Fleeing Kobani for uncertain future in Turkey

For Shamsa Tammi, a refugee in this city from the nearby Syrian town of Kobani, the men of the Islamic State were a scourge her family could not escape. Her husband, a Kurdish fighter, was killed in a battle with militants from the group more than a year ago. Then last week, an Islamic State sniper killed her eldest son, Recber, who had stayed to defend their home. Troubles followed her family across the border, where the Turkish authorities detained another of her sons, along with dozens of other people accused of being Kurdish activists.

“They came to us,” she said of the militants, as she tallied the calamities and gazed at a photograph of Recber. There was possibly more heartache to come: another of her sons, Ahmed, (15), said out of earshot of his mother that he planned to sneak back into Kobani, across the border, to fight.

The Islamic State's assault last month on Kobani, a majority Kurdish town, drove out a huge number of the area's roughly 400,000 residents, flooding Suruc with families and their belongings, anger and tales of hardship. The refugees have settled in storefronts, unfinished buildings and tent camps that fill as soon as they are erected, roughly doubling the size of the town, according to aid workers. Now, with the battle for Kobani settling into a stalemate, the squares and streets of Suruc feel more like a purgatory for the refugees than a haven.

The refugees here seem at once luckier and more tortured than the masses of displaced people from the wars in Syria and Iraq: Their homes are still visible from the border, a short drive away. On the daily pilgrimage to the frontier, where they join Kurds from all over Turkey, the refugees peer through binoculars, trying to make out neighbourhoods under columns of smoke.

Marwan Ismail, one of the refugees, spent most of Monday at the border, a day that brought thunderous car bombings on the northern edge of the city by militants with the Islamic State, also known as Isis or Isil. “My house is okay,” he said, relieved, after returning to a cafe in Suruc.

The people in Suruc – like Kobani, a majority Kurdish town – have been welcoming. Many of the Syrians from Kobani had travelled here over the years, to visit relatives separated by the border or to work as day labourers. Now, everyone mingles in the town centre, clogging the square under the statue of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, and the gaze of heavily armed police officers.

Changing moods

In the town’s gathering spots, moods seemed to pivot with the news of the day. In the parking lot of the hospital last week, on a day of heavy airstrikes in Kobani, a refugee named Yasser Ali said “spirits were high” among the Kurdish fighters back in his city. A cousin had just arrived at the hospital from the front lines, with a leg injury.

“His wound is light,” Ali said. “He wants to go back.” No one seemed to talk about resettling elsewhere, not with Kurdish fighters still struggling to repel the militants, backed by coalition airstrikes that have kept the Kurds in the fight without tipping the battle. These refugees regarded their exile as still temporary, even as the days stretched into a month.

“When you leave because of war, you don’t think about what will happen,” said Azzat Oso, 38, who owned a restaurant in Kobani and fled last month with 24 members of his extended family.

The only place they could find shelter was at a construction site in the centre of Suruc, until a kindly shopkeeper offered the family space in one of his empty stores. They huddled together there on a recent evening, behind a metal rolling gate, carrying only the clothes they had managed to snatch as they fled.

Hundreds of refugees stayed at a dank wedding hall nearby, where mattresses on a recent evening were piled in mounds. The Syrians stood in chaotic lines for a dinner of beans and rice in a darkened courtyard with children everywhere, underfoot.

“My head is about to explode,” said Fawzia Mahmoud, 35. “This is my first time in Turkey, and I haven’t seen Turkey except for this hall.” Mahmoud and many of her neighbours from Kobani dwelled on the recent betrayals they had suffered, first, at the hands of fellow Syrians, Arabs from the area around Kobani who had allied with the militants and who, the Kurds said, had looted Kurdish homes.

Then there was the Turkish government, accused by the Kurds of aiding the Islamic State in its rise. Ankara continues to refuse to intervene militarily to help Kobani, or to allow the Kurds to send their own fighters and arms over the border.

Profiteering

And there were profiteers, who took advantage of the refugees’ inability to bring their possessions across the border. Abuzeid Ibrahim, a farmer, sold 42 head of cattle – his livelihood – at the border for half price, he said. His neighbours had left their sheep or their cars.

Others in the crowded camps struggled with traumas far more profound. One refugee at the wedding hall said the extremists had killed his 18-year old niece, calling her an infidel for wearing pants. At another refugee camp, in an old warehouse, Abdullah Mohamed was becoming reacquainted with his 16-year old son, who was among roughly 150 Kurdish children kidnapped by the militants in May as they were returning from a school trip to the Syrian city of Aleppo.

During their captivity, Mohamed received a few calls from the boy, who said he was being treated well and receiving religious instruction. The boy was released about two weeks ago and seemed “normal,” his father said. “He keeps praying,” Mohamed added, saying that regular prayer was unusual in his family.

As he spoke, the noise in the camp, filled with children, tested Mohamed’s frayed nerves. “Who can stand all this?” he said. Even as Suruc ran out of space, more refugees arrived, shuttled in trucks over the border as gunbattles erupted in the city behind them. Kurdu Hassan, 31, a schoolteacher, tried to jump out of the truck in which he was riding but instead fell about 10 feet onto the ground, injuring his wrists and a leg while smashing a jar of tea that he had been carrying in a plastic bag.

“I didn’t know where the truck was taking me,” he said. His family had crossed the border about three weeks ago, but he had waited with the family car in hopes the fighting would end. But the situation in Kobani had only gotten worse, and he had no idea where his family had gone. Maybe Suruc, he hoped.

“I decided to jump here,” he said, “and start looking.” – (New York Times service)