Turkey’s CHP Leader Calls for Restoring Ties with Damascus, Sending Refugees Home

Police and security personnel stand guard outside the private Sanko University Hospital where a fire broke out in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) intensive care unit in Gaziantep, Turkey, December 19, 2020. Kadir Gunes/Demiroren News Agency via REUTERS
Police and security personnel stand guard outside the private Sanko University Hospital where a fire broke out in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) intensive care unit in Gaziantep, Turkey, December 19, 2020. Kadir Gunes/Demiroren News Agency via REUTERS
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Turkey’s CHP Leader Calls for Restoring Ties with Damascus, Sending Refugees Home

Police and security personnel stand guard outside the private Sanko University Hospital where a fire broke out in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) intensive care unit in Gaziantep, Turkey, December 19, 2020. Kadir Gunes/Demiroren News Agency via REUTERS
Police and security personnel stand guard outside the private Sanko University Hospital where a fire broke out in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) intensive care unit in Gaziantep, Turkey, December 19, 2020. Kadir Gunes/Demiroren News Agency via REUTERS

Turkey’s opposition leader and Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu has called on Ankara to restore diplomatic relations and bilateral ties with the Syrian government of President Bashar Al-Assad.

Kilicdaroglu has also urged the reopening of the Turkish and Syrian embassies in the two countries, stressing the need for peace in Syria so that refugees may return to their homes.

“If we were in power, there would be no problem in Syria, but relations with Damascus need improving in any way,” said the leader in an implicit hint directed at the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“The embassies must open again,” added Kilicdaroglu.

As for how Syrian refugees are affecting Turkey’s economy, Kilicdaroglu said they are creating unwanted competition to local industries and guilds.

“Syrians settled here and carry on their business, which caused a serious problem for the industrialists and the residents,” he said during a visit to Turkey’s southern Gaziantep province on Sunday.

Noting that there are between 500,000-700,000 Syrians in Gaziantep, Kilicdaroglu stressed the need to change the current situation and bring peace to Syria immediately.

For Kilicdaroglu, Syrians may pose a serious demographic threat in the future, especially that there are more Syrians than Turks in the southern Kilis province.

He went on to push for the European Union (EU) to take over reconstruction in the war-torn country.

“The EU should build roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and parks in Syria,” said Kilicdaroglu, adding that after reconstruction, Syrians must be told to “go home,” where they’ll have all their needs met.

So far, it is the CHP spearheading efforts for reestablishing ties with the Syrian regime in Turkey.

The opposition party believes that Turkey’s current policy on Syria was based on grave miscalculations.

Turkey hosts around 3.7 million Syrians, the majority of whom are settled in Gaziantep and Istanbul.



Israeli Airstrike on Apartment Building in Lebanese Coastal Town Kills at Least 1

 A building damaged in an Israeli military strike in the town of Jiyeh, south of Beirut, Lebanon, 05 November 2024. (EPA)
A building damaged in an Israeli military strike in the town of Jiyeh, south of Beirut, Lebanon, 05 November 2024. (EPA)
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Israeli Airstrike on Apartment Building in Lebanese Coastal Town Kills at Least 1

 A building damaged in an Israeli military strike in the town of Jiyeh, south of Beirut, Lebanon, 05 November 2024. (EPA)
A building damaged in an Israeli military strike in the town of Jiyeh, south of Beirut, Lebanon, 05 November 2024. (EPA)

An Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in a coastal town south of Beirut killed at least one person, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.

The ministry said 20 others were wounded in the strike Tuesday in Jiyeh, around 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the port of Sidon.

The attack hit an area that has not been a regular target of Israeli military operations and had not received prior evacuation warnings.

“It felt like it was inside the house,” Malika Al Hajj, an elderly woman living in the area, told The Associated Press. “I ran away — I don’t even know which neighbor brought me out, because everything was black. You couldn’t see anything.”

Once outside, Hajj said she discovered that the strike had hit the nearby building where her nephews live.

“Men, women and children” live inside, she said. “I just want to be reassured. I saw some of them, but the others, they told me, were taken to the hospital."

At the site of the strike, the building’s skeletal frame stands amid the rubble, its concrete shattered, windows blown out and metal twisted from the impact.

Families were seen leaving the area, carrying what belongings they could gather.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 3,013 people and injured 13,553 others since Oct. 2023, the Lebanese government said on Tuesday.