“Syria is as important as our domestic affairs,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Jan. 19. His government put strong emphasis on the moral responsibility that Turkey has in caring for the nearly 200,000 Syrians who fled to Turkey for safety from the atrocities of the Bashar al-Assad regime, but a recent incident at a Syrian refugee camp risks putting Turkey’s good name on the line and has the potential to cause some international repercussions.
On Thursday, March 28, CNNTurk had this headline: “Six Hundred Syrians are deported.” The story then followed: “Tension emerged between Syrians protesting the fire that killed [a 7-year-old Syrian] girl and the security forces. As a followup to this incident, 600 refugees have been deported.”
“There is not one single Syrian we deported,” Halil Tekyildiz, the head of the Suleiman Shah refugee camp, near the Turkish town of Akcakale on the Syrian border, told Al-Monitor. “They leave voluntarily.”
What happened was that faulty electricity in a tent led to a short circuit and started a fire, which killed the youngest of three sisters, and injured the other two, aged 18 and 19. According to the news reports, nearly 200 camp residents started a protest, and threw rocks at Turkish military police who fired tear gas and water cannon to control the unrest.
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