscored how the Syrian conflict is threatening the region’s stability, came as international diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict faced new complications. Russia, a major supporter of the Syrian government, suggested that the special Syria envoy of the Arab League and United Nations had lost credibility because the Arab League had sided with the insurgency.

Turkey, like Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, has accepted tens of thousands of Syrian refugees since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began two years ago. The Turks threatened for the first time to deport a group of refugees after a riot at one of Turkey’s 17 refugee camps on Wednesday, a threat that alarmed the United Nations refugee agency, which said such a move would violate international law.

Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, said in an interview that a forced return would breach legal protections that prohibit host countries from forcing refugees out.

Turkey changed its stance on Thursday, saying that the refugees would not be deported but had agreed to leave voluntarily after having been told that they would face prosecution if they stayed.

The Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said the group of refugees “wanted to use the right to voluntary return, and left for Syria.”

A local government official in Turkey confirmed this Thursday afternoon, saying, “A deportation is out of question, and we cannot deport them when we do not have the right to do so according to the terms of temporary protected status.”

The 130 Syrians had been identified as residents of the Suleiman Shah camp, in the township of Akcakale in Sanliurfa Province, who had been involved in a riot on Wednesday that damaged the camp’s facilities, including a medical center.

The circumstances behind the riot are in dispute, but it may have started after a fire in a tent that killed a 7-year-old girl and injured her two sisters.

Television images showed dozens of people hurling stones inside and outside the camp, cars with broken windows and damaged laptops inside a press vehicle.

Camp security officers, unable to contain the violence, called in the military police, and images on television showed armored military vehicles moving into the camp. The military police tear-gassed and hosed down the protesters.

The Turkish government said that the protest broke out when a crowd gathered outside the camp demanding entry. With 35,000 refugees, the camp is full, another local government official said, denying that the protest was linked to the fire, which he attributed to faulty electrical wiring.

“It was clearly an act of provocation, which started at the gate, outside the camp, far from where the fire broke out,” the official said.

Unlike Syria’s other neighbors, Israel — which remains in a technical state of war with Syria — has not accepted any Syrian refugees. But it has become increasingly concerned as fighting between Syrian insurgents and loyalists has crept close to the decade-old cease-fire line in the Golan Heights. An Israeli military official said Thursday that it had bolstered medical teams on the frontier because of wounded Syrians seeking aid.

The latest such episode occurred on Wednesday, when several Syrians arrived at the demarcation fence. Israeli Army medical crews attended to most of them on location and returned them to Syria, but two who had suffered severe head wounds were taken to a hospital in Nahariya, in northern Israel.

One of them died soon after, and the military transferred his body back to Syria early Thursday with help from United Nations peacekeepers in the area, according to Haggai Einav, a spokesman for the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. The second remained in serious but stable condition on Thursday after having three operations, Mr. Einav added.

At the United Nations, Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador, enlarged on remarks Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov had made in Moscow, saying that the Arab League was playing a “destructive” role in international attempts to peacefully resolve the Syrian conflict because it had granted Syria’s vacant seat to the main opposition coalition, which seeks to topple Mr. Assad by force.

Mr. Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that the Arab League’s action had raised serious questions about the role of Lakhdar Brahimi, the special Syria envoy who represents both the Arab League and United Nations. Mr. Churkin said Mr. Brahimi should distance himself from the Arab League.

A spokesman for Mr. Brahimi said he had no immediate comment. Mr. Brahimi was appointed the joint envoy last August.

“The Arab League has basically taken itself out of the joint effort,” Mr. Churkin said at a news conference, criticizing opposition supporters as concentrating on a military solution while merely “paying lip service” to a political one.

“Now, instead of dialogue, we have a group of people whose legitimacy has been established from outside the country,” Mr. Churkin said. “Their legitimacy does not have any ground in Syria, no elections.”

Mr. Churkin dismissed the opposition group, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as “an international traveling thing” and described its work as “chaotic,” with a constant parade of new leaders.

He said Russia still maintained hope for a political settlement, although critics maintain that it has done little to actually push Mr. Assad in that direction.

Mr. Churkin also said the Syrian opposition’s aspiration to take Syria’s seat at the United Nations would probably fail.

“We’ll oppose it very strongly,” he said. “The U.N. is an intergovernmental organization. You simply do not seat opposition groups who have not gone through the process of legitimization.”

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 29, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey and Israel Feel the Effect as Syria’s Civil War Fuels Tensions at Borders.

March 29, 2013
Istanbul Symphony Orchestra plays to draw attention to Syria

ISTANBUL – Anatolia News Agency

Istanbul’s CRR hosted on March 25 a concert to benefit Syria. The Istanbul Symphony Orchestra played under the baton of Bosnian Emir Nuhanovic

Syrian violinist Ali Moraly made an appearance as a soloist. AA photo

The Istanbul Symphony Orchestra performed March 25 under the baton of famous Bosnian orchestra conductor Emir Nuhanovic. The concert at Istanbul’s Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall (CRR) was organized to draw attention to the human tragedy in Syria and hosted Syrian violinist Ali Moraly as a soloist.

Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik, who made a speech before the concert, said that while optimism was in the air all around the world in the 1990s, the people of Sarajevo faced a wild massacre. He said he had been a student at the time.

“We students were organized to find out what we could do for Sarajevo. Although Turkey mobilized its all options, we did not have today’s opportunities and all of us felt the pain and sorrow of our helplessness for Sarajevo. In the middle of the tragedy, the late Alija Izetbegovic called for the master conductor Nuhanovic and asked him to make their voice be heard all around the world. The modern world, which had nothing to say for Sarajevo, began to speak again.”

Tragedy before the whole world

Çelik said Syria was currently experiencing a tragedy before the whole world and the concert was held to draw attention to this drama. “There are 70,000 martyrs and 250,000 missing. There are millions of refugees outside the country, and there are millions of people who had to leave their place in Syria. Now, in order to make a call for all human beings, art will make its voice heard for Syria under the leadership of a great master. What should be asked here is how those who remain silent against the events in Syria could do it. We will give the most meaningful answer to this tonight in this venue,” he said.

The minister said the question of what art is would find the most meaningful answer that night as well.

“Rather than watching the tragedy in Bosnia in the 1990s, Turkey did its best. It is trying to do the same for Syria today. But there is a difference today, and everybody feels what this difference is. Today we are all around the world not only with our people but also with all organs of the state. We do not stand by those who slaughter and oppress. We are not following a policy of lack of conscience.”

Çelik said it was not an ordinary night but rather the 70,000 martyrs and hundreds of thousands of missing were together with them.

“We will be the tongue of millions of refugees tonight. This is art. The losses of Bosnia will meet the losses of Syria, and Istanbul will bring brotherhood to Aleppo, Damascus and Sarajevo once again.”

‘Mothers bury their own children in Syria’

At the opening of the concert, Nuhanovic addressed the audience, saying Europe and most of the world did nothing for the incidents in Sarajevo and only Turkey had made efforts against this tragedy at the United Nations.

He said that to draw attention to the events, they gave a concert with conductor Zubin Mehta in 1994 under hard circumstances upon the order of Izetbegovic. “The tear of a child is worth the wealth of the world. Mothers bury their own children now in Syria.”

Following the speeches Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio in G-Minor, Maurice Jarre’s “The Message” and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony were performed at the concert.

March/27/2013

via MUSIC – Istanbul Symphony Orchestra plays to draw attention to Syria.

March 27, 2013