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LONDON: A recent rise in violent attacks against Arabs in Turkey has raised concerns about the safety of foreigners in a country visited by tens of thousands of tourists from Middle Eastern countries and hosting millions of Syrian refugees.

Earlier this month, a Turkish man was arrested in Istanbul after threatening a group of Saudi tourists with a knife and apparently shouting derogatory insults 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 Grey Wolves, an ultranationalist and pan-Turkic group founded in the late 1960s as the youth wing of the Nationalist Movement Party.

The Grey Wolves have long been associated with violence, including attacks on leftists, Kurds and other minority groups. Despite their controversial reputation, they continue to wield great influence in Turkish society.

Turkey is a popular destination for Saudi tourists, with 650,000 of them visiting Turkey between January and August last year, according to Turkish tourism authorities. An outbreak of hostility towards Arabs could reduce the number of Saudi visitors.

This was, of course, not the first time that clips of attacks on Arab tourists in Turkey went viral on the internet. Last year, users from the Gulf states and Egypt uploaded incidents of fistfights and xenophobic insults to social media platforms.

The stabbing incident came amid a new wave of violence against Syrians in Turkey, after a 26-year-old Syrian man was arrested in Kayseri, central Anatolia, on charges of sexually abusing a minor.

Riots broke out across Kayseri on the night of June 30 after news spread on social media that a Syrian man had allegedly been caught abusing a seven-year-old relative in a public toilet in Melikgazi district, a Reuters report said.

The rioters attacked and vandalized dozens of Syrian shops, homes and vehicles. The violence then spread to other parts of Turkey, including Gaziantep, Bursa and Hatay, where a Syrian grocery store was set on fire.

Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said the attack was being investigated and condemned the rioters’ actions as “illegal” and contrary to the country’s values.

In a post on X, he said local authorities had arrested 67 of the protesters and stressed that it was “unacceptable that our people are harming the environment without taking into account public order, security and human rights.”

In a separate post, Yerlikaya said authorities were investigating several X-accounts that helped fuel the violence, and 10 of them had been referred to prosecutors.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also condemned the violence and said: “If you stir up xenophobia and hatred towards refugees in society, you will achieve nothing.”

A few days after the incident in Kayseri, the personal data of around three million Syrian refugees in Turkey were posted on the Internet, triggering fears of an outbreak of xenophobic violence.

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

“The Istanbul Children’s Department Directorate has taken the necessary measures against EP (the account administrator),” 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 after the incident in Kayseri.”

She said: “In the days following the unrest, they could not even leave their homes to buy bread. They were gripped by fear and paralysed by the uncertainty created by recent developments, including talks since June on ending the normalisation of Turkish relations with President Bashar Assad.”

Marwah, a Syrian woman living in Bursa who works in human resources, believes social media is to blame for exaggerating the situation.

“When I followed the news, I felt that if I left my house I would be killed because of my identity, but that was not the case,” she told Arab News.

Still, news and images of the unrest have sparked panic among Syrians. “Some have sold their belongings in panic or borrowed $8,000 to flee Turkey, while others are considering returning to Syria,” Marwah said.

“Even my colleague, who has Turkish citizenship, inquired about resettling in Egypt, although he had not witnessed any of the violence.”

UN agencies and several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have concluded that Syria remains unsafe for the return of refugees.

Marwah explained that while violence against Syrians has been nothing unusual in Turkey since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 drove millions of people abroad, “Kayseri is a place where Syrians and Turks live together peacefully and 48 percent of the workers are Syrian.

“Obviously, it was not easy to stir up conflict between Syrians and Turks in Kayseri. Therefore, it had to be done through something related to shared values, because people in Kayseri are generally conservative,” Marwah said.

She said she had heard from locals that “groups of thugs were brought to Kayseri on buses to incite violence.

“Turks in Kayseri, an industrial city, tend to retire early, so it is unlikely that locals were responsible for the violence against Syrians,” she said, stressing: “Anyone who has lived in Turkey for years knows that these riots – and their coverage on social media – could not have broken out spontaneously and without prior planning.”

Anti-Arab sentiment may already have dampened the ambitions of the Turkish tourism industry.

According to the news website Hürriyet Daily, the number of tourists from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan visiting Turkey fell by 34 percent, 17 percent, 24.2 percent, 24.4 percent and 22.2 percent in 2023.

UK-based Syrian activist Lana said that while “increasing anti-Arab racism has led to a decline in Arab tourism in Turkey in recent years, the greatest impact has been felt by Syrian nationals who have been trying to migrate to Europe for the past three years.”

She believes the hostility has been fuelled in part by Syrian refugees being used as “political pawns” in local elections and “not being included in any discussions about their status and future”.

Enass, a Syrian journalist living in France who also requests anonymity, believes: “Turkey, like other neighboring countries, has benefited from hosting Syrian refugees.

“There was a clear agreement to increase EU support to Turkey in exchange for curbing the influx of refugees into European countries in 2015,” she told Arab News, stressing that most of Syria’s neighbors “viewed the refugee crisis as an emergency and not a permanent situation.”

In 2016, an agreement was signed between the European Commission and Ankara to control the flow of illegal migrant boats to Greece. Turkey agreed to strengthen border security on its coasts in exchange for 6 billion euros (6.6 billion dollars).

“The government dealt with the refugee issue both politically and economically, aiming to protect the national interest. At the same time, the public was often misled about the benefits their country would receive from hosting Syrian refugees,” said Enass.

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

“For years, rival political parties in Turkey have spread false information about supporting Syrian refugees. This has led Turkish citizens to believe that refugees are entitled to benefits and support, which in turn has contributed to economic inflation. This is not true,” Enass said.

“Opposition parties exploited this misinformation to stoke anger among the Turkish people.”

According to a study by the Foundation for Economic Research in Turkey, Syrian entrepreneurs owned or partially owned at least 10,000 companies in Turkey in 2019. These companies 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 to encourage Syrians to return ‘voluntarily’, but this is a form of unjustified deportation of people with valid residence permits.”

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

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

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