Turks and Syrians adapting to new border reality

It says something about the scale of the Syria disaster when the first half-dozen conversations to be heard upon arriving in Urfa, an ancient Turkish city of 830,000 people, are in Syrian Arabic. In recent weeks, fighting 50km to the south, across the border in Tell Abyad and Kobane, has led to thousands more Syrians fleeing to Turkey. Hundreds of thousands more have, over the past four years, put down roots in southern Turkey.

An evening concert at a main city square following the Ramadan iftar meal sees loud young Syrians run across a busy intersection, their sights set on securing a good view. Syrian kids roller skate with aplomb.

“We just opened this restaurant two weeks ago and business has been great,” says Ahmed from Aleppo, while serving traditional Syrian dishes to a steady stream of customers – all speaking Arabic, “but every now and again there are problems between us [Syrians] and the Turks.”

Also adapting – and even thriving – from the displacement of Syrians are the local Turkish communities along the 900km border. Dam-building projects and advanced irrigation schemes have transformed southeast Turkey into a key area for agricultural production.

South of Urfa, fields of vegetables are being harvested by Syrians who work for a fraction of the fee demanded by Turkish labourers and, as a result of the war, food exports from the border provinces to Syria have increased substantially since 2011.

New tractors, valued at tens of thousands of euros, roll off farm machinery lots on the edge of Urfa every hour. Sukru Karacizmeli owns a tractor dealership outside Urfa and says he has seen many Syrians hired by farmers. “Most of them are not professional but working for less money. So it’s beneficial for some farmers and farming machinery business owners,” he says.

“The highest rent for a good apartment in city centre was 600 Turkish lira (€200) in 2012. If it is furnished, monthly rent was 800TL (€270). Now monthly rent is 1,200TL (€400), if furnished 1,500TL (€500),” says Mehmet Mem, a real estate consultant in Urfa. “Forty to 50 per cent of our customers are Syrians and that’s increasing day by day . . . Syrians pay good money for good houses.”

Although relations between Syrians and Turks have remained relatively peaceful considering the sheer numbers involved, problems between host and guest have spiked, with some Turks blaming the influx of Syrians for the spike in rent prices.

Heavy police presences are common at popular gathering places in Urfa, such as at the Ramadan concert, and clashes between local and Syrian youths happen regularly. Unemployment rates trebled in Sanliurfa province between 2012 and 2013, the most recent years of available data.

“We have moral decay involving the Syrians,” a local opposition politician told journalists this month. “Young girls are married to old local men in return for money. On highways around the city, you see women offering themselves for money.”

Most unsettling for local Turks, however, is the ease with which foreign and Arab jihadists move to and from Syria through Turkey, and the regular flaring of violence across the border. Last Thursday, Islamic State forces attacked the Syrian city of Kobane, reportedly killing 143 civilians.

A politician from the Kurdish-tied Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) claimed the jihadists attacking Kobane entered from Turkish territory. The AK party government has been slow to support or has actively stopped Kurds from entering Syria to fight off the jihadists.

A Syrian civilian living in Urfa, who asks not to be named, says that when Islamic State forces controlled the Syrian border regions in and around Tell Abyad (until this month), foreigners seeking to join Islamic State – and others drawn to life in the so-called caliphate, including three British sisters from Bradford and a group of British teenage girls – first travelled through Urfa.

Since Syrians began streaming over the Turkish border in the summer of 2011, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly visited Syrian refugee camps. The government has spent well over $4 billion in assisting Syrians, building 22 camps to house over 300,000 people. In return, Syrians have been naming their children after Erdogan and his wife, Emine.

Cynics and opposition politicians believe this support for Syrians, the majority of whom, like Erdogan, oppose the Syrian government in Damascus, is motivated by the Turkish government’s wish to eventually grant citizenship and voting rights for the refugees, who would then presumably vote for the AK Party in future elections.

“[This] influx could result in permanent Arab majorities in border provinces such as Hatay and Kilis,” wrote analyst Soner Cagaptay last year. “Furthermore, in Hatay, the shift could catapult Sunni Arabs to dominance over Alawites, upsetting the existing balance in the Arab community.”