A recent increase in violent assaults on Arabs in Turkey has raised significant concerns about the safety of foreigners in a country visited by tens of thousands of tourists from Middle Eastern nations and home to millions of Syrian refugees. Earlier this month, a Turkish man was arrested in Istanbul for threatening a group of Saudi tourists with a knife while allegedly shouting derogatory remarks at them.
A video of the attack quickly circulated on social media, showing the man making a hand gesture associated with the Gray Wolves, an ultranationalist and pan-Turkic group established in the late 1960s as the youth wing of the Nationalist Movement Party. The Gray Wolves have long been linked to violent acts, including attacks on leftists, Kurds, and other minority groups. Despite their controversial reputation, they remain influential in Turkish society.
Turkiye is a popular destination for Saudi tourists, with 650,000 visiting from January through August last year, according to Turkish tourism officials. An increase in hostility towards Arabs could potentially reduce the number of Saudi visitors. This incident is not isolated, as similar videos of attacks on Arab tourists in Turkiye have gone viral online, involving fistfights and xenophobic insults posted by users from Gulf states and Egypt.
The knife-brandishing incident occurred amid a fresh wave of violence against Syrians in Turkiye, following the arrest of a 26-year-old Syrian man on charges of sexual assault against a minor in Kayseri, Central Anatolia. Riots broke out overnight on June 30 across Kayseri after news spread on social media about the alleged abuse. The rioters attacked and vandalized dozens of Syrian-owned businesses, homes, and vehicles, spreading to other parts of Turkiye, including Gaziantep, Bursa, and Hatay.
Ali Yerlikaya, the Turkish interior minister, condemned the rioters’ actions as “illegal” and contrary to the nation’s values. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also condemned the violence, emphasizing that fueling xenophobia and hatred of refugees achieves nothing. Shortly after the Kayseri incident, the personal data of some 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkiye was leaked online, sparking fears of increased xenophobic violence.
UK-based Syrian activist Lana, who chose to remain anonymous informed that her family in Gaziantep “went through hell for at least two weeks following the Kayseri incident.” Marwah, a Syrian in Bursa, believes social media exaggerated the situation, causing panic among Syrians.
Anti-Arab sentiments may have already impacted Turkiye’s tourism industry. The number of tourists visiting Turkiye from Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan dropped significantly in 2023, according to Hurriyet Daily. UK-based Syrian activist Lana noted that heightened anti-Arab racism has caused a decline in Arab tourism to Turkiye, with the biggest impact felt by Syrian nationals.
Enass, a France-based Syrian journalist, emphasized that Turkiye, like other neighboring countries, has profited from hosting Syrian refugees. She criticized Turkish politicians for employing anti-refugee rhetoric, contributing to violence against vulnerable Syrian communities. Syrian entrepreneurs in Turkiye owned at least 10,000 businesses as of 2019, employing around 44,000 Syrians and thousands of Turkish nationals.
The changing political and economic landscape is prompting the Turkish government to encourage Syrians to “voluntarily” return, which Enass views as unjustified deportation. The delay in addressing security incidents against Syrians in Turkiye undermines their interests and fuels hate speech. Erdogan has expressed a willingness to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus, but the Syrian leadership has conditioned normalization on the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syrian territory.
