More than 470 people have been arrested after mobs attacked Syrian shops and cars in central Turkey.
The Turkish government is urging calm after mob violence against Syrian refugees broke out in the central Melikgazi region and spread to other areas.
The riots erupted after Turkish authorities arrested a Syrian man for allegedly sexually abusing a seven-year-old Syrian girl in the central city of Kayseri.
Turkish residents, angered by reports of crime posted online, overturned cars in Kayseri and set fire to Syrian-run businesses on Sunday night, demanding that Syrians be expelled from the country.
The violence spread to the southern province of Hatay, where protesters set fire to a Syrian grocery store.
The riots “damaged homes, workplaces and vehicles belonging to Syrian citizens,” said Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, who accused those responsible of acting “illegally in an attitude that does not conform to our human values.”
On Tuesday, Yerlikaya said that “474 people were detained after provocative actions” carried out against Syrians, in a post on X.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned the violence, which he says opposition parties are fomenting.
“It is unacceptable to burn houses, vandalise and set streets on fire,” he said on Monday, referring to the violence. “Nothing can be achieved by fuelling xenophobia and hatred towards refugees in society.”
More than 3.5 million Syrians live in Turkey, the highest number in the region, who were initially welcomed as refugees when the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011.
Most Syrians live under “temporary protection” status and many later became Turkish citizens. But anti-refugee sentiment has been on the rise in Turkey, particularly against Syrians, for several years due to a deep economic crisis that has led to rising inflation.
Reporting from Istanbul, Al Jazeera's Sinem Koseoglu said: “This is not the first time xenophobic protests against Syrians have occurred in the past three years,” as Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) began to lose popularity amid the dire state of the economy and rising nationalist sentiment.
Umit Ozdag, leader of the anti-immigrant Victory Party in Turkey, blamed the violence on the government's supposedly “privileged” treatment of Syrian refugees.
Anti-Syrian riots broke out in Turkey in 2021 after a Turkish teenager was stabbed to death in a fight with a group of Syrian youths in the capital Ankara.
Hundreds of people took to the streets chanting anti-immigrant slogans, vandalising shops run by Syrians and throwing stones at refugee homes.
Backlash in Syria
The recent violence sparked retaliatory riots in opposition-held areas across the border in northwest Syria, including those controlled by Turkey-backed forces.
Hundreds of Syrian demonstrators, some armed, took to the streets to protest. Some tore down Turkish flags, threw stones and objects at Turkish trucks and tried to storm the Jarablus crossing, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a body that monitors the war.
Four people were killed in “exchanges of fire” with Turkish guards, while 20 others were wounded, the Syrian Observatory said.
Protester Adel al-Faraj said he took to the streets in solidarity with “our Syrian brothers in Turkey.”
“Our people fled from [Syrian President] “Bashar al-Assad will only be oppressed in Turkey,” he told AFP news agency, urging Turkey to do more to stop violence against Syrians.
Al Jazeera's Koseoglu said another reason for the unrest was recent separate announcements by Erdogan and al-Assad to restore relations.
Tensions have been rising in opposition-held areas of Syria over moves towards rapprochement between the two countries, including plans to open a crossing between government-held areas and those controlled by Turkish-backed opposition forces in Aleppo.
