Clashes between PYD, Syrian opposition take toll on Turkish town

The rocket landed on the first floor of a two-storey house but did not explode. Bomb squads detonated it after police evacuated the residents and cordoned off the building.

The Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, just across the border from Ceylanpınar, was captured from the Syrian army by anti-regime forces in November. Since then, the mixed Arab and Kurdish town has been the scene of clashes between the opposition and fighters from a Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

The clashes have intensified over the past two weeks, disrupting daily life in Ceylanpınar and causing panic among residents. Last week, a 32-year-old man, Ahmet Özer, was hit in the neck by a bullet fired from Syria while having dinner at home. His situation remains critical after two surgeries.

“Who is going to account for this? My children love their father very much. They keep asking about him [since he was hospitalized],” Özer's wife said. “We want a solution to this problem in Syria.”

Özer was the third person to be wounded by bullets from across Ras al-Ain in a week. Since then, three people, aged 7, 10 and 16, were wounded by stray bullets from Syria, with the two latest injuries taking place this weekend. Seven-year-old Gamze Nur Yıldırım was hit in the armpit by a bullet when she was playing outside her home on Saturday. She was sent to a hospital in Şanlıurfa after initial treatment in Ceylanpınar and her situation remains critical. Angry family members protested in front of Ceylanpınar's only state hospital, causing a brief brawl with the police forces.

Over the past two weeks, a school bus and a public bus were the targets of bullets that smashed windows but caused no casualties. The school bus was empty when it was hit, but the public bus was not. “The rear window of the bus was smashed with a big noise. We all were very scared,” the bus driver Suphi Akan told reporters after the Jan. 24 incident.

Authorities said most children in the town failed to show up at schools on the last day of the semester last Friday to receive their reports because families were too afraid to send them out.

Injuries among residents, coupled with treatment offered in the Ceylanpınar hospital to Syrian opposition fighters injured in clashes in Ras al-Ain, have also sparked angry protests, forcing local authorities in Ceylanpınar to release statements to address complaints. In a statement last week, the Secretariat-General of the Association of Public Hospitals in Şanlıurfa said allegations that only Syrian opposition fighters receive treatment in Ceylanpınar were not true. Syrians treated at the Ceylanpınar State Hospital throughout January constitute only 17 percent of the total patients, according to the statement.

Ceylanpınar has long been on tenterhooks since Ras al-Ain was first attacked by opposition forces in November. The Syrian airplanes bombed opposition targets for days in response to the opposition assault, but the Syrian forces later withdrew from Ras al-Ain, leaving the control of the town to fighters associated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The town has since been hit by clashes between the PYD, affiliated with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and reportedly Islamist elements within the FSA.

On Jan. 19, the Kurdish National Council, a pro-opposition Syrian Kurdish group called on the FSA and opposition organizations, namely the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the Syrian National Council, to intervene to stop the assault on Ras al-Ain residents.

"We condemn these cowardly attacks and call on the National Coalition, the Syrian National Council and the Free [Syrian] Army to pressure these militants to stop this criminal war, which is detrimental to the principles and objectives of the Syrian revolution," the statement was quoted as saying by the French news agency AFP.

The Kurdish National Council also accused Turkey of supporting the opposition fighters in Ras al-Ain and called on Turkish authorities to "stop interfering and supporting armed groups to implement their own agenda."

AFP further reported that armed groups loyal to the anti-regime Al-Nusra Front crossed into Ras al-Ain from the Turkish border with three tanks, quoting a Kurdish activist from the city.

Last month, Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) also accused the government of “organizing a gang, providing them with arms and helping them to cross the border in order to create a conflict situation” in Ras al-Ain. “We have all the evidence, information and witnesses for this claim,” BDP co-Chairperson Gülten Kışanak said.

Turkey supports the opposition fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and is also concerned over increased PKK influence in Syria's north if PYD seizes control of Kurdish areas near the Turkish border in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the Syrian forces.

“The Kurdish groups in Syria should distance themselves from the regime in Syria. I mean here the PYD, as other [Kurdish] groups are already within the ranks of the opposition,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said in recent remarks.