Turkish-Syrian Trade dries up

(Dp-news)

Although Gaziantep to the east is the main hub for trade with Syria via Aleppo, ties to Syria are particularly close in Hatay.

Formerly an independent state, Hatay has been claimed by the Syrians as part of their country, but was incorporated into Turkey in 1938. The ups and downs of the Turkish-Syrian relationship have been reflected in the region ever since. In the late 1990s, Turkey and Syria nearly went to war over Damascus’s support for Kurdish separatists in Turkey, but in the years of Syrian-Turkish rapprochement since then, relations have flourished.

In 2005, Damascus recognised Turkish sovereignty over the province, and a few years later a free-trade agreement and mutual abolition of visa requirements resulted in Turkey’s exports to Syria nearly doubling between 2005 and 2010 and a huge surge in tourism – the number of Syrian visitors to Hatay increased 80 per cent after the visa agreement, according to the local chamber of trade and industry. Plans were even drawn up for a “friendship dam” in Hatay to irrigate agricultural land in both countries.

However, since pro-democracy protests erupted in Syria in March and a violent crackdown sent 12,000 refugees fleeing across the border to Hatay, the picture is beginning to change. Work on the friendship dam has been delayed, according to local media.
Rows of empty tables stretch across restaurants in Antakya, the capital of the Turkish province of Hatay which juts southward into neighbouring Syria.

“I don’t know how long it will last,” says Mehmet Deveci, the owner of a mountainside restaurant on the outskirts of the city which would normally be bustling with Syrian tourists at this time of year. “God knows.”

“Our trade relationship broke,” says Ali Bagci, a shop owner in an area of Antakya better known in the west as Antioch, where many of the staff are drawn from the province’s Arabic-speaking population in order to serve tourists who come to shop for the latest fashions from Turkey. He says that 95 per cent of Syrian business “is lost”.
Hickmet Cincin, chairman of the chamber of trade and industry in Antakya, estimates that trade at Hatay’s formal crossing points with Syria has fallen 80 per cent, and says informal trade of small goods in private cars, worth about $600m a year, has stopped altogether.
Ibrahim Guler, who owns a freight transport company - mainly moving textiles and construction materials - on the lucrative trade route through Syria to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, says he is sending 30 per cent less trucks across the border because of a combination of a new fuel levy imposed on traffic through Syria and drivers’ concerns about their security.
“If it continues like this all transport companies will go to other routes; Afghanistan, Iraq or Russia,” he says.
An exporter of bottled water, who did not want to give his name, says he has given up trying to get goods into Syria altogether after drivers were unable to reach his agents in towns affected by protests to deliver the cargo.
Although nearly all of the problems cited are to do with instability in Syria, which affects all countries who trade with it, some fear that a recent diplomatic volte-face by Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, in which he described his former ally’s crackdown on protesters as “savagery”, is affecting the cross-border business climate.
Mr Guler says he has worried more about his drivers’ safety in the past month since Turkey took in large numbers of refugees from the restive north-western province of Idlib.
“The relationship between Turkey and Syria is damaged - it’s sad,” says Mithat Matkap, who manufactures industrial parts in co-operation with factories in Syria. “People in Hatay don’t like it.”
Unlike the Islamist leadership in Ankara, many businessmen in Hatay, where there is a relatively high concentration of minority groups, express support for Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. One woman who sells trinkets and memorabilia outside a hotel in Antakya says she sells many more rugs depicting Mr. al-Assad than she does ones of Mr. Erdogan.
According to Christopher Phillips of the Economist Intelligence Unit, while significant divestments from Syria are extremely unlikely, there are signs that Turkish businesses are delaying new investment and expansion projects in Syria because of the unrest.
In the long run, however, says Mr. Phillips, Turkey’s trade and business relationship with Syria is driven by economic imperatives that are likely to prove more powerful than politics. “It’s widely expected that whatever happens in the next six months, Turkish economic interests will continue in Syria,” he says.
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