The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried

The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried
An officer checks the papers of a Syrian woman before she crosses into Syria from Turkiye, at the Oncupinar border gate in southern Turkiye on Dec. 11, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 20 December 2024
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The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried

The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried
  • Syrian president’s ouster this month has led many in Turkiye to argue that the refugees have no reason to stay
  • Some Syrians are panicking about returning to a devastated nation

GAZIANTEP, Turkiye: Turkiye gained renown as a haven for refugees by welcoming more than 3 million Syrians fleeing violence between forces from Bashar Assad ‘s government and a patchwork of rebel groups.
But the Syrian president’s ouster this month has led many in Turkiye to argue that the refugees have no reason to stay, part of the global backlash against migration. Some Syrians are panicking about returning to a devastated nation.
“There’s no work, electricity, or water. There is no leader. Who will it be? I have no idea,” said Mahmut Cabuli, who fled airstrikes by Syrian government forces and violence by rebel groups in his hometown Aleppo a decade ago. “I’m scared and don’t know what the authorities will do.”
‘My children were born here’
Cabuli spent several years in a refugee camp before he found a job at a textile factory in Gaziantep, a southern Turkish city near the Syrian border. After he met another Syrian refugee, they married and had two children.
“My children were born here,” he said. “I am working, thank God. I am happy here. I don’t want to go back now.”
Many Turks baselessly accuse Syrians of taking their jobs and straining health care and other public services. Riots have damaged Syrian-owned shops, homes or cars, including one in July in the central city of Kayseri following allegations that a Syrian refugee sexually assaulted a child. The riots sparked counterprotests in northern Syria.
Turkish authorities said that the alleged perpetrator was arrested and the victim placed under state protection.
“A spark between Syrians and Turkish citizens can immediately cause a big fire, a big flame,” said Umit Yılmaz, the mayor of Sehitkamil, which hosts 450,000 Syrians.
“The Syrians need to be reunited with their homeland immediately,” he said. “I have come to a point where I am even willing to get in my own car and take them away if necessary.”
Was staying in Turkiye temporary or for good?
In 2014, Turkish authorities gave Syrians universal access to health care, education and the right to work by granting them a legal status known as temporary protection.
As a result, Turkiye has taken in more Syrian refugees than any other nation — more than 3.8 million at its peak in 2022, or roughly 60 percent of all the Syrians logged by UN refugee agency UNHCR.
But more recently, anti-refugee sentiment has surged as Turkiye has grappled with problems including persistent inflation — particularly in food and housing — and with high youth unemployment.
“This prolonged stay under temporary protection must end,” said Azmi Mahmutoglu, spokesman for the Victory Party, a right-wing party that has opposed the presence of Syrians in Turkiye and called for their repatriation.
Hundreds of Syrians have gathered at border gates along Turkiye’s 911-kilometer (566 mile) frontier with Syria since Assad’s fall and the returns are expected to accelerate if Syria becomes stable.
Metin Corabatir, director of the Ankara-based Research Center on Asylum and Migration, said most of the departures so far appear to be Syrians checking the situation back in Syria before deciding whether to move their families back.
Muhammed Nur Cuneyt, a 24-year-old Syrian who arrived in 2011 from the northern town of Azaz, was eagerly waiting at one gate on Dec. 10, saying he was grateful to Turkiye for granting refuge but resented hearing anti-Syrian sentiment as his people fought Assad.
“Some were saying ‘Why are the Syrians here? Why don’t you go back and fight with your nation?’” he said.
Are they voluntary returns?
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought ways to encourage the refugees’ voluntary returns — including building housing in Syria close to the Turkish border after Syrian migration helped weaken support for his Justice and Development party.
Erdogan has four more years in office but the main opposition party has a slight lead in polls.
One refugee who returned to Syria said that he had signed a document ending his protected refugee status under Turkish law.
“Would they be allowed to come back to Turkiye? Corabatir said. “Our hope is that it will continue.”
This week, UNHCR said it does not believe that conditions to end Syrian’s refugee status have been met and it still thinks they need protection.
But for Huseyin Basut, the Turkish owner of a pet shop in Gaziantep, Turkiye has done all that it can for the Syrians.
“We did all we could as a country and as citizens,” said Bayut, 52. “Since the war is over, they should return to their homes, build their homes or whatever they need to do and may God help them.”


Sudan facing ‘abyss’ unless war ends: UN

Sudan facing ‘abyss’ unless war ends: UN
Updated 28 February 2025
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Sudan facing ‘abyss’ unless war ends: UN

Sudan facing ‘abyss’ unless war ends: UN

GENEVA: Sudan is facing the abyss and potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths unless the devastating war in the country ends and aid pours in, the United Nations warned Thursday.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk painted a bleak outlook for Sudan, where famine has already taken hold and millions have fled their homes amid intense fighting between rival forces.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal conflict between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“Sudan is a powder keg, on the verge of a further explosion into chaos, and at increasing risk of atrocity crimes and mass deaths from famine,” Turk warned the UN Human Rights Council.
He called the country “the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.”
“We are looking into the abyss. Humanitarian agencies warn that without action to end the war, deliver emergency aid, and get agriculture back on its feet, hundreds of thousands of people could die.”
Turk said more than 600,000 people were “on the brink of starvation,” with famine reported to have taken hold in five areas, including the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur.
Turk said five more areas could face famine in the next three months, while a further 17 are considered at risk.
He said an estimated 8.8 million people had been forced from their homes within Sudan, while 3.5 million more have fled across borders.
“This is the biggest displacement crisis in the world,” he said.
“Some 30.4 million people need assistance, from health care to food and other forms of humanitarian support,” he said.
Presenting his annual report on the human rights situation in Sudan, Turk said some of the acts it documented may constitute war crimes and other atrocity crimes.
Turk said the Sudanese people had endured “unfathomable suffering and pain” since the conflict began, “with no peaceful solution in sight.”
Responding to the report, Sudanese justice minister Muawiya Osman blamed the RSF for starting the war and accused them of having “forced people out of their regions, humiliating them, and trying to cleanse specific regions from their original populations, just like West Darfur.”
He accused the RSF of “blocking humanitarian deliveries” and said the government was committed to “just peace and stability across the country, to address the needs of the Sudanese people, maintain their dignity and end the suffering.”
However, Adama Dieng, the African Union’s special envoy on the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities, said extreme violence against civilians — by both sides in the conflict — was widespread.
“The war has been characterised by targeting of civilians, including executions, abduction, torture, sexual violence, slavery and sexual slavery, looting of private property, indiscriminate bombardment,” Dieng told the Human Rights Council in a video statement.
“Sexual assault has reached such proportions that there have been reports of women committing mass suicide as the only way to avoid rape.”
Ghana, speaking for the African group, called for a “single, coordinated international effort” to resolve the crisis, but said the “utmost priority is to silence the guns,” paving the way for uninterrupted aid flows.
France said both parties were refusing to respect the fundamental rules of international humanitarian and human rights law.
Britain said the conflict was “wholly unnecessary” and said the perpetrators of abuses needed to be brought to account.


Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan
Updated 28 February 2025
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Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan
  • “The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said
  • Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque

JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday that it will implement what it called “safety restrictions” at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins over the weekend.
During Ramadan, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians come to pray at Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam located in East Jerusalem — a sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel.
This year, Ramadan coincides with a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which has largely halted fighting after a devastating war that left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian territory.
“The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said in an online briefing to journalists.
Last year, amid the Gaza war, Israeli authorities imposed restrictions on visitors coming to Al-Aqsa, particularly on those Palestinians coming from the occupied West Bank.
Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque compound “for security reasons,” while thousands of Israeli police officers were deployed across Jerusalem’s Old City.
Mencer indicated that precautions would be taken again this year.
“What we cannot, of course, and no country would countenance is people seeking to foment violence and attacks on anyone else,” he said, without detailing this year’s police deployment.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
By longstanding convention, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray in the compound, which they revere as the site of their second temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
In recent years, growing numbers of Jewish ultranationalists have defied the rules, including far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who publicly prayed there while serving as national security minister in 2023 and 2024.
The Israeli government has said repeatedly that it intends to uphold the status quo at the compound but Palestinian fears about its future have made it a flashpoint for violence.
Last year, Israel allowed Muslims to worship at Al-Aqsa in the same numbers as in previous year despite the war raging in Gaza.


Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop

Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop
Updated 27 February 2025
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Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop

Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop
  • 13 people including a police officer were wounded
  • Israel’s first responders treated injured people at the site of the incident

JERUSALEM: Israeli police said a Palestinian man rammed a car into a bus stop in the north of the country on Thursday, wounding 13 civilians in an incident they were treating as a “terror” attack.
“At 16:17 today, Israel Police’s emergency dispatch received reports of a ramming attack at Karkur Junction, where a vehicle struck multiple civilians waiting at a bus stop,” police said in a statement.
Israel’s first responders, Magen David Adom, said a team treated injured people at the site of the incident, including a 17-year old girl who was in critical condition.
Police said 13 people, including a police officer, were wounded, and that two of them were in “serious” condition.
The suspect was a “53-year-old Palestinian from the Jenin area, (who) was residing in Israel unlawfully with his family,” the police statement said.
“The circumstances of his presence in Israel are under investigation,” the police said, adding that “preliminary findings indicate that he deliberately targeted civilians waiting at a bus stop.”
Israel’s military launched earlier this year a major offensive in the north of the occupied West Bank, deploying tanks into the area for the first time in 20 years.
Dubbed “Iron Wall” by the Israeli military, the operation came days after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza.
The raids have spanned multiple refugee camps near the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas.
Military operations are commonplace in Jenin’s refugee camp, a bastion of Palestinian militancy.


More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says

More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says
Updated 27 February 2025
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More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says

More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says
  • Grave sites identified using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents

DAMASCUS: More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites.

In the report, the Syria Justice and Accountability Center said it identified the grave sites by using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar Assad in December.

Some sites were on the airport grounds. Others were across Damascus.

Two of the sites, one on the Mezzeh airport property and another at a cemetery in Najha, show clear signs of long trenches dug during periods consistent with witness testimony from SJAC.

Shadi Haroun, one of the report’s authors, said he was among the captives. Held over several months in 2011-2012 for organizing protests, he described daily interrogations with physical and psychological torture intended to force him into baseless confessions.

Death came in many forms, he said.

Although detainees saw nothing except their cell walls or the interrogation room, they could hear “occasional shootings, shot by shot, every couple of days.”

Then there were the injuries inflicted by their tormentors.

“A small wound on the foot of one of the detainees, caused by a whipping he received during torture, was left unsterilized or untreated for days, which gradually turned into gangrene and his condition worsened until it reached the point of amputation of the entire foot,” Haroun said, describing a cellmate’s plight.

In addition to obtaining the documents, SJAC and the Association for the Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison interviewed 156 survivors and eight former members of air force intelligence, Syria’s security service that was tasked with the surveillance, imprisonment and killing of regime critics.

The new government has issued a decree forbidding former regime officials from speaking publicly and none were available to comment.

“Although some of the graves mentioned in the report had not been discovered before, the discovery itself does not surprise us, as we know that there are more than 100,000 missing persons in Assad’s prisons who did not come out during the days of liberation in early December,” said a colonel in the new government’s Interior Ministry who identified himself by his military alias, Abu Baker.

“Discovering the fates of those missing persons and searching for more graves is one of the greatest legacies left by the Assad regime,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests spiraled into a full-scale war. Both Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused by rights groups, foreign governments and war-crimes prosecutors of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.


Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development

Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development
Updated 27 February 2025
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Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development

Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development
  • As Oman’s largest sustainable urban development, Yiti integrates renewable energy, food production, water and waste recycling, smart mobility and climate-resilient infrastructure to create a “future-ready” community

MUSCAT: The Sustainable City — Yiti, Oman’s flagship sustainable development and the pioneering net zero emissions community, signed a strategic partnership on Thursday with Ahli Islamic Oman bank.

The partnership was formalized at a signing ceremony held on-site at The Sustainable City — Yiti, attended by senior executives from Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman, along with key stakeholders.

As Oman’s largest sustainable urban development, Yiti integrates renewable energy, food production, water and waste recycling, smart mobility and climate-resilient infrastructure to create a “future-ready” community.

With 96 percent of its infrastructure already completed, the project is progressing toward its full realization by 2026, bringing together residential, commercial, hospitality and educational spaces designed to advance sustainable living.

“With an investment of nearly $1 billion, we are redefining the real estate landscape by integrating sustainability, innovation, and long-term value creation. This collaboration with Ahli reinforces our commitment to responsible growth, ensuring that we deliver a world-class, net-zero emissions community that aligns with Oman’s Vision 2040 and sets a benchmark for sustainable cities worldwide,” said Mohammed Al-Ghufaili, COO of Oman Tourism Development Company (OMRAN) Group and a board member of Yiti.

Yousuf Al-Rawahi, head of Ahli Islamic Oman, said: “Our collaboration with The Sustainable City — Yiti reflects the overall commitment and endeavor to support Sharia-compliant and sustainable investments that align with Oman Vision 2040.

“By providing the needed financial solutions, we empower individuals and businesses to be part of a groundbreaking net-zero emissions community. Together, we are fostering a responsible urban grown society, while ensuring long-term value creation, and contributing to a more sustainable future for many in the Sultanate of Oman.”

Developed by Diamond Developers in collaboration with OMRAN, Yiti spans nearly one million square meters along the Gulf of Oman coastline, and offers smart infrastructure, low-carbon living and sustainable tourism.

The development features a mix of residential, commercial, hospitality, educational spaces, two hotels, alongside essential community infrastructure such as schools, a nursery, an equestrian center, an indoor sports complex and outdoor leisure areas.

It has been designed to achieve net zero emissions by 2040, as a key contributor to Oman’s environmental and economic transformation.