Category: Syria

By MARC CHAMPION, AYLA ALBAYRAK and NOUR MALAS

ISTANBUL—Syrian refugees streamed into Turkey on Monday, fleeing a crackdown in the country’s north, as Turkey’s foreign ministry convened a high-level meeting on its neighbor with members of Turkey’s intelligences service.

The Syrian military, meanwhile, said it had retaken control the town of Jisr al-Shoghour, where 120 soldiers were killed last week in an apparent mutiny.

On Monday, as the number of Syrians who have fled across the border reached close to 7,000 since last week, according to Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu Ajansi, the Turkish government dismissed media reports that Turkey was planning to create a military buffer zone just inside Syria.

“There are no such plans yet,” said Ibrahim Kalin, foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “If the number [of refugees] really goes up, then we are prepared for everything, but we have no plans to create a buffer zone.”

The Turkish foreign ministry meeting on Syria, which also included its ambassadors to Damascus and Beirut, was reported by Anadolu Ajansi.

Unrest in Syria

Despite the rising death toll from weeks of unrest, people across Syria continue to protest the government of President Bashar al-Assad. See events by day.

Turkey has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest supporters, but appeared to lose patience as Syrian forces triggered a refugee crisis on Turkey’s border in the lead-up to elections on Sunday, which Mr. Erdogan’s party won.

Hundreds of Syrians huddled under trees and makeshift camps in harsh rain and wind on Monday evening, said Mohammed Abdelwahab, a resident of Jisr al-Shoghour who is helping drive families from neighboring villages to the border. “We’re afraid the security forces will attack us at the border any minute,” he said. He estimated there were as many as 15,000 Syrians now waiting in makeshift camps at the Syrian side of the border.

“It poured rain and got chilly and it became a problem—the women were trying to take care of crying children, the men trying to get food,” said Mr. Abdelwahab. He said snipers patrolled villages near the border from which families were fleeing, with one man who went to get bread for the refugees suspected detained or killed.

People at the border said the flow of mini-bus traffic crossing into Turkey increased Sunday night, as thunderstorms set in and Syrian forces swept villages in the border area, although there was no sense of chaos.

In apparent anticipation of more refugees, workers of the Turkish Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross, began building a fourth tent camp Monday near the border, the Associated Press reported

Syria on Monday said the army “restored peace and safety” to Jisr al-Shughour after a military operation hunted down what the government said were terrorist gangs, and discovered a mass grave of 12 bodies of security force members. Two gunmen were killed and many others arrested in clashes on Sunday, the state news agency said.

Residents of Jisr al-Shughour on Sunday said some 160 tanks shelled the town for most of the day as an attack helicopter sprayed machine gun fire. The town had emptied out of most residents in the days leading to Sunday as it braced for the military attack.

Local residents and government opponents say the deaths of the 120 soldiers last week were caused not by terrorists, as the government claims, but by other government forces when the soldiers mutinied.

Write to Marc Champion at [email protected] and Nour Malas at [email protected]

via Syrian Refugees Flood Into Turkey – WSJ.com.

By SEBNEM ARSU and ANTHONY SHADID

KHIRBIT EL JOUS, Syria — Hundreds of Syrians displaced by a ferocious crackdown on the uprising here fled to the Turkish border by tractor, truck and foot on Tuesday, some huddling in muddy olive groves without shelter and food, residents said.

The scenes on both sides of the border, a 520-mile frontier that Syrians can cross without visas, brought yet another dimension to the three-month rebellion against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The repressive force of the state unfolded Tuesday, with the military expanding its deployment to restive regions in the north and east and security forces making more arrests, along with the consequences of thousands of lives uprooted.

In wrenching scenes, occasionally playing out under rare but torrential summer rains, some of the Syrians here spoke of the pain of flight in a region where land — as well as the attachment to it — stands as one of the most visceral notions of belonging.

“They think we are refugees, but we are not,” said a man who refused to give his name, holding a bag of bread and seeking shelter on the Syrian side of the border. “We have everything — our houses, properties and memories there. What would happen if we enter Turkey now and, when it’s time to return, find everything gone in our absence?”

The humanitarian crisis, along with the relentlessness of the crackdown, has drawn growing international condemnation, thrusting Syria’s leadership into some of its starkest isolation in its four decades in power. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a friend of Mr. Assad’s, urged him yet again to end the crackdown in a telephone call on Tuesday.

But so far, the Syrian government, led by Mr. Assad and a tight-knit, opaque circle, has signaled its intention to repress by force what it describes as an armed, religiously motivated uprising and what activists describe as a largely peaceful protest against the withering oppression of one of the Arab world’s most authoritarian states.

Residents in northern Syria said the military had deployed thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and jeeps in and around Jisr al-Shoughour, where insurgents, military defectors or a combination of both fought Syrian security forces earlier this month. The government retook the town on Sunday, prompting the exodus.

Reports from the town were contradictory, underlining the difficulty of reporting with authority in a country where foreign journalists are mostly barred. One resident, a 31-year-old government employee who gave his first name as Muhanna, said the town was relatively quiet on Tuesday, with some residents returning and electricity restored.

“The army received us and offered us bread and water,” he said.

But a driver from a nearby town who gave his name as Abu Khaled said Jisr al-Shoughour remained largely deserted, though the military had set up a base in the town’s hospital to direct operations in the conservative, predominantly Sunni Muslim region.

Activists and residents said tanks and soldiers were also moving east toward Deir al-Zour and Abu Kamal, a region near the Iraqi border dominated by extended clans. Video taken by residents showed a handful of tanks on a main highway, but some activists said the numbers of armored vehicles were larger, perhaps in the dozens.

Protests have gathered almost daily in Deir al-Zour, and clashes have erupted in Abu Kamal, a town inhabited by families that span the border with Iraq and Syria. One 27-year-old protester who gave his name as Abdullah said demonstrators hurled epithets as the tanks approached Abu Kamal, asking why the Syrian military was fighting its own people and not Israel, which seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war.

“Are you going to the Golan to liberate it?” he quoted them as shouting.

One local leader, Nawaf el-Bashir, said Syrian military forces had yet to enter Deir al-Zour, while Abdullah said they had already taken up positions inside the town.

Opposition activists have sought to rally Syria’s extended clans to their side, particularly the groups living in eastern Syria. Some activists speculated that the military’s deployment toward the region was meant as a show of force for a government that, at least momentarily, appeared to lose control of Jisr al-Shoughour and its hinterland.

“I think they want to signal strength to the tribes,” said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. “But it’s not an easy environment, and the people there don’t like anyone to intrude in their territory.”

via Fleeing Syrians Take Refuge Along Border With Turkey – NYTimes.com.