• As Turkey’s economic crisis worsens, resentment towards refugees continues to increase.
• In Istanbul’s working-class districts, such as Bagcilar, large refugee populations live.
• Locals say tensions between different groups existed in low-income areas long before Syrian refugees arrived.

As Turkey’s economic crisis worsens, so does resentment of refugees, with tensions boiling over into violence, particularly in Istanbul’s crowded working-class districts.

Large refugee populations live in these areas, such as Bagcilar on Istanbul’s European side.

Bagcilar, the city’s second-largest district, has a population of three-quarters of a million people and a bad reputation.

The shooting and killing of a 22-year-old Syrian outside his home in the early hours of June 6 highlighted the dangers that the large Syrian community (officially 79,000 in 2020, but likely much higher) faces.

Some Turkish men had been cursing Sherif Khaled al-Ahmad and his Syrian roommates and provoking them to come out onto the street.

Al-Ahmad was shot and killed when he went outside to confront them.

In Bagcilar, gunshots are not uncommon. During a recent reporting trip to the area, at least a half-dozen gunshots were fired into the air from a vehicle driving down a street quickly.

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Dozens of people rushed to the scene, and some Turks immediately blamed the Syrians.

One bystander speculated that the gunfire was intended to intimidate the owner of a barbershop across the street.

Locals say tensions between different groups existed long before Syrian refugees arrived in low-income areas like Bagcilar.

“[I]n areas like Bagcilar, where the symbol of power is brute force, this is now directly affecting the refugees from Syria,” Gokay, a Bagcilar resident for many years, told.

“There was a similar situation in the past between Turks and Kurds, students from X high school and students from Y high school, or students from an upper-class neighbourhood and students from a lower-class neighbourhood,” Gokay said of some of the rival factions in question.

The murder in Bagcilar is just one of several attacks on refugees in Turkish cities over the last year. Turkey is home to about 3.7 million Syrian refugees.

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