In Turkey, anger as Syrian conflict spills over

Clare Morgana Gillis | Special for USA TODAY

REYHANLI, Turkey — It almost looked like a normal day for the mayor of Reyhanli as Hüseyin Can Sanverdi wore a three-piece suit while sitting in his stately City Hall office where the phone rang off the hook.

But it was anything but normal: All windows in the room had been blown out by a car bomb three days earlier, the first of two attacks that claimed about 50 lives and injured hundreds more in the deadliest attack on Turkish soil in more than 20 years.

Reyhanli sits at the border with Syria, where an increasingly brutal civil war has spilled over in an action that, many Turks say, demands international response.

"The international community and the U.S. definitely have to help Turkey with the situation," said Sanverdi, raising his voice to be heard over the bulldozers that worked frenetically scraping rubble from the blast into piles for disposal. The building would be fully functional again in a week, he said, but Turkey could no longer handle the problem on the other side of the border alone.

President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met at the White House on Thursday, emerging later to say they remain opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and want his removal. Neither offered any initiatives to make that happen.

Turkey has endured several attacks by Syria, and many are concerned the attacks will only increase.

"They attacked us because Reyhanli cooperates so much with the Syrian people and sends so much aid," Sanverdi says. "For two years, there have never been any problems here."

The Turkish government believes that Mihrac Ural — a fugitive Turkish Alawite who found asylum in Syria in 1980 — is behind the Reyhanli attacks.

Officials have also implicated Ural in a massacre in the coastal town of Baniyas, Syria, two weeks ago. "Those who committed the Baniyas massacre are also responsible for these attacks," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on May 12, referring to the twin car bombings here.

At the site of the more powerful second bombing, a busy street corner at a roundabout known for its artificial tree, tensions remain high less than a week after the explosion. A minor traffic snafu turns into a man getting beaten violently, but police intervene quickly.

Some Turks have become violent, but many others simply want to stop playing such a large role in Syria's war. Political opposition groups hope to capitalize on diminishing public support for Erdogan's policy on Syria.

Semih Iseri, a 21-year-old international relations student, came to Reyhanli from Ankara to see for himself what is happening in his country. As he paces around on shattered glass and bloodstains near the top floor of a building that overlooks the bomb site, he blames the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for the attack, and Erdogan's government for supporting the rebels, whom he calls "terrorists."

"There is an Arab Spring, or whatever you want to call it, but that's Assad's business. It's Syria's business. It's not our business, but we are intervening because Erdogan wants to make another Ottoman Empire. The West says we should declare war on Syria, but we don't want war. We are not a strong country." says Iseri, a member of the ADD (Kemalist Thought Party), an opposition group.

Gesturing toward the taped-off wreckage — where beds in bedrooms are visible after entire sides of the buildings were torn off by the blast — Iseri says, "That's the Ottoman Empire."

Reyhanli sits at the Syrian border, serving as a corridor for humanitarian aid going into Syria and refugees coming out. Atmeh, just over the border on the Syrian side, is also known for its high number of foreign fighters and mujahedin, Muslims who come from elsewhere in the world to pursue jihad in Syria.

Reyhanli has one main strip and three roundabouts. Its pre-Arab-Spring population of 60,000 has nearly doubled as about 40,000 Syrians have escaped the increasingly brutal civil war at home.

As the circle of players in Syria's civil war continues to grow, the questions surrounding the Reyhanli attacks — who did it, what their goals were, why they chose Reyhanli, and why so many Turks and so few Syrians perished — are significant for determining the future of the Syrian conflict and the role of Turkey in it.

While Reyhanli's Turks — as well as the Syrians who have found refuge here — are nearly 100% Sunni, Reyhanli is in Hatay province, which has many Alawites as well. Not far away is Syria's Latakia city, the homeland of the Alawites, the Shia offshoot sect to which the ruling Assad family belongs.

As Syria's civil war has grown more and more sectarian, with largely Sunni rebels pitted against an Alawite regime, ordinary citizens have succumbed to anger and hatred based on sect as well.

Antakya, the seat of Turkey's Hatay province, which used to be part of Syria, is about 30% Alawi.

Reyhanli's economy has taken off as a result of its proximity to the Syrian border.

Houses that used to be rented out for $100 a month now go for $700, said Yasir Alsyed, an attorney who used to defend political prisoners before military courts in Syria.

Alsyed left Aleppo nearly a year and a half ago and has lived for eight months in Reyhanli, where he directs a rehabilitation center for disabled Syrians. In Antakya, most merchants are Alawi, he explained, and as all the aid organizations began basing themselves in Reyhanli, the trade for Sunnis went up, and the trade for Alawis in Antakya went down.

Then, Alsyed said, as the civil war in Syria took an increasingly sectarian tone, "now Sunnis always look for Sunni shops; they won't buy from Alawis in Antakya. It wasn't like this before."

"Three days ago, the situation here became terrible. I haven't left home since then," said Hassan Abu Hamzi, a 25-year-old aid worker and former FSAfighter, as he sat in the apartment he has lived in for the last six months with his brother, sister and mother.

Syrians have walled themselves up inside their homes since the bombings spurred Turks in Reyhanli to attack Syrians in the streets and target cars with Syrian license plates. "It's not everybody," Abu Hamzi said, "just some violent people."

Concerning the future of Syria, Abu Hamzi said, "there's no choice. It's either us (the Sunnis) or the Alawis."