Fear quiets 2 cities on Turkey-Syria border
AKÇAKALE / TEL ABYAD
Residents of Turkey’s Akçakale and Syria’s Tel Abyad wait in fear and silence after a killer shelling in the former and Ankara’s response to it
Hüseyin Hayatsever huseyin.hayatsever@hdn.com.tr Turkish border town Akçakale, where a mortar from Syria hit a house and killed five civilians on Oct. 3, is now calm and quiet and residents expect to return to their daily routine soon, although they fear a possible increase in conflicts around their town.
The conflict between Syrian rebels and Syrian government forces intensified near the Turkish border after rebels captured the border gate last month.
Nevertheless, when a mortar shell from Syria killed five people, residents here in Akçakale expressed their fury at the Turkish government authorities. A group of people held a march to protest just hours after the incident on Oct. 3, but they were dispersed with pepper spray. On Oct. 4, people also protested high ranking officials including Labor Minister Faruk Çelik at the funeral ceremony of the victims.
When strolling around, life seems to be flowing normally in the center of Akçakale, which is a couple of hundreds of meters away from the Syrian border. When asked how they consider the situation, some residents blame the al-Assad administration for the shelling and express their support for Turkey’s retaliation.
A 36 year-old Akçakale resident, who called the Syrian rebels his “brothers,” told the Hürriyet Daily News: “Enough is enough. Al-Assad has killed civilians not only in Syria but also in Turkey with the latest incident. Turkey is doing what has to be done. He [al-Assad] calls them [rebels] terrorists, but what have they done to be called this? All they do is to say ‘La ilahe illallah’ [Allah is the only god].”
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