Border towns pay price for Turkey’s war
Smears of fresh black asphalt covered the blood stains from a deadly mortar strike, in a quiet neighbourhood in Nusaybin, Turkey, just two blocks from the Syrian border.
Turks, Kurds and Syrians were all cut down in the same attack, one of dozens that have hit the border towns in Turkey’s southeast in the last 10 days. After the first two mortar strikes on Nusaybin last week, shopkeepers and others rushed to the scene. That was when the third mortar hit, killing at least eight, including two Syrian refugees, and wounding 35.
“The people who died were mostly the people who came to help,” said Adem Dilges Aktog, 44, a Kurdish shopkeeper squatting amid the broken glass of his wife’s clothing store. “They all had shops here.”
Border towns like Nusaybin are paying a heavy price since the Turkish military began its incursion into northern Syria and Kurdish militants retaliated with rocket and mortar fire.
But so far, there has been little increase in ethnic tension, as communities have mourned together and refused to blame each other, even when they back different sides in the conflict.
“No one is discussing against Kurds or Syrians,” said Ozgur Becet, 34, a Turkish long-haul truck driver. “The fight we are having is with the US because they are giving them weapons,” he said, referring to US support for the Kurdish militia in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces. “If no one was supporting them with weapons, then there would not be a problem in the first place.”
Laying the blame on the US
Turkish officials have kept a strong grip on the communities along the border, attending funerals while laying the blame for the casualties on the US for supporting what Ankara calls a terrorist organisation. Ottoman-era martial music played repeatedly on loud speakers in the border towns.
But despite the government’s insistence that it is fighting terrorism to protect Turks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s campaign against the Kurdish militia in Syria has hurt communities at home, with already 20 dead and 80 wounded in Turkey.