Drowned boys and mother buried in Syrian hometown
Grieving father and husband now says he wants to stay in war-torn country
KUCUK KENDIRLI, TURKEY— The Syrian man who survived a capsizing during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece buried his wife and two sons on Friday in their hometown of Kobani, returning them to the conflicttorn Syrian Kurdish region they had fled.
With the burial, Abdullah Kurdi abandoned any plans of leaving his homeland again.
“He only wanted to go to Europe for the sake of his children,” said Suleiman Kurdi, an uncle of the grieving father. “Now that they’re dead, he wants to stay here in Kobani next to them.”
The haunting image of the 3-yearold Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach focused the world’s attention on the wave of migration fuelled by war and deprivation.
“There was nothing I could do, nothing,” Abdullah Kurdi said on Friday, France 24 reported.
“I hope these people will be helped, that these massacres are stopped. We’re human beings just like Westerners. Why are we trying to get to Europe when our country is more beautiful? That’s just how it is.”
The three bodies were flown to a city near Turkey’s border with Syria, from where police-protected funeral vehicles made their way to the border town of Suruc and crossed into Kobani. Legislators from Turkey accompanied Abdullah Kurdi to Kobani. Journalists and well-wishers were stopped at a checkpoint some three kilometres from the border.
“People are sad and angry at the same time,” Shams Shahin, a freelance reporter from Kobani who attended the funeral, told the Star in a telephone interview Friday.
Dozens of casually dressed mourners clustered around as the bodies were laid in the dry, bare earth of the Martyrs Cemetery. Clouds of dust rose as dirt was shovelled over the graves. Some graves in the cemetery were haphazardly marked out with borders of concrete blocks.
Kobani, a town on Syria’s northern border with Turkey, was the site of one of the biggest fights against the Islamic State group in 2014. Tens of thousands fled the area in the wake of battles between Kurdish fighters and Islamic State.
Shahin said local residents have become accustomed to tragedy. “Every day, civilians are dying,” she said.
“What’s happening in Syria is something unacceptable, but it’s happening. This crisis must stop. Any way, it must stop. We have been suffering (for) five years. Enough.”
Alan’s body was discovered on a Turkish beach in sneakers, blue shorts and a red shirt on Wednesday after the rubber boat he and his family were in capsized. They were among 12 migrants who drowned off the Turkish coast of Bodrum that day.
Abdullah Kurdi said the overloaded boat flipped over moments after the captain, described as a Turkish man, panicked and abandoned the vessel, leaving Abdullah as the de facto commander of a small boat overmatched by high seas.
In a police statement later leaked to the Turkish news agency Dogan, Abdullah Kurdi gave a different account, denying that a smuggler was aboard. However, smugglers often instruct migrants that if caught they should deny their presence.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said four suspected human traffickers were detained in connection with the drownings and face charges of smuggling and involuntary manslaughter. The four, including a Syrian national, were being questioned Friday by a court in the Turkish resort town of Bodrum, the news agency reported.
Speaking from her home in Coquitlam, B.C., on Friday, Tima Kurdi, Abdullah Kurdi’s sister, said she wished she had attended the funeral.
“It was very hard for him. I can’t even imagine,” she said, fighting back tears. “I wish I was there.”
She too said her brother spoke of how he never wants to leave Syria, now that his boys are buried there, but said she still hopes to bring Abdullah to Canada one day.
“. . . one day, he might change his mind,” she said. “One day I will bring him here. He cannot be alone.”
She said she wanted to bring her brother to Canada earlier, but was dismayed with the refugee process in an attempt to bring over another brother.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada said it received no refugee application from the father of the two drowned boys. It did, however, receive an application for Abdullah Kurdi’s brother, Mohammed, but said it was incomplete and did not meet regulatory requirements for proof of refugee status recognition.
Tima Kurdi confirmed her family had made an official request only for Mohammed Kurdi, explaining that she and her husband could afford to sponsor just one brother. With files from Jacques Gallant