Tag: Syrians head to Turkey

  • Syrians hiding in Turkey

    Syrians hiding in Turkey

    Antakya, Turkey (CNN) — It didn’t take long for Ali Jadour to explain why he fled his homeland.

    111012105600 watson syria refugee turkey 00022926 story top

    The 22-year-old man pointed to his empty shirt sleeve, where his right arm was amputated above the elbow. Then he lifted his shirt to show the dark scars left by bullets that had penetrated his stomach and back when Syrian security forces opened fire last May at an anti-government protest in Idlib province.

    “They shot at us from helicopters,” Jadour said. “I was asking for freedom and democracy, nothing else.”

    Jadour is one of thousands of Syrian refugees living in a network of Turkish government-run camps along the border between the two countries. Most of the refugees have been here for months.

    The conditions at the Boynuyogun camp were relatively good, as far as refugee camps go. During a recent visit, the Turks were providing residents with free food, donated clothing and medical care. The government also offered Arabic-language school for the children, who played on jungle gyms and tried to help their parents sweep the freshly laid asphalt outside their tents.

    But the presence of such tent cities, often located within sight of the Syrian border, is a powerful reminder that a significant segment of Syrian society still lives in dire fear of its own government. The Turkish government says more than 7,500 Syrian refugees reside in camps.

    Harder to quantify is the growing number of unregistered Syrian refugees who have fled across porous borders to Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon after fleeing a crackdown that has claimed more than 2,900 lives, according to the United Nations.

    They include men like Mohamed Abu Aled, who — dressed in a paint-spattered shirt and wearing flip-flops — labors illegally on a construction site in Turkey nearly six months after he, his wife and 2-year-old daughter fled Syria.

    “This life has been forced upon us,” Abu Aled said as he cut strips of drywall. “It’s a refugee’s life.”

    Abu Aled said he became a wanted man in his native coastal city of Lattakia after he participated in a series of anti-government demonstrations. Because he repeatedly said “no” to the Syrian government, he sacrificed his house, his shop and a stable income for his family in exchange for life on the margins in a foreign country where he does not speak the language.

    Abu Aled’s eyes flashed when he was asked whether he had any regrets.

    “I didn’t sacrifice anything for the revolution. I’m still alive,” he said. “I have no regrets. … We are simply demanding our rights. We have the right to live the way people in other countries live.”

    According to the expatriate group Syrians in Istanbul, 4,000 to 5,000 Syrian refugees are hiding in Turkey. It’s unclear how many other Syrians have found themselves in similar straits after having fled to Jordan or Lebanon.

    “When they come to Turkey, some of them have some money, and they have an idea … that shortly the situation will be changed in Syria and they will go back,” said Omar Shawaf, a member of Syrians in Istanbul as well as the opposition Syrian National Council, which was recently established in Istanbul.

    “So they rent houses … but in a short time, they finish their money and come to be in a hard situation.”

    Shawaf knows all too well the disorientation that results from fleeing one’s homeland. In 1982, at age 15, he fled the Syrian military assault on the Muslim Brotherhood city of Hama, which by Amnesty International’s estimates left as many as 25,000 people dead. Shawaf has lived in exile ever since.

    The newest political refugees first take shelter in the Turkish border province of Hatay, near the churches and medieval cobblestoned streets of the ancient city of Antakya (Antioch).

    They include Huda, the single mother of two teenage girls, who until recently had a comfortable job as a social worker in Damascus. Huda asked not to be identified in order to protect her relatives still living in Syria.

    Upon arrival in Turkey several months ago, Huda said, she washed dishes, and her daughters worked with a local tailor to help make ends meet.

    They now live in a grimy apartment; the girls have not been to school since they left Syria. “We are very lonely here,” Huda’s eldest daughter, Fifi, said in fluent English.

    Like many of the other illegal refugees CNN interviewed, Huda said she spent most of her time indoors in order to avoid Turkish police. If caught, she could be deported for having overstayed her three-month visa.

    The Turkish government has referred to the displaced Syrians as “guests” rather than refugees. As a result, the refugees are denied certain legal protections, including as free education and the right to find legal employment.

    “We don’t want to play these cat-and-mouse games with the Turkish police,” Huda said. “We need documents to allow us to move legally. We need schools for our children. We need to be able to live here temporarily until the regime in Syria falls. Then we’ll go back to our country.”

    That was the declared condition for return of all of the dozens of Syrian refugees CNN has interviewed in Turkey over the past six months.

    And increasingly, they seemed to be pinning their hopes on the international community, praying that foreign pressure would bring the Damascus regime down.

    “This regime will fall. There is no doubt about it. Because all the people are protesting and the cost in blood has been enormous,” said Abu Aled, the shop-owner-turned-construction worker. “Most governments around the world will not accept to deal with (the Syrian) regime because they are criminals and cold-blooded killers. So there is no way out. We will one day go back to Syria.”

    via Syrians hiding in Turkey – CNN.com.

  • Syria Sends Tanks to Border Area Near Turkey, Holds Hundreds

    Syria Sends Tanks to Border Area Near Turkey, Holds Hundreds

    (Updates with death toll in third paragraph, more protests in sixth. For more on the Middle East turmoil, see MET.)

    July 1 (Bloomberg) — Syria’s army carried out attacks on anti-government demonstrators near the border with Turkey and detained hundreds at rallies across the country today, a human- rights activist said.

    At least 60 tanks were sent north to the border province of Idlib, part of a deployment that includes helicopters, Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, said by phone from Syria’s capital, Damascus. At least 10 people were killed and as many as 50 wounded in Idlib in the past day in raids on the village of Rameh, with more deaths reported today in Halab, he said. The Associated Press put the total at 12.

    Three people died during rallies in the central province of Homs today, Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, said by phone from Cairo.

    Security forces have killed more than 1,500 people since the start of the unrest, according Qurabi. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today that President Bashar al-Assad is “running out of time” to meet protesters’ demands. A U.S.- led effort to get the United Nations Security Council to condemn the violence was blocked by China and Russia.

    Arrests have been carried out in the Damascus suburbs of Barzeh, Douma, Harasta and Kaswa, and in the governorate of Raqa, Merhi said, while demonstrators including female students were detained in the northern city of Aleppo, where protests continued today. In Daraa, the southern city where the rallies against Assad’s rule began in mid-March, at least 200 people were held, Merhi said.

    Protests numbered about 400,000 people in Hama and about 100,000 in Homs, with major protests also in other cities, he said.

    National Dialogue

    Critics of Assad’s leadership met at a conference in Damascus this week, and his government set up a national dialogue committee. Most activists say such measures won’t work without policy changes. Assad blamed the protests on a foreign conspiracy last week, while also saying that the demands of demonstrators “have merit” and that reforms are needed.

    At least 20,000 people have been arrested since the start of the unrest, and half of them remain in detention, according to Qurabi.

    Thousands of Syrians have fled across the border to Turkey to escape violence in northern towns, straining relations between the countries. About 10,500 refugees are currently staying in Turkish camps, Turkey’s government said today. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will visit Syria during a tour of the Middle East beginning this weekend, Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency said.

    More ‘Resistance’ Possible

    Clinton said the Syrian government’s actions so far aren’t enough to begin a transition to democracy.

    Assad’s government can “allow a serious political process that will include peaceful protests to take place throughout Syria and engage in a productive dialogue with members of the opposition and civil society” or the government is “going to continue to see increasingly organized resistance,” Clinton told reporters in Vilnius, Lithuania.

    The U.S. and its European allies accepted defeat yesterday in their latest effort at the UN to pressure Assad to halt his crackdown.

    Russia led opposition that stripped U.S.-drafted language critical of the Assad regime from a Security Council resolution renewing the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission on the Golan Heights. Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa have blocked adoption of a draft resolution that would condemn the attacks and demand an immediate end to the Syrian violence.

    –With assistance from Bill Varner at the United Nations, Vivian Salama in Dubai, Emre Peker in Ankara and Nicole Gaouette in Vilnius, Lithuania. Editors: Ben Holland, Heather Langan, Karl Maier, Andrew Atkinson

    via Syria Sends Tanks to Border Area Near Turkey, Holds Hundreds.

  • Turkey watching dev’ts in Syria

    Turkey watching dev’ts in Syria

    By NICOLAS CHEVIRON

    July 1, 2011, 4:18am

    ISTANBUL, Turkey (AFP) — Turkey’s relationship with Syria’s embattled regime grows frostier each day and Ankara may withdraw support for President Bashar al-Assad if his crackdown on protests continues, analysts said.

    In public, top Turkish officials insist that policy towards their southern neighbour – of maintaining cordial relations while nudging Damascus toward democratic reform – remains unchanged, despite the intensifying unrest.

    Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu recently gave Assad lukewarm support, telling journalists his recent speech ”contained positive elements and indications in terms of reform,” according to the Anatolia new agency. But at a press conference last Friday, Davutoglu added, ”it is very important that concrete steps be made” in implementing some of the demands fuelling the protests.

    Analysts say that Ankara’s goodwill for Assad has been pushed almost to breaking point now that some 12,000 Syrian refugees have fled into Turkey after Assad’s troops cracked down on protests in their home areas.

    ”Turkey cannot guarantee its support for the Syrian regime,” said Sedat Laciner of the University of Canakkale. ”If it loses all legitimacy, Turkey cannot continue to support it.”

    Osman Bahadir Dincer of the strategic research institute USAK argued that Turkey gave Assad the space to reform at his own pace, but now that conditions in Syria have deteriorated so dramatically, Ankara is basically fed up.

    ”We have arrived at a point where the (Turkish) government is going to tell the Syrian government ‘the time has expired, we have given you time and you have done nothing,”’ Dincer said.

    He further argued that if a Libya-type scenario unfolds, and ”international actors decide something” regarding the situation in Syria, Turkey may side with the majority.

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has, since coming to power in 2002, improved relations with Syria, and encouraged Assad to reform, but without success, according to Dincer.

    via Turkey watching dev’ts in Syria | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online.

  • Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead

    Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead

    ANTAKYA, Turkey — Syrian security forces arrested scores of people across the country on Saturday as mourners took part in the funerals of six protesters killed Friday outside of Damascus, continuing a grim pattern of protest, death, mourning and repression that has been repeated week after week as the uprising in Syria enters its fourth month.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed in the security sweep on Saturday, according to Reuters, and two protesters were killed during the funerals.

    Syria has been gripped since mid-March by an unprecedented popular uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled with an iron fist for over four decades. The government has cracked down hard on the protests, killing more than 1,400 people and detaining more than 10,000, according to activists, who estimate that 20 were killed on Friday, 5 of them children.

    Violence in the rural northwest has driven more than 11,000 refugees into neighboring Turkey, where the Red Crescent, a local version of the Red Cross, said this week that 17,000 more were waiting to cross the rugged border. Hundreds have also crossed into Lebanon, The Associated Press reported Saturday, citing a Lebanese security official.

    Pallbearers carried the coffins of the dead through the streets of the Damascus suburb of Kisweh on Saturday as a column of mourners marched behind them, clapping their hands and loudly chanting “God is great,” according to a video posted online by activists.

    “We wanted a very big funeral to honor the dead and we planned to show the regime our answer to their killing,” said Ibrahim, 30, a farmer in Kisweh. “We are so angry and we will not forget our martyrs. The security men killed Hassan Shabib, who was 13 years old.”

    Activists estimated the number of mourners in Kisweh at 30,000, although the video posted online appears to show far fewer. Syria bars most foreign journalists from entering the country so it is difficult to verify the accounts of either the government or its opponents.

    As mourners in Kisweh buried their dead, security forces continued a wave of mass arrests in towns and villages across the country that activists and residents said began after midnight Friday.

    In Kisweh, dozens of people were arrested on Saturday and one was killed, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, a grass-roots group.

    Many residents were nervous, hiding in their homes and unwilling to talk to a visiting reporter out of fear of possible government retribution.

    Activists from the Coordinating Committees said there were also dozens of arrests in the Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh, where three people were wounded and one person, Riad al-Shayb, 18, was killed.

    A human rights activist in Damascus, who declined to be identified for fear of government retribution, called the situation in Kisweh and Barzeh “tense,” and said he expected the government to come down hard there in a bid to crush protests in the capital that activists said have drawn ever larger crowds.

    The Coordinating Committees said there were also mass arrests Saturday in Homs, Syria’s third largest city; Mare’a, a suburb of Aleppo; and the villages of Khan Sheikhoun and Jebel Zawiyah in the restive northern province of Idlib, where security forces have reportedly used scorched-earth tactics in recent weeks as part of a drive to retake a string of towns that appeared to have fallen beyond their control.

    The Committees had no estimate of the number of people detained. A spokesman for the group, Hozan Ibrahim, said they were primarily young people, a trend that he said reflected fear on the part of the authorities.

    “They are scared,” he said. “Young people are the ones organizing the demonstrations and this is the last thing they want to happen.”

    In Kisweh, hundreds of soldiers prowled the streets on Saturday in what local residents described as a manhunt for young people believe to have taken part in antigovernment protests. Backed by at least 15 tanks, uniformed soldiers from Syria’s conscript army went from house to house bearing a list of the names of wanted men.

    “They have lists with the names of pro-democracy activists who are behind the demonstrations,” said a resident who identified himself as Abu Muhammad, 45, a public employee. “The regime intends to punish us.”

    He said checkpoints barred anyone from entering the town, squeezed between the capital and the Danoun Palestinian refugee camp 12 miles south of Damascus.

    “I wanted to go to work this morning but I saw a large number of soldiers with uniforms standing near two tanks and they told me you cannot leave Kisweh today, go back home, no work today,” said Abu Muhammad. “The soldiers blocked all of the entrances to Kisweh and won’t allow anyone to leave it.”

    An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria.

    via Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead – NYTimes.com.

  • Turkey building giant tent city as Syrian refugees swell

    Turkey building giant tent city as Syrian refugees swell

    Turkey building giant tent city as Syrian refugees swell

    * 14 Syrian officers including two colonels crossed to Turkey

    * Tent city will accommodate up to 15,000 people

    * EU extends sanctions against Syrian and Iranian officials

    20110625 02APAYDIN: A giant tent city was springing up on Turkey’s frontier with Syria as concerns mounted Friday over a massive influx of refugees after Syrian tanks rolled into the border zone.

    Some 150 workers toiled in scorching heat by the village of Apaydin, some 10 kilometres (six miles) from the frontier, scrambling to expand a Red Crescent camp where more than 200 tents have already been erected. Another 1,000 tents will be ready in a week on the cleaned and levelled plot of 300 hectares (750 acres), claimed from pasture land, “in case of a massive influx” of Syrians, said village headman Omer Cagatay.

    On Thursday, Syrian security forces backed by tanks entered a border zone where thousands of people have massed to escape bloodshed, triggering a new exodus across the border.

    The Turkish authorities said Friday that 1,578 people had poured in, bringing to 11,739 the total number of Syrians sheltering in camps in the Turkish border province of Hatay. The latest wave included Syrians who had flocked to the border but hesitated to cross to Turkey, braving squalid conditions in the open air or in makeshift shelters of branches and plastic sheets, with scarce food and water.

    The arrival of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces finally impelled them to seek refuge in Turkey, overriding their concerns of an uncertain future on foreign soil. Members of the Syrian security forces have allegedly joined the fleeing Syrians. Speaking to AFP by telephone, a Turkish smuggler in contact with relatives on the Syrian side said that14 Syrian officers, among them two colonels, crossed to Turkey on Friday from the border village of Khirbet al-Joz, which the Syrian army overran the previous day.

    The tent city at Apaydin will be the largest, with a capacity to accommodate up to 15,000 people, Cagatay said. A worker said they had erected a two-kilometre fence around the camp. “We want to be ready,” another worker said, busily hammering a support pole for a tent designed to house a family of at least six.

    Ankara has already allocated $2.3 million (1.6 million euros) for the refugees and assured that no one seeking shelter in Turkey will be turned away. “We do not know how many Syrians could come but we are prepared for any possibility,” said Emre Manav, the Turkish foreign ministry’s local coordinator.

    The head of the Turkish Red Crescent, Tekin Kucukali, has said that his agency is in theory able to sustain up to 250,000 people. Such an eventuality however “is something that we absolutely do not desire,” a Turkish diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

    The Apaydin camp offer as much comfort as possible to the refugees: toilets, showers, cinemas, playgrounds for children, a small mosque, a field hospital, recreation areas and even a wedding hall. The piping system is almost ready and running water is to come soon to the tent city, equipped with floodlights for illumination.

    The worst-case scenario for Turkey, observers say, would be a spillover of unrest to Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city and economic hub, which lies only 90 kilometres (55 miles) from the Turkish border. “Aleppo is a bastion of the (Syrian) regime. If the revolt wins over the city, that would mean a humanitarian disaster,” said Nebil Al-Said, a Syrian dissident long based in Hatay. afp

    Meanwhile, European Union extended sanctions against Syrian and Iranian officials. The local government in Turkey’s Hatay province said the new wave of refugees who crossed the border on Thursday, mostly from makeshift camps just inside Syrian territory, brought the total number now registered in Turkish camps to 11,739.

    On Friday the European Union announced extended sanctions on Syria, including three commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard accused of helping Damascus curb dissent. Syria denies Iran has played any role in tackling the unrest.

    According to the EU’s Official Journal, the Iranians were Major-General Qasem Soleimani and Brigadier Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari of the Revolutionary Guard, and the Guard’s deputy commander for intelligence, Hossein Taeb. Four Syrian officials were also targeted, bringing to 34 the number of individuals and entities on the list which already includes Assad and his top officials.

    The United States, which has also imposed targeted sanctions on Syrian officials, said the reported Syrian army move to surround and target the town of Khirbat al-Joz just 500 metres (yards) from the Turkish border was a worrying new development. agencies

    via Daily Times – Leading News Resource of Pakistan – Turkey building giant tent city as Syrian refugees swell.

  • Syrian Army Visible from Turkey; Extra Buses Sent for Fleeing Syrians

    Syrian Army Visible from Turkey; Extra Buses Sent for Fleeing Syrians

    SyrianFlagcrpd(GUVECCI, Turkey) — Along the Turkey-Syria border last week there were reports that the Syrian army was just a few kilometers away. Border towns were emptied, thousands fled in fear. On Thursday, those Syrian forces finally came into view in the hills across from Guvecci, Turkey, reportedly storming the Syrian border town of Khirbet al-Jouz.

    A Syrian flag was raised over a watchtower where a Turkish flag had been flown by the refugees — soldiers and armored personnel carriers were visible. Snipers were reportedly on rooftops.

    So what does this mean for the thousands still camped out inside Syria?

    AFP reports several hundred broke through a fence to get into Turkey.

    A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees tells ABC News that the Red Crescent believes at least 600 came across into camps Thursday. A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman says they have sent more buses over than usual to pick up displaced Syrians but won’t know the final count until Friday.

    There were 10,224 refugees in Turkish camps Thursday morning — a number that’s been slowly decreasing in the last few days as Syrians try to head home.

    Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

    via Syrian Army Visible from Turkey; Extra Buses Sent for Fleeing Syrians – World News – ABC News Radio.