Skip to main content

Turkey losing propaganda war over Syrian Armenians

Turkey’s alleged collusion in the rebel takeover of a Syrian Armenian village has revived the ghosts of a bloody past.
Free Syrian Army fighters stand on a tank at the Armenian Christian town of Kasab March 28, 2014. After months of setbacks in central Syria, Islamist rebels launched an offensive last Friday into the Latakia region, taking the border crossing and the Armenian Christian village of Kasab. The border crossing at Kasab they seized had been the last point of entry from Turkey into territory fully under control of Assad's forces, since most of the northern border region is already under rebel control. REUTERS/Str

“The bearded men came to our home. They spoke Turkish. They rifled through our belongings and asked if we had guns.” This is how Sirpuhi Titizyan, a refugee from Kassab, a mainly Armenian village in northern Syria that was overrun by jihadists fighters on March 21, described her ordeal to Agos, an Istanbul-based Armenian weekly. 

The frail octogenarian blamed Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for Kassab’s fall. “Had Erdogan not cleared the path to Kassab, this many evil men would not have come,” Titizyan said. “May Allah blind Erdogan,” she thundered in a separate interview with Aris Nalci, a Turkish-Armenian blogger.

Access the Middle East news and analysis you can trust

Join our community of Middle East readers to experience all of Al-Monitor, including 24/7 news, analyses, memos, reports and newsletters.

Subscribe

Only $100 per year.