In Turkish border city, Erdogan's backing of Syrian rebels draws ire

In the city of Antakya on the Turkish-Syrian border, Turkish government support for the Syrian opposition has unnerved locals belonging to the same Shiite sect as President Assad.

By Alexander Christie-Miller,?Correspondent / August 28, 2012

New Syrian refugees rest as they arrive at a stopover facility for breaking fast near the Turkish border town of Reyhanli in Hatay province August 9.

Umit Bektas/Reuters

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Syrian refugee Abdulhefiz Abdulrahman remembers when he had many local friends in the Turkish city of Antakya, but those days seem over.?

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The political dissident fled Syria, arriving in this border city several months before the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime erupted last year.

?I had a lot of Alawite friends here,? says Mr. Abdulrahman, referring to the offshoot of Shiite Islam to which a large part of Antakya's population adheres.

Alawites?dominate the regime in Syria, where the 18-month uprising has split the country along sectarian lines, pitting the privileged Alawite minority against the Sunni majority.?

In Antakya, where support for the Alawite Assad regime runs deep, hostility is growing toward Syrian rebels and dissidents who have made a temporary base there. And throughout the province,?Turkey's apparent backing of the Syrian opposition is upsetting a delicate ethnic balance.?

?Before, when I told them I was a refugee, they respected me,? Abdulrahman told the Monitor. ?They won?t even say hello to me in the street anymore.?

Now,?local frustration about the government's apparent decision to let?Syrian dissidents and fighters?operate on Turkish soil could ignite wider ethnic tensions in the country.?

Turkey's rebel support draws ire

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has strongly backed the Syrian opposition, calling for the regime's overthrow.

?Even though Turkey?s a secular country, it?s increasingly being seen as a Sunni actor [in the Syrian conflict], along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar,? says Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ?Inevitably that affects the body politic.?

On Aug. 26, the leader of the Republican People?s Party, Turkey?s main opposition party, accused the government of training Syrian anti-regime fighters, after a delegation from his party was denied access to a Syrian refugee camp along the border.

"I sent our deputies to check out the camp, which was said to be full of agents and spies, but the authorities said you cannot enter this camp,? Kemal Kilicdaroglu told journalists. ?Now I expect an answer from the government: ?What is in that camp? Who are you training in that camp? Are you raising men to spill Muslims? blood?'"

Ankara denies offering?support to the Syrian armed opposition, or allowing it to freely operate from Turkish territory. But when the Monitor visited the Reyhanli border crossing near Antakya yesterday, one rebel commander waiting there said authorities were allowing him to cross into Syria even though he had no passport. And?Reuters, quoting Doha-based sources, reported last month that Ankara has set up a secret base near the Syrian border, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to provide military and communications assistance to the rebels.

'Sectarian solidarity'

Meanwhile, tensions are rising in Antakya. Last week, some residents held a protest calling for Syrians to be removed, while Syrian activists told the Monitor they had been called to a meeting with Turkish military and municipal officials and told they would have to leave the city "for their own security." Turkish officials deny such a meeting took place.

?The people of Hatay have lived together for thousands of years without regard for ethnicity or religion,? says Mehmet Ali Edipoglu, a local member of parliament from Mr. Kilicdaroglu?s opposition party. ?The fact that attempts for regime change in Syria have turned into a sectarian war is damaging that."

?It?s not the refugees who are coming to Antakya, but the Syrian militants who are being armed by the government to go back into Syria,? he says, describing those living there as "assassins."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/uIJ26Y3oJwE/In-Turkish-border-city-Erdogan-s-backing-of-Syrian-rebels-draws-ire

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