Turkish cemetery offers graves for Syria's deceased
by Daily Sabah with IHA
ISTANBULSep 16, 2015 - 12:00 am GMT+3
by Daily Sabah with IHA
Sep 16, 2015 12:00 am
In four years of civil war, Turkey has helped Syrians to survive by hosting them in state-of-art refugee camps. The country, which hosts more than 1.9 million Syrians is also home to those who died in attacks in Syria with Turkish cemeteries housing the graves of Syrians who succumbed to their wounds at Turkish hospitals. Since the early days of the conflict, the country regularly receives those injured in the clashes with regime forces and civilians wounded in bombings by regime forces.
In Yayladağ, a district of the border province of Hatay, which is home to nearly 6,000 refugees in two camps, the main cemetery contains the graves of 159 Syrians including 20 infants. The deceased are those whose bodies cannot be transferred to Syria due to the deteriorating security situation. The graves are marked with numbers in the fashion of Turkish graves where the perished who are without an immediate relative are buried. Abu Adnan, a Syrian Turkmen, had to bury his late mother and two relatives in Yayladağı. His mother died in the tent camp where she fell sick while his cousin and brother-in-law died in a regime forces attack in Syria. "They were brought to Turkey for treatment but they died. We couldn't take the bodies to Syria because of the clashes. So, we buried them here in Yayladağı," he said. Adnan, who visits the graves every week, said most graves had no visitors as the victims' families and relatives were still in Syria. "We never thought that we would bury our loved ones in Turkey but this is our fate after all. Hopefully, we will return home one day but we don't know if we can bring them home," he said.
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