An orphan studying medicine.. Details of the killing of a Syrian youth at the hands of Turks in Hatay
Al Jazeera website
A group of Turkish youths fatally stabbed a Syrian youth in the southern state of Hatay, while the authorities later announced that they had arrested the attackers.
While the incident sparked outrage in the Turkish street, officials, parliamentarians and human rights activists expressed their condemnation of the incident, which they described as racist.
The crime took place while Faris Al-Ali (17 years) was leaving a football field in the town of Narlija, near the city of Antioch. While it was not clear from the beginning of the identity of the attackers and their purpose, identical sources later confirmed, quoting the family of the murdered young man, that some of the members of the group who attacked and killed him were the children of a Turkish woman whom Al-Ali found in his new workplace.
The Syrian activist residing in Turkey, Muhammad Sarhil, said, quoting the family of the dead young man, that “Fares started working 3 days before the accident in a food factory, and on the third day of the new work, Faris collided with one of the Turkish workers, so he apologized to her and the matter passed peacefully.” According to the family.
And he added in a post on his Facebook page, “The day after this incident, 6 young Turkish men came to him, asked him for his name and verified that he was the young man who had collided with the worker, after which they took him away from the surveillance cameras and stabbed him, which led to his death directly.”
The state of Hatay issued a written statement – today, Sunday – confirming the arrest of the “killers” in the incident “within a short period of time”, and the statement explained that “they were taken to the judicial authorities.” Activist Sarhil quoted Al-Ali’s family as confirming that the authorities arrested the 16-year-old murderer along with two other young men who participated in the crime.
The Syrian young man, Fares Al-Ali, who hails from a village in Ariha in the Syrian province of Idlib, had taken refuge with his family in Turkey about 9 years ago, after his father was killed during the war in Syria. Al-Ali managed to get a place to study medicine at the university.
While the head of IHH, Bulent Yildirim, visited Fares’ family, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu called the family to express his condolences.
Yildirim and the Commission, in two separate statements on Twitter, strongly condemned the “attack” that killed Fares, recalling that he was “one of our Syrian orphans.”
The authority said that he grew up in the Reyhanli complex for orphan care, until he finished secondary school this year with distinction, and was accepted to study at the Faculty of Medicine.
While the incident did not receive wide attention in the Turkish media, the Twitter platform witnessed an interaction from the tweeters, some of whom were members of parliament. Most of the participants blamed politicians who fueled racism and xenophobia, and singled out the famous right-wing politician Umit Ozdag, who is known for his anti-Syrians.