Isis attacks Turkish border town that hosts Syrian refugees

If it weren't for the low bellow of fighter jets swirling in the cloudy sky overhead, this might just be any other town in rural Anatolia. Kilis is a town terrorised. More than 50 missiles, mostly crudely manufactured Katyusha rockets about a metre in length, have landed in and around the town, 8km from Syria, since January.

The rockets have fallen on shoppers in the town’s main square, on chunks of garden soil growing vegetables for families, on mosques and on children playing in their homes. On top of this, more than 120,000 refugees from Syria made the town a temporary home.

Many have fled areas where the Islamic State terrorist group holds a vicious grip, and it is increasingly telegraphing its wanton violence to Kilis by way of these rockets.

For several years the people of Kilis have welcomed the waves of desperate Syrians, who now outnumber their hosts. As a result of such tolerance the town has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a Turkish government official.

Yet over the past couple of weeks alone, a barrage of shells that claimed six lives and caused huge fires is threatening the calm between hosts and guests. More than 50 projectiles have landed on the town since January and several times over the past month protesters have called for the resignation of local officials.

Okges Haydar (22) opened a new barber shop in the Beslever area in east Kilis just over three weeks ago. Since two rockets landed within metres of his salon last Friday week, however, the neighbourhood has resembled a ghost town.

“Everyone has left. My fiancee, my mother and father all went to Antep [Gaziantep] yesterday because of the rocket attack,” says Haydar from his empty salon.

“Most of the shops have closed,” he says, pointing at shuttered shopfronts up and down his street, “because the locals have left the area. The butcher next door closed up yesterday and I haven’t seen him since.”

Economic collapse

This is an experience echoed by residents on the far side of Kilis. On the western fringes of the town, grocery shop owner Nesdet Karadas says the local economy is bordering on collapse.

“Ever since the bombs started falling the situation has been terrible. The malls are empty, the streets are quiet, and the internet service is awful. Around 70,000 people have left Kilis just in the last month because of the rockets,” he says.

“And what’s happening now is that criminals from other cities are coming to Kilis stealing TVs and other property from the empty homes, stealing cigarettes and goods from shops.”

Kilis is not helped by the fact that Islamic State – also known as Isis – has controlled a vast 98km stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border just south of the town for more than a year, and Turkey has been unwilling to definitively degrade the jihadists for fear such action would work to the advantage of separatist Kurdish militants in Syria and Turkey, whom Ankara vehemently opposes.

Another reason for Turkey’s sluggishness in taking retributive action against Islamic State in Syria is because it fears once more coming into contact with Russian fighter jets that have been backing the Syrian regime in its war against rebel groups since last September. Last November, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet on the Syrian border, prompting a freeze in diplomatic and economic relations that has since damaged Turkey’s agriculture and tourism industries.

Buffer zone

Despite Ankara’s fears, locals in Kilis want action. Karadas says the only way to improve the situation in Kilis is to send the Turkish army 40km into northern Syria to establish a buffer zone. “Only then will the rockets stop,” he said.

For others, anger with the authorities has reached boiling point. “Our town mayor is in Ankara, he didn’t come to see what happened; he’s not even in Kilis,” says barber Okges Haydar.

Unseen but clearly audible in the sky above, Turkish jets are dropping bombs on Islamic State positions just kilometres away inside Syria as he speaks.

“When we hear this sound we know there will be no rockets landing here today. But sometimes they [the jets] don’t come for a week,” he said, inhaling a cigarette while pointing angrily to the sky.

Kilis's mayor Hasan Kara told The Irish Times he was in Kilis at the time of last Friday week's attacks, but that trade in the town "has almost stopped nowadays". Yes, the Turkish government is doing enough. The Turkish army is taking precautions at the border and destroying the locations that the rockets launched by Isis militants," he said.

Authorities confirmed last week that special forces on the ground in Syria killed 55 Islamic State militants on May 7th, an operation expected to reduce the number of rocket attacks on Kilis. But for some that’s not enough.

“There have been protests here in the neighbourhood, people banging on their cooking pots in frustration, but no one came to listen to us,” says Haydar. “These rockets are landing on Turkish soil, the president should come and just see, that’s all we want.”