Syrian Refugees

In various cities throughout Turkey, protests have occurred in opposition to Syrian refugees. We have seen a number of different types of incidents: people chasing Syrians with sticks, even beating them up in city centers; purposeful damage to businesses and homes where Syrians work and live; even incidents of arson, wherein homes belonging to Syrians are set on fire.
In the most recent of these incidences, three Syrians were killed. In all of these cases, there appear to be two factors playing major roles. One of these factors is demographic while the other is political.
1) Certain forces deep within the state want to simultaneously make it possible for Syrians to return to their homes in Syria as well as take advantage of the dramatic situation into which so many Syrians have fallen by using it against the government itself.

According to official figures, there are now some 218,121 Syrians staying in temporary shelters, while there are another 1,127,970 Syrians in various cities throughout Turkey. We can assume that these figures will ultimately rise to around 1.5 million. I should also make it immediately clear that in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, there are three times as many Syrians as here in Turkey.

The aforementioned incidents that we are seeing unfold against the presence of Syrians cannot take place without knowledge, guidance or permission of the government. Perhaps this implies the work of some very deep powers embedded within the state.

One of the reasons behind the discomfort clearly felt by some deep state powers when it comes to Syrian refugees could be demographic: the idea that the general Turkish population will shift in favor of Arabs and Kurds. This fear, in turn, has led to harassment, mass protests, arson attempts and personal attacks.

Kurds who escaped from Saddam's cruelty during the years of the Gulf War were literally held in camps on the outskirts of Turkish cities, forbidden from entering the cities and making contacts with local residents. This was of course not the sort of treatment one would expect Muslims fleeing tyranny to be faced with upon taking shelter in another Muslim country, but the prevalent worry at the time was, “What if a large portion of these Kurdish refugees winds up staying in Turkey?!” This worry ultimately led to the Kurdish refugees being sent back as quickly as possible.

There are some differences, though, between the wave of Syrian refugees fleeing war in Syria and the waves of Kurdish refugees fleeing war in Iraq. The first notable difference is that these newer refugees are largely Arab, Kurdish and Nusayri. An increase in the populations of these three groups within Turkey would not fit into the classic Turkish state paradigm. Another difference is that Turkey, in terms of the state itself, took sides in the Syrian civil war from the very start.

Much earlier, when civilian protests had only just begun in Syria, Ankara announced that some 70,000 Syrian refugees fleeing their country could take shelter in pre-fabricated housing brought in from the earthquake zone in Van to border cities. According to Ankara's (incorrect) calculations, Assad was to be overthrown in just three short months, and the total number of refugees fleeing Syria wouldn't surpass 100,000. Of course, these calculations turned out to be very off base; we see that Assad remains in power and the total number of Syrian refugees has swelled to some 15 times the original calculations.

2) Beyond the actions taken against Syrian refugees by those embedded in the deeper ranks of the state, there is also a dimension to all this that concerns normal citizens in Turkey. This dimension is just as thought-provoking and meaningful -- not to mention notable -- as the first dimension mentioned above. What we see in all this is that there in fact does exist a sector of society that truly participates in the chasing, and even the beating, of Syrians. Turks in Germany are often the victims of racist attacks. But at the same time, we have never seen thousands of Germans gather to protest against Turks. Likewise, no Germans have ever been documented chasing Turks through the streets with sticks. The chauvinism, racism and fascism that has been injected into us for 100 years now -- by official ideology -- has, unfortunately, established a strong hold in the minds our masses. The fact that the orientalist views of Arabs and the East in general that have been planted in our culture through Kemalist nationalism have found such firm footing the hearts of our people is frightening. And equally if not more frightening is how, during an era of conservative-religious political rule, not only has this kind of racism not come to an end, but it has also become widespread and mass in nature.

The general stance that we ought to be taking when it comes to the Syrian refugees -- and all refugees for that matter -- is to be “ensar,” or helpful in the way that Prophet and his followers were.

ALİ BULAÇ (Cihan/Today's Zaman)