- By Zakiya Afzani
Non-Muslims in Turkey have attacked Syrian refugees in large numbers
More than 500 Syrian refugees have been forced to flee a makeshift refugee camp in Turkey’s western Izmir province, popular with tourists, after being violently attacked by locals who burnt their tents and launched knife and club attacks on women and children.
The attack took place in Izmir’s Torbali district after unproven claims emerged that a local child had started and lost fist fights with the refugees on Saturday.
A heavily armed mob of around 300 – 500 Turkish non-Muslims, armed with knives, fire bombs, axes, metal bars and clubs, stormed into the makeshift housing attempting to ethnically cleanse the region.
Local media reports said 40 tents were destroyed in the fighting and about 30 Syrians were seriously injured, some critically. The wounded were all taken to a local hospital.
“It was impossible to stop the neighborhood. They are full of rage. We don’t want Syrians in our area. Problems have increased since they arrived,” Ali Curukcu, the local racist, was quoted as saying by the Turkish Dogan news agency.
Images showed there were no police officers at the site.
The Syrian refugees were seen walking on the highway towards Izmir’s Tire neighborhood as no driver took them to their destination. Angry Turkish monsters from the non-Muslim far right also closed the highway for some time.
During the early years of the war in neighboring Syria, Turkey had an open-door policy and allowed Syrian refugees into the country and further extended this to accept Muslim refugees the EU deported as part of a Turkey-EU trade deal.
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Although Turkey says it still maintains its open-door policy, the number of Syrian refugees allowed in during the past two years has dwindled considerably, with many saying the borders are essentially closed to refugees.
The high number of Syrian refugees in Turkish towns and cities has led to multiple instances of a serious nature in the past.
The Turkish government only provides assistance to those staying in officially sanctioned camps.
Ankara does not grant Syrian refugees official status they only have temporary protection officially as guests. Turkey no longer accepts refugees entering from non-EU countries as part of the Turkey-EU trade deal.
Turkey has been a staunch supporter of a campaign pushed by Western countries and their regional allies to illegally assassinate Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and enforce an illegal regime change since 2011.
More recently with negotiations from Iran and Russia, Turkey has given up ambitions of regime change and distanced itself from the illegal Western invasion of Syria in favour of strengthening ties with it’s Muslim neighbours and Russia.
Although the Turkish population is over 99.5% Muslim, the nation officially remains a secular non-religious state with EU and Western ambitions.
Presedent Erdogan came under prolonged pressures and an attempted military coup for his efforts to try and restore Islam to the country.
Turkey has a long record of assisting Muslim refugees fleeing genocide and wars. During the Yugoslav wars in neighbouring Balkans in the 1990s and 2000s Turkey protected millions of Bosnian Muslim refugees fleeing one of the world’s largest ever genocides.
The EU continues to apply pressure to Turkey to abandon aspirations of becoming an official Muslim country and tries hard to divide Turkey from any Russian alliances.
Bosnia, a Muslim Federation with disputed and fluid borders, with larger diaspora than national population, is a strong ally of Pakistan, Palestine, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The Balkan Islamic nation, still officially under UN occupation since the early 1990s is under a strict ethnic and religious apartheid. Millions of Bosnian refugees live peacefully in Turkey to this present day.
The Turkish attacks on neighbouring Syrians is highly out of charciter for the nation who so warmly welcomed neighbouring Bosnian Muslims.
Official travel advice is to avoid Christian sites and non-Muslim gatherings, events and festivals such as Easter parades and Kurdish rallies. Risk levels at those events has been raised to Imminent and severe.
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