With fists and knives, mobs attack Syrian refugees in Turkey | World News

Over the past two days, angry groups of men in a half-dozen cities in Turkey have turned on the Syrian refugees living among them, damaging their shops and cars and assaulting them with fists and knives.

Across the border in parts of northern Syria where Turkey holds sway, Syrians have confronted the Turkish soldiers in their midst, pelting their vehicles with rocks, tearing down Turkish flags and condemning them in street protests.

The scattered violence, which has left at least seven people dead in Syria, according to a war monitor, has exposed growing cracks in the coexistence between Syrians and Turks on both sides of their shared border. After years of generally peaceful relations, recent political shifts and deepening economic distress have brought tensions to the surface.

Many Turks have come to resent the 3.1 million Syrian refugees in their country and accuse them, with or without evidence, of fueling economic troubles that include low wages and persistent inflation that exceeded 75% in May.

And many Syrians who oppose the government of President Bashar Assad have gone from viewing Turkey as their greatest protector to fearing that it will abandon them. Support for the idea of sending Syrian refugees home has spread across Turkey’s political spectrum.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who cut ties with Syria in 2011 and backed the rebels seeking to topple Assad, said last week he would not rule out meeting his former foe to try to restore ties.

The unrest this week was set off by allegations Sunday that a Syrian man had molested his 7-year-old cousin in a public bathroom in Kayseri, a city in central Turkey. The man was arrested, and the girl and her mother and siblings were put under state protection while the police investigated, Turkish authorities said.

That night, angry men in Kayseri attacked Syrian cars, shops and homes, setting some on fire, according to footage posted on social media and broadcast by Turkish TV stations.

On Monday, similar attacks happened in a half-dozen other cities, including Hatay, Konya and Istanbul, with men marching with batons through neighborhoods where Syrians live and throwing stones at their buildings.

On Tuesday, the Turkish interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, wrote on social media that the security forces had detained 474 people in connection with the violence.