Turkey and Israel Feel the Effect as Syria’s Civil War Fuels Tensions at Borders
By SEBNEM ARSU and RICK GLADSTONE
Published: March 28, 2013
Multimedia
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Syria’s War Invades a Campus That Acted as a Sanctuary (March 29, 2013)
The tensions, which underscored how the Syrian conflict is threatening
the region’s stability, came as international diplomacy aimed at ending
the conflict faced new complications. Russia, a major supporter of the
Syrian government, suggested that the special Syria envoy of the Arab
League and United Nations had lost credibility because the Arab League had sided with the insurgency.
Turkey, like Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, has accepted tens of thousands of
Syrian refugees since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad
began two years ago. The Turks threatened for the first time to deport a
group of refugees after a riot at one of Turkey’s 17 refugee camps on
Wednesday, a threat that alarmed the United Nations refugee agency,
which said such a move would violate international law.
Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees in Geneva, said in an interview that a forced return would
breach legal protections that prohibit host countries from forcing
refugees out.
Turkey changed its stance on Thursday, saying that the refugees would
not be deported but had agreed to leave voluntarily after having been
told that they would face prosecution if they stayed.
The Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said the group of refugees “wanted
to use the right to voluntary return, and left for Syria.”
A local government official in Turkey confirmed this Thursday afternoon,
saying, “A deportation is out of question, and we cannot deport them
when we do not have the right to do so according to the terms of
temporary protected status.”
The 130 Syrians had been identified as residents of the Suleiman Shah
camp, in the township of Akcakale in Sanliurfa Province, who had been
involved in a riot on Wednesday that damaged the camp’s facilities,
including a medical center.
The circumstances behind the riot are in dispute, but it may have
started after a fire in a tent that killed a 7-year-old girl and injured
her two sisters.
Television images showed dozens of people hurling stones inside and
outside the camp, cars with broken windows and damaged laptops inside a
press vehicle.
Camp security officers, unable to contain the violence, called in the
military police, and images on television showed armored military
vehicles moving into the camp. The military police tear-gassed and hosed
down the protesters.
The Turkish government said that the protest broke out when a crowd
gathered outside the camp demanding entry. With 35,000 refugees, the
camp is full, another local government official said, denying that the
protest was linked to the fire, which he attributed to faulty electrical
wiring.
“It was clearly an act of provocation, which started at the gate,
outside the camp, far from where the fire broke out,” the official said.
Unlike Syria’s other neighbors, Israel — which remains in a technical
state of war with Syria — has not accepted any Syrian refugees. But it
has become increasingly concerned as fighting between Syrian insurgents
and loyalists has crept close to the decade-old cease-fire line in the
Golan Heights. An Israeli military official said Thursday that it had
bolstered medical teams on the frontier because of wounded Syrians
seeking aid.
The latest such episode occurred on Wednesday, when several Syrians
arrived at the demarcation fence. Israeli Army medical crews attended to
most of them on location and returned them to Syria, but two who had
suffered severe head wounds were taken to a hospital in Nahariya, in
northern Israel.
One of them died soon after, and the military transferred his body back
to Syria early Thursday with help from United Nations peacekeepers in
the area, according to Haggai Einav, a spokesman for the Western Galilee
Hospital in Nahariya. The second remained in serious but stable
condition on Thursday after having three operations, Mr. Einav added.
At the United Nations, Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador,
enlarged on remarks Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov had made in
Moscow, saying that the Arab League was playing a “destructive” role in
international attempts to peacefully resolve the Syrian conflict because
it had granted Syria’s vacant seat to the main opposition coalition,
which seeks to topple Mr. Assad by force.
Mr. Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that the Arab League’s action had
raised serious questions about the role of Lakhdar Brahimi, the special
Syria envoy who represents both the Arab League and United Nations. Mr.
Churkin said Mr. Brahimi should distance himself from the Arab League.
A spokesman for Mr. Brahimi said he had no immediate comment. Mr. Brahimi was appointed the joint envoy last August.
“The Arab League has basically taken itself out of the joint effort,”
Mr. Churkin said at a news conference, criticizing opposition supporters
as concentrating on a military solution while merely “paying lip
service” to a political one.
“Now, instead of dialogue, we have a group of people whose legitimacy
has been established from outside the country,” Mr. Churkin said. “Their
legitimacy does not have any ground in Syria, no elections.”
Mr. Churkin dismissed the opposition group, the National Coalition of
Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as “an international
traveling thing” and described its work as “chaotic,” with a constant
parade of new leaders.
He said Russia still maintained hope for a political settlement,
although critics maintain that it has done little to actually push Mr.
Assad in that direction.
Mr. Churkin also said the Syrian opposition’s aspiration to take Syria’s seat at the United Nations would probably fail.
“We’ll oppose it very strongly,” he said. “The U.N. is an
intergovernmental organization. You simply do not seat opposition groups
who have not gone through the process of legitimization.”
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