For several days, the streets of the Turkish city of Kayseri resemble a war zone because of the protest of local residents who want Syrian migrants out of the country. There were also protests in other Turkish cities.
The reason for their actions was the rape of a 7-year-old girl in the toilet of a supermarket. Anadolu Agency reported that a Syrian was arrested for the crime. The raped girl is also believed to be Syrian, possibly the man's cousin.
Thousands of local residents took to the streets of the country and set fire to cars, homes and shops with Syrian owners. Turkey's Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya called on the population to calm down and said that these riots “do not correspond to our human values”.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan saw political motives in the citizens' actions. According to him, the opposition in the country, which for years has maintained a hard line against the acceptance of Syrian refugees, has fueled this hatred on the streets of Kayseri.
Erdogan himself promised to create conditions for a large number of Syrians to voluntarily return to Syria. “Xenophobia and hatred of refugees in our country should not be ignited, because it does not produce any positive results,”, Erdogan said.
The riots in Kayseri caused a reaction in Syria as well. Syrians in the town of Atarib (near the border), which is currently controlled by the Turkish army, threw objects at Turkish soldiers and chanted against the presence of the Turkish army in their country. In other settlements in Syria, the Turkish flag was burned.
There were protests not only in Kayseri. Interior Minister Yerlikaya announced that 474 people were detained in connection with “provocative actions against Syrians in a number of cities in the country”. He claimed that calls for violence had been spread on social media and accused “provocateurs” of being behind the riots. The regime of Recep Erdogan is known for its repression of freedom of speech and control over social networks.
Turkey is the country that has received the most Syrian refugees because of the civil war there. But Ankara continues to experience serious difficulties in integrating the millions of Syrians, especially against the background of Turkey's dire economic situation. Many Syrians accuse the Turks of being racist.
All this comes just days after Erdogan said he was ready to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to restore ties between the two countries – although last year Assad said the meeting could not take place while Turkish troops remained in Syria. Assad and Erdogan were once close and even vacationed together, but Erdogan eventually backed the Free Syrian Army, which sought to oust Assad in Syria's civil war. The war criminal Assad, supported by another war criminal – Vladimir Putin, is responsible for the slaughter of many civilians in Syria and the fleeing of millions of citizens from their homes.
This is not the first time that xenophobic protests targeting Syrians have taken place, as Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party have begun to lose popularity amid the dire state of the economy and rising nationalist sentiments, writes “Al Jazira“.
Anti-Syrian riots erupted in Turkey in 2021 after a Turkish teenager was stabbed to death in a fight with a group of young Syrians in the capital, Ankara. According to UN data, 3.2 million Syrian refugees have been accepted by Turkey.
Turkish police stepped up security around the Syrian consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday, deploying armored vehicles there. The fate of Syrian refugees will continue to be a hot topic in Turkish politics.