QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Syrian refugees face Turkish constraints whether they live in Syria or Turkey. They are subject to murder, torture, extortion and racial discrimination. “It amounts to crime to be Syrian.”
On the border
On August 14, Sulaiman al-Sayyad, 27, was shot dead by Turkish border guards. Another young man was also injured.
Al-Sayyad, father of three, wanted to flee Syria illegally. He tried to climb the wall on the Turkish border close to the village of al-Edwaniyah in Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), northeastern Syria, in the fellowship of other 15 people.
Before he was able to climb the wall, the Turkish border guards fired at al-Sayyad. He incurred three bullets at the chest. Someone pulled him and kept him away from the border.
However, he lost life before reaching the hospital.
Al-Sayyad was buried in the village of al-Qali’a in the west of Sere Kaniye.
On July 23, three youths from a village of Amuda town, northeast Syria, were ferociously beaten by the Turkish border guards while they tried to cross into Turkey.
525 Syrians have been killed by the Turkish border guards since the onset of the war in Syria in 2011, according to the Violations Documentation Center in Northern Syria (VDC-NSY) while 1.337 people were injured after being fired at by the Turkish soldiers on the border. The number is open to rise.
Sere Kaniye, as other areas held by Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, also known as Syrian National Army (SNA), witnesses human smuggling by certain factions whose members take thousands of USDs to enter Syrian people to Turkey, according to former information obtained by North Press.
In October 2019, the Turkish forces and their affiliated SNA factions invaded Sere Kaniye and then occupied it, displacing more than 300.000 of the original inhabitants.
Inside Turkey
Killing and violence against Syrians are on the rise in Turkey as perpetrators and offenders still at large, according to news agencies.
On July 13, Sultan Jibneh, from Homs, was stabbed to death in a brawl with Turkish youths in Taksim in Istanbul.
Earlier, a video went viral on social media outlets showing a Turkish young man kicking a female Syrian refugee called Salma Muhammad, 70, raising agitation to Syrians as it indicated “stark racism”.
Early in 2022, Turkish youths attacked and broke facades of shops of Syrians in Ankara and Istanbul after a number of Turkish soldiers were killed in Syria.
In 2021 the same scenario happened in Adana, where a number of Syrian refugees’ houses were attacked after allegedly a Syrian stabbed a Turkish in a brawl.
Turkey hosts nearly 63,4 % of Syrian refugees that makes roughly a third of refugees worldwide, that is 3.570.452 in a data that periodically is updated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Most Syrians inside Turkey are pressurized to return home within the so-called “voluntary return” to settlements built for the end. Earlier, Reuters reported that a Syrian was forced to sign a return home without his knowledge.
Arrest and extortion
In July 2022, Synergy Association documented the arrest of 10 people including a woman by the SNA factions in Sere Kaniye as they tried to cross into Turkey illegally.
Synergy reported that the families of the 10 people underwent extortion to pay for the release of their beloved ones. Some of them were asked to pay 2.500 USDs. Those released had traces of torture and maltreatment while held in detention.
There is no precise data for the exact number of people detained in areas held by factions backed by Turkey due to restriction in such areas.