Tough days ahead for Arabs in Turkey
TURKISH President Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power since 2002, has found itself losing support amid soaring inflation and unemployment rates.
Millions of Syrian refugees are now at an increased risk of xenophobic attacks from the nationalist segment of Turkish society who blame Syrians for the worsening economic situation. The AKP has opened the country’s border to millions of Syrians since the eruption of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Turkey’s ultra-nationalist figures who are today recognised as representatives of the Ottoman Empire’s Union and Progressive Party (CUP), also known as Young Turks, is a political group that embraced the Turkification policy excluding the Empire’s Arab and Kurdish citizens.
The UN Refugee Agency reports that Turkey currently hosts some 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees, along with close to 320 000 persons of concern from among other nationalities. The first convoy of 252 refugees from Syria crossed the fence at the Yaylada ı border of Turkey’s Hatay city, entering Turkey on April 29, 2011.
This occurred just a month after the anti-government opposition demonstrations against the Ba’athist government led by Bashar al-Assad in Syria in March 2011.
These demonstrations eventually led to a bloody civil war across the county. Erdogan hoped to replace President Assad’s regime in Syria with a Muslim Brotherhood-friendly government and his AKP rule has been supporting the Free Syrian Army and other jihadist groups, including al-Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Sham Legion against Assad’s rule.
Erdogan himself appears increasingly apathetic toward the well-being and safety of the millions of Syrians in Turkey as polls last month demonstrated that public support for him is at an all-time low amid the economic crisis. The prominent Metropoll’s April survey indicates that support for the AKP is now at 27%. Erdogan is undoubtedly deeply troubled by these results as the Turkish general election, alongside the presidential election, is scheduled to take place on June 18, 2023.
In a shocking turn of events, Erdogan mentioned his plan to send one million Syrians back home.
“Some 500 000 Syrians have returned to the safe regions (in Syria). We are now working on a new project for the voluntary return of one million Syrians,” Erdogan said in a video message at a ceremony held by the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency in Syria’s Idlib region on May 3.
Millions of Syrians have settled in Turkey and due to the AKP’s liberal policy, around one-third of them live in Istanbul.
Turkey’s ultra-nationalist political figures, Dr Sinan Ogan and Professor Umit Ozdag, the leader of the nationalist, anti-refugee Victory Party, have been at the forefront of anti-Syrian propaganda in Turkey. Many Syrians have spoken to the media regarding their fears of going out in public after the various social media campaigns targeting them.
It seems that there has been a rebirth of the CUP’s anti-Arab sentiment in Turkey after a century and that Syrian Arabs now need to be extra vigilant in Turkey, a country with an increasingly bad human rights record against minorities.