There are 35,000, some estimates say 50,000 Syrians, who have fled Assad’s Russian-backed assault on Aleppo, who have been refused permission to cross the border and find refuge in Turkey. International media are outraged. This outrage however is misplaced.
Indeed, it is hard not to feel some sympathy with the Turkish government while suspecting a degree of hypocrisy from the Europeans who are calling for the refugees to be admitted. Europe is also demanding that Turkey stem the flow of migrants surging into the EU largely through Greece. It has backed this demand with cash. In November Brussels agreed to pay Ankara $3.3 billion to keep its 2.4 million Syrian refugees in their camps. This makes Europe’s insistence that Turkey now admit tens of thousand more seem offensively proprietorial, as if Brussels had bought and paid for the Erdogan government. It is also diplomatically inept. Republican Turkey has never responded to that sort of treatment.
It would have been far wiser had Brussels considered what the Turks have done with these helpless people. They have established a tented camp on the Syrian side of the frontier and are busy supplying food and essentials. There is also a medical center and the border gates are still being opened to allow injured members of the Free Syrian Army to be ferried into Turkey for treatment.
From a humanitarian point of view, what the Turks are doing seems entirely defensible. The big question, however, is how physically defensible will be the camp on the Syrian side of the border. Turkey has always been reluctant to establish safe zones inside Syria. Far from supporting the inhabitants of Kobane during the brutal assault by Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and seeking to establish a safe zone, the Erdogan government actually sought to isolate the fighters defending the city, until forced by international opinion to allow support to enter. This of course was because Kobane was a Kurdish town and the Turkish president was then readying himself for a resumption of the war against the Kurdish PKK.
The most Ankara has ever proposed has been a no-fly zone in northern Syrian airspace. This, however, is a non-starter because Assad now has Russian air cover. Moscow’s pilots will be itching to revenge the death of one of their comrades shot down by Turkish warplanes when allegedly on the Turkish side of the frontier.
So what is the Turkish government prepared to do to protect the two refugee camps it has established at Bab Al-Salama outside Turkey’s Oncupinar? Of equal importance, is Turkey prepared to allow for rapid expansion of these two camps? There are some 350,000 people trapped in Aleppo itself and maybe 100,000 in surrounding areas.
Assad’s bloodstained army appears to have cut the road heading north toward Turkey. This may mean that those who have made it to Oncupinar are the lucky ones. Nevertheless there could yet be tens of thousands more terrified Syrians desperately seeking shelter. Is Turkey ready both to succor and protect them?
