Hope builds for refugees as world turns on Assad

Reuters, by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, YAYLADAG, Turkey | Thu Nov 24, 2011

(Reuters) - After months of despair that the international community would ever act to help them, Syrian refugees in Turkey say they are now optimistic that the world is ready to take action at last.

"Before, people were frustrated that their camp stay would last too long, and felt it was no life in a camp, when the international community seemed paralyzed and hesitant," said Ibrahim Ali, a contractor from a Syrian village, now living in a tented camp in Yayladag on the Turkish side of the border.

"But now it's different. People are staying here and morale is high. Assad's days are numbered."

In the eight months since President Bashar al-Assad's security forces began their crackdown on protests, the West and regional neighbors seemed resolutely opposed to getting entangled in one of the core countries of the Middle East.

But two weeks ago the Arab League suspended Syria for refusing to halt the violence, and the news has reinvigorated refugees in camps here on the border.

This week, France called for a humanitarian corridor to be set up in Syria, guarded by international monitors, with Assad's permission or organized by international observers.

The prime minister of Turkey - a regional heavyweight with the military strength to mount a cross-border operation -compared Assad to Hitler and Mussolini and called for him to quit. Its land forces commander visited the border region.

On Thursday, Arab League ministers meeting in Cairo said they would impose harsh economic sanctions if Assad did not allow in monitors.

Yamen Fadel, a 30-year-old cook from Dama village, was watching the news from the League meeting in Cairo on a large flat screen TV in a tent with other refugees.

"From morning till now people have been glued to the news. We have a lot of hope the decisions of the Arab League will encourage Turkey to set up a safe zone to allow our men to go and fight the regime from there," he said.

"People want to go and fight with the revolutionaries and leave the women behind in the camp."

PAINTINGS

About 8,200 Syrian refugees are registered in five camps in Turkey's Hatay province, a panhandle of territory jutting south along the Mediterranean coast toward Syria.

A Turkish foreign ministry official in the area reckoned that the number of refugees registered peaked at nearly 20,000 a few months ago, but fell as families left the camps.

Some have found lodging with families in villages in the area, which share kinship ties with villages in Syria's Idlib province across the hilly, forested frontier.

In better times Hatay, site of the ancient city of Antioch, formed a trade route to the Levant. The Turkish and Syrian governments agreed visa-free travel in 2009, a time of friendship between Assad and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Refugees in the two camps at Yayladag, the first set up months ago by the Turkish Red Crescent, say they have been well looked after by their Turkish hosts but are still homesick for Syria. The border is within walking distance.

"I spend my time either painting or killing time playing cards and there is no work to do," said Abdelkarim Haj Yousuf, 57, an artist.

His grizzled face filled with sadness and he broke into sobs over the actions of Assad's government.

"This is not a regime it's a gang, or it wouldn't be doing this to us. Is there a regime that humiliates and kills its people this way?" he cried.

Kneeling on the floor of his tent, he worked on a pastel portrait of a blue-eyed young woman with long brown hair. Other portraits lay scattered around. None of the faces bore smiles.

A relative, Mariam Haj Yousef, 57, said refugees wanted to go home but would not return as long as Assad remained in power.

"We want Allah and the help of all the countries to return to Syria," she said outside her tent. "If Bashar stays, we will not go back. We will never go back."

(Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff; editing by Tim Pearce)

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