With less than a week until the end of Ramadan, messages of brotherhood are given and sympathizing with Syrian refugees continues.
The headquarters of the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) youth branch has organized a program for Syrian refugees with a traveling food bank on a truck distributing meals to more than 2,500 people during iftar, the fast-breaking meal. Having started in Yayladağı, Hatay on July 7, the program involves coming together with Syrian refugees through six stops in four cities, including Kilis, Şanlıurfa and Kahramanmaraş, for one week.
Speaking during the program's Şanlıurfa stop, the vice chairman of the AK Party's youth branch, Osman Doğan, pointed to the slogan of the program as the reason for undertaking such an activity. "Tyrants have always been different. Tyrants who came from Syria were different, including [Syrian President Bashar] Assad's regime, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [ISIS] and the Democratic Union Party [PYD]. Turkey tries to fulfill our brotherhood duty for them. Thank God, iftars, until now, were great," Doğan said.
"Zalimler Farklı, Ensar Aynı" (Tyrants are different, Brothers are the same) is the slogan for the program. "Ensar," literally meaning "helper" in Arabic, is a term in Islamic literature that emerged after those who lived in Medina helped the Prophet Muhammad and the migrants on their arrival to the city and strived for the sake of Islam.
More than 2,500 people were hosted in Şanlıurfa's Rabia Square on Saturday with foreign students who are studying in Turkish universities taking part in the program.
"Some say that the civil war badly influenced people here. However, we have witnessed nothing but brotherhood and peace when we come here and take part in this program by helping the food distribution process," said Fredinand, an Albanian who studies theology at Ankara University.
Again, during the first part of the program in Hatay, AK Party Hatay Deputy Mehmet Algan indicated that Syrian refugees came from their homeland because of different oppression implemented by different tyrants and said: "The AK Party's youth branch undertakes helping Syrian refugees on every occasion as a duty. In the future, when things are over in Syria, the only country that will be able to look in the eyes of Syrians is Turkey."
AK Party Tokat Deputy Fatma Gaye Güler, also among the coordinators of the program, said in Hatay that Turkey did not discriminate between people's suffering since the beginning of the civil war in Syria: "Western countries, which became famous for their humanism, human rights and democracy, actually look at people's occupations and financial status when they accept refugees. They also do this for a limited number of people. Turkey has never done such a thing and opened its gates to everyone disregarding the difference in language, religion or ethnicity."
