Influx of Syrian refugees stirs tensions in Turkey's Kurdish southeast

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The head of the Turkish human rights group (IHD) in the Kurdish city of Urfa says systematic efforts are seen to remake the city’s demography by mass relocation of Arab refugees from neighboring Syria.

Atilla Yazar told Rudaw the mayors of other Turkish cities, including Konya and Antalya, have "encouraged and facilitated" the resettling of Syrian Arab refugees in the Kurdish southeast and Urfa in particular.

"Roughly 60 percent of the population in Urfa is Kurdish, the rest are Arabs and Turks," Yazar said. "Now they plan to rebalance the number of Kurds in relation to other nationalities through Syrian Arab refugees," he said, referring to the recent influx of refugees into Kurdish towns near the Syrian border.

According to the group, over 1 million refugees have already been resettled in nine Kurdish cities, with a total population of 8.3 million -- or 12 percent of the total population.

The group says some 38 percent of the refugees are currently in the Kurdish southeast while the rest of the 2.7 million displaced people from Syria are spread across the country.

Urfa alone has embraced 410,000 refugees, a colossal number for a city of 800,000 people.

"This is social engineering," said Ayaan Kaya at the Bilgi University in Istanbul at a panel that was arranged to discuss the wave of resettlements. "Through balance of population, Kurdish national sentiments will be tamed as it will change the demography of this region in the long run," Kaya said.

Another speaker at the panel, professor Ilter Toran, said that since most of the refugees are of Arab origin and have relatives in Kurdish cities, "it will likely shift the population make up."

Influx of Syrian refugees stirs tensions in Turkey's Kurdish southeast

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