Turkey’s president accuses opposition of stoking racism after anti-Syrian rioting erupts

Syrians wait to cross into Syria at the Cilvegozu border gate near the town of Antakya in southeastern Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused opposition parties of stoking xenophobia and racism on Monday, a day after residents in a neighborhood in central Turkey set Syrian-owned shops on fire. “One of the reasons for the tragic event that was caused by a small group in Kayseri yesterday is the poisonous discourse of the opposition.” When neighboring Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, Turkey received Syrian refugees with compassion, becoming the country to host the largest refugee population globally. The Syrian National Army, a coalition of armed Syrian opposition groups backed by Turkey, in a statement called on residents of northwestern Syria to “avoid being drawn in by seditionists who seek to sabotage our institutions.” The outbursts came amid rising tensions in Syrian opposition-held areas over apparent moves toward a rapprochement between Ankara and the government of Bashar Assad in Damascus, including plans to open a crossing between government-held areas and those held by Turkish-backed opposition forces in Aleppo province. The Idlib-based “salvation government” of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — a formerly Al Qaeda-linked insurgent group that controls other parts of northwestern Syria — issued a statement calling on Turkey to “assume its legal and moral responsibilities to protect Syrian refugees.” In 2021, similar anti-Syrian riots broke out in an Ankara neighborhood after a Turkish teenager was stabbed to death in a fight with a group of young Syrians.