Sitting on mattresses on the floor in an apartment in Reyhanli, a Turkish town on the Syrian border, a dozen friends chat over tea, smoking cigarette after cigarette. The lives of these Syrians changed again with the earthquake which struck Turkey and Syria on February 6, killing more than 40,000 people. In the province of Hatay, where they represent 20% of the population, Syrian refugees have many victims. In their twenties, former revolutionaries, these young men, whose surnames are withheld for safety, fled Syria at war. They lost everything again. “We don’t know where life will take us”said, fatalistic, Mohamed.
He and his friend, Souhaib, hurry. Their families are waiting for them in Antakya, with the few belongings they have saved from the rubble, to settle in Mersin. Ahmad, a car salesman, sent his parents to his brother’s house in Ankara, the time to find an apartment in Reyhanli. The Turkish government has authorized Syrian refugees residing in the provinces affected by the earthquake to settle during the next three months in other regions, with the exception of Istanbul. Those who have relatives, or enough money to rent an apartment elsewhere, leave on their own. “The government facilitates the evacuation of the Turks, we have to manage”complains Abdelaziz.
Another young man named Ahmad has moved into this apartment that Mohamed rents. The latter pulled it out of the rubble, three days after the earthquake. Ahmad no longer has a phone or money, not even his identity papers or his university degree. For six days, with seven friends, Mohamed extracted nearly a hundred people from buildings in Antakya – nine of them alive – and transported the bodies of 200 Syrians to the border. More than 1,200 remains were transported to Syria for burial, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Once the young man was molested by Turkish rescuers, who believed he was looting the apartments.
Racism
On two other occasions, hostile residents prevented him from distributing aid in the camps. Anti-Syrian racism, fueled in recent years by the economic crisis which has turned the 3.7 million refugees into scapegoats, has exploded since the earthquake. In Antakya, the atmosphere is poisonous. “There are Syrians who steal everything. The government must send them back to their country or to Europe. They change the demographic structure of the country.accuses Kazem Kuseyri, the owner of the Savon hotel.
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