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LONDON: A spike in the number of violent assaults on Arabs in Turkiye in recent times has raised concern about the safety of foreigners in a country visited by tens of thousands of tourists from Middle East countries and which hosts millions of Syrian refugees.

Earlier this month, a Turkish man was arrested in Istanbul after threatening a group of Saudi tourists with a knife while seemingly hurling derogatory epithets at them, Al-Arabiya reported.

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 associated with 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 of them visiting from January through August last year, according to Turkish tourism officials.  An outburst of hostility toward Arabs could dent Saudi visitor numbers.

This was of course not the first time that clips of attacks on Arab tourists in Turkiye went viral online. Incidents involving fistfights and xenophobic insults were uploaded to social media platforms last year by users from the Gulf states and Egypt.

The knife-brandishing incident occurred against the backdrop of 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 a Syrian man who was allegedly caught abusing a 7-year-old female relative in a public restroom in the Melikgazi district, according to a Reuters report.

The rioters attacked and vandalized dozens of Syrian-owned businesses, homes, and vehicles, following which the violence spread to other parts of Turkiye, including Gaziantep, Bursa, and Hatay, where a Syrian grocery store was set on fire

Ali Yerlikaya, the Turkish interior minister, said the assault was being investigated and condemned the rioters’ actions as “illegal” and contrary to the nation’s values.

He said in a post on X that local authorities had detained 67 of the protesters, stressing that it was “unacceptable for our people to harm the environment without considering public order, security and human rights.”

In a separate post, Yerlikaya said authorities were investigating several X accounts that had helped to stoke the violence, with 10 referred to the prosecutor’s office.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also condemned the violence, saying: “Nothing can be achieved by fueling xenophobia and hatred of refugees in society.”

A few days after the Kayseri incident, the personal data of some 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkiye was leaked online, sparking fears of an eruption of xenophobic violence.

The Turkish Interior Ministry confirmed that the personal details of Syrians under temporary protection were shared from the social media account “Uprising#Turkey,” which is run by a 14-year-old.

“The necessary action was taken against E.P. (the account admin) by the Istanbul Children’s Branch Directorate,” the ministry said in a statement.

UK-based Syrian activist Lana, whose name has been changed to protect her anonymity, told Arab News that her family in Gaziantep “went through hell for at least two weeks following the Kayseri incident.”

She said: “In the few days following the riots, they couldn’t even leave the house to buy bread. They were gripped by fear and paralyzed by the uncertainty created by the recent developments, including talk since June (regarding the) end of normalization of Turkish ties with President Bashar Assad.”

Marwah, a Syrian who lives in Bursa and works in human resources, thinks social media was responsible for blowing the situation out of proportion.

“While following the news, I felt like I’d be killed for my identity if I stepped outside my house, but this has not been the case,” she told Arab News.

Still, the news and footage of the riots have caused panic among Syrians. “Some have frantically sold their possessions or borrowed about $8,000 to flee Turkiye while others have contemplated returning to Syria,” said Marwah.

“Even my colleague who has Turkish citizenship was inquiring about relocating to Egypt despite not having witnessed any of the violence.”

UN agencies and several human rights bodies, including Amnesty International, have concluded that Syria remains unsafe for refugee repatriation.

Marwah explained that although violence against Syrians has not been unusual in Turkiye since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 sent millions fleeing abroad, “Kayseri is a place where Syrians and Turks have coexisted peacefully, with 48 percent of workers being Syrian.

“Apparently it was not easy to incite strife between Syrians and Turks in Kayseri, so it had to be done through something related to common values, as the people of Kayseri are generally conservative,” said Marwah.

She said she heard from locals that “groups of thugs were brought to Kayseri in buses to stir up violence.

“Turks in Kayseri, which is an industrial city, typically retire early, so it is unlikely the locals were the ones who engaged in the violence against Syrians,” she said, stressing that “anyone living in Turkiye for years would know that those riots — and their social media coverage — could not have erupted spontaneously, without prior planning.”

Anti-Arab sentiments may have already put a damper on the Turkish tourism industry’s ambitions.

According to the news website Hurriyet Daily, the number of tourists visiting Turkiye from Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan dropped in 2023 respectively by 34 percent, 17 percent, 24.2 percent, 24.4 percent and 22.2 percent.

UK-based Syrian activist Lana said that “while heightened anti-Arab racism in recent years has caused a decline in Arab tourism to Turkiye, the biggest impact is felt by Syrian nationals, who for the last three years have been pursuing onward migration to Europe.”

She believes the hostility has been encouraged in part because Syrian refugees have been used as a “political pawn” in local elections and “are not included in any discussions related to their status and future.”

Enass, a France-based Syrian journalist who also requested anonymity, believes “Turkiye, like other neighboring countries, has profited from hosting Syrian refugees.

“There was a clear agreement to increase EU support for Turkiye in exchange for curbing the influx of refugees to European countries in 2015,” she told Arab News, emphasizing that most of Syria’s neighbors “addressed the refugee crisis as an emergency rather than a permanent situation.”

In 2016, an agreement was reached between the European Commission and Ankara to control the flow of irregular migrant boats to Greece. Turkiye agreed to tighten border security at its shores in exchange for 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion).

“The government’s management of the refugee issue has been both political and economic, aimed at serving the national interest, while the public has often been misled about how their country benefited from hosting Syrian refugees,” said Enass.

She added that many Turkish politicians, particularly during election campaigns, “have employed an anti-refugee rhetoric” that “has contributed to inciting violence against vulnerable Syrian communities across the country.

“For years, competing political parties in Turkiye have spread misleading information about the support provided to Syrian refugees. This has led Turkish citizens to believe refugees were entitled to services and support, which in turn has contributed to economic inflation. This isn’t true,” Enass said.

“Opposition parties capitalized on this misinformation to stoke anger among the Turkish populace.”

Syrian entrepreneurs in Turkiye wholly or partly owned at least 10,000 businesses as of 2019, according to a study by the Economic Research Foundation of Turkiye. Those enterprises employ around 44,000 Syrians as well as thousands of Turkish nationals.

Enass said the changing political and economic landscape “is prompting the Turkish government to take new measures that encourage Syrians to ‘voluntarily’ return, but this is a form of unjustified deportation of individuals holding valid permits.”

She added: “The delay in addressing security incidents against Syrians in Turkiye undermines the interests of Syrians and contributes to the rise in hate speech.”

Erdogan has said he sees no reason not to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus, but the Syrian leadership has conditioned normalization on the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syrian territory.

A rapprochement would see the opening of a crossing between government-held areas and those controlled by Turkish-backed opposition forces in Aleppo province.