Turkey Accused of Sending Fighters to Syria
Turkey, which once had a strong relationship with Syria, is seeing ties deteriorate further as Damascus accuses Ankara of allowing foreign fighters to cross its border to go fight with rebel groups.
“Syria’s information minister has lashed out at Turkey, accusing Ankara of sending foreign fighters across the border to fight Syrian government troops in President Bashar al-Assad’s ancestral homeland in Latakia province,” reports Al Jazeera.
He told Syrian state TV on Sunday that Turkey “is facilitating the entry of ‘groups of foreigners, armed to their teeth’ into Latakia, where fighting is raging between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters trying to oust Assad. Recently, the Syrian government complained to the U.N. that Ankara was providing cover to rebels crossing the border to Syrian soil.”
Syrian-Armenian Town’s Fate Unclear After Rebel Grab
The AP reports on the uncertain fate of Kassab, the Latakia village that has been taken over by Syrian rebels. The rebel presence there carries historic weight: for the third time since 1900, Armenians are fleeing.
“Kassab ‘is a symbol of Armenian history, language and continuity. It’s very symbolic,’ said Ohannes Geukjian, a political science professor who writes on contemporary Armenian history and politics. ‘And so the fall of Kassab, I consider it the defeat of Armenian identity in that area.’
“Rebels seized control of Kassab on Sunday after launching an attack two days earlier in the coastal Syrian province of Latakia. The fighters were from an array of conservative and Islamic groups, including the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front.”
At Zaatari, Shakespeare Inspires Cast of Young Syrians
More than 60,000 Syrians under age 18 live at the Zaatari camp, which has been heralded for the activities, markets and sense of normalcy it attempts to create for its residents. Ben Hubbard of the New York Times reports that those activities now include a production of Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
“Parents and aid workers fear that Syria’s war threatens to create a lost generation of children who are scarred by violence and miss vital years of education, and that those experiences and disadvantages will follow them into adulthood,” he writes, with the performance an attempt to fight that threat.
“’The show is to bring back laughter, joy and humanity,’ said its director, Nawar Bulbul, a 40-year-old Syrian actor known at home for his role in ‘Bab al-Hara,’ an enormously popular historical drama that was broadcast throughout the Arab world. The play owed its production largely to Mr. Bulbul. Smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and speaking with the animated face of a stage actor who never stops performing, Mr. Bulbul described his journey from television star to children’s director.
“When the Syrian uprising broke out in 2011, he joined with gusto, appearing at antigovernment protests, leading chants and drawing the ire of the security services. A play he produced was banned, and a fellow actor who supported the government informed him that he could either appear on television to rectify his stance or expect to be arrested.”
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