Jul 5, 2017

A beautiful summer day in Turkey’s Black Sea town of Samsun turned ugly on July 2, when a mob tried to lynch two Syrian men for allegedly taking pictures of women swimming and sunbathing at a local beach. The police used batons to disperse the crowd and save the two injured men, who were hospitalized.

In a similar incident that same day in the capital, Ankara, residents of the working-class neighborhood of Demetevler brawled with Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The fight broke out over rumors that a Syrian man had raped a 5-year-old girl. Police used water cannons and tear gas to break up the fight. One Iraqi Turkmen man was stabbed during the scuffle and taken to a hospital for treatment.

The incidents quickly gave rise to racist posts on Turkish social media. On Twitter, choice hashtags such as “Syrians should return home,” “Expel Syrians” and “I do not want Syrians in my country” continue to trend. Others expressed dismay that Syrians in Turkey could return to visit their homes during the recent Islamic holiday and come back to Turkey. If it’s safe enough to go back to Syria during the holiday, why do those people return, critics asked.

For veteran Turkish journalist Rusen Cakir, these reactions point to an ugly spread of racism in Turkey. On his independent media platform Medyascope TV, Cakir pointed out how cases of sexual assault involving refugees or incidents in which Syrians themselves are the victims (such as one back in March when a 70-year-old man in Samsun sexually harassed a Syrian girl) are barely covered by the Turkish media. Cakir had to point out some of the obvious but often forgotten facts about why there are 3.5 million refugees in Turkey, most of them Syrian: Syria is a war-torn country and none of the Syrians in Turkey came there on their own volition.

The news may not be as bad as it sounds. According to Akin Unver, an assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and digital politics fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, anti-Syrian posts and hashtags on Twitter are likely the result of automated bot attacks.