They fled the war and their country, but, also affected by earthquakes, many of them want to leave Turkey, where they feel badly welcomed.
By Hélène Sallon (Antakya (Turkey), Special Envoy)
Sitted on mattresses placed on the floor in an apartment in Reyhanli, a Turkish city on the Syrian border, a dozen friends discuss around a tea, smoking cigarette on cigarettes. The life of these Syrians has again changed with the earthquake, which struck Turkey and Syria on February 6, killing more than 40,000 people. In the province of Hatay where they represent 20 % of the population, Syrian refugees have many victims. The twenty, former revolutionaries, these young men, whose family name is you for security, fled Syria at war. They lost everything again. “We do not know where life will take us,” says, fatalist, Mohamed.
him and his friend, Houned, their families await them in Antakya, with the little Business they saved rubble, to settle in Mersin. Ahmad, a car seller, sent his parents to his brother in Ankara, time to find an apartment in Reyhanli. The Turkish government has authorized Syrian refugees Residing in the provinces affected by the earthquake to settle in the next three months in other regions, with the exception of Istanbul. Those who have relatives, or enough money to rent an apartment elsewhere, leave by Their means. “The government facilitates the evacuation of the Turks, we must manage”, complains Abdelaziz.
Another young man by the name of Ahmad settled in this apartment that Mohamed rents. The latter took it out of the rubble, three days after the earthquake. Ahmad no longer has no telephone or money, not even his identity papers or his university diploma. For six days, with seven friends, Mohamed extracted nearly one hundred people from Antakya buildings – including nine living – and transported the bodies of 200 Syrians to the border. More than 1,200 remains were transported to Syria to be buried there, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Once, the young man was molested by Turkish rescuers, who thought he was looting apartments.
racism
Two other times, hostile inhabitants have prevented him from distributing aid in the camps. Anti-Syrian racism, fueled in recent years by the economic crisis which has transformed the 3.7 million refugees into scapegoats, has exploded from the earthquake. In Antakya, the atmosphere is deleterious. “There are Syrians who fly everything. The government must send them back to their country or in Europe. They modify the demographic structure of the country,” accuses Kazem Kuseyri, the owner of the Hotel soap.
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