Peter Hapak for TIME

Sheikh Samir Ibrahim, age not available

"I came with great difficulty. I'm a little overweight and I had to walk through mountains, long distances until I reached Turkey."


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It was approaching midnight but many of the hundreds of Syrians who had arrived at the Reyhanli refugee camp in southern Turkey just hours before were still restless, even the toddlers. Most were concerned with where they were going to sleep that night, and if friends and family members had reached safety. It was difficult to get people to talk. Many were afraid to speak for fear of reprisals against relatives still in Syria, others were clearly physically and emotionally worn down. Nevertheless, some were prepared to share their experiences, their fears and thoughts.

TIME was granted vast access during the first week of April to the Reyhanli and Yayladagi camps in Turkish territory to document, through words and pictures, the travails of the thousands who were fleeing Syria. As photographer Peter Hapak and his assistant took portraits of several of the refugees against a white backdrop set up just beyond the tents, other residents of Reyhanli—both newcomers and those who had been there for months—swirled about.

A wiry young newlywed in a thin aqua blue zippered jacket was searching for his wife among the families milling around the cramped canvas tents. His Syrian border village of Kili in Idlib province was shelled and strafed by helicopter gunships that morning, an account repeated by many of the other refugees from the town. The 26-year-old with a thin mustache and enraged eyes was seething: “I buried a man today. Two others and me, we buried a man who had half of his head missing.” When the young man, who refused to give his name, returned to his house after the burial, his wife wasn’t there. Believing she had fled across the border, he headed for Turkey as well. “Now, I learnt from others who arrived after me that my family was behind me, that they have reached the border but haven’t crossed it yet.”


Brent Herrig for TIME
Peter Hapak photographs Syrian refugees in Reyhanli.
Like so many others in Reyhanli that night, the young man had made a perilous journey on foot through mountainous terrain to reach Turkey, guided and aided by members of the rebel Free Syrian Army along backroads and mountain trails to avoid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops. Some had walked for hours; others for days; most brought nothing but the clothes on their backs and harrowing tales of what they had fled. They spoke of mass killings, of homes being shelled, burnt to the ground, of relatives marched in front of tanks as human shields in the village of Taftanaz.

“Assad’s army is trying to find us, they are hunting us down in these hills to shoot and kill us,” the young man said. His group, however, was lucky. It did not encounter Assad loyalists. Just days later, a Syrian refugee was killed and several wounded after Syrian troops fired across the border at a refugee camp in the Turkish town of Kilis after a skirmish with rebel fighters. It wasn’t the first time the regime’s firepower had chased its opponents across borders into Turkey and Lebanon, but where the Lebanese government has been pliant and weak in its response to the attacks, Turkey’s patience is waning. The country already houses more than 24,000 Syrians, and is expecting thousands more.

In just one day last week, more than 2,800 Syrians streamed into Turkey from Idlib, the highest 24-hour figure to date. The exodus belied President Assad’s pledge to adhere to an internationally backed ceasefire agreement brokered by joint United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan. The deal called on Assad to withdraw his troops and heavy weaponry from besieged cities and towns by Tuesday April 10, and for both sides to cease violence. But instead of winding down, the regime’s muscle escalated operations to crush the year-long revolt.

Syria has routinely ignored diplomatic deadlines and scoffed at half-hearted international ultimatums, relying on its Russian and Chinese allies to shield it from censure. But this time, Assad’s powerful friends signed off on Annan’s initiative. His dismissiveness may yet chip away at their support, or at the very least make it harder for them to insist, as they have, that the Syrian president must be part of any diplomatic solution.

International discord is one thing. The disunity among the opposition to Assad is another. The Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, remains divided and beset by claims of corruption, personal pettiness, feuds and rising suspicion that its secular leader Burhan Ghalioun is merely a front for the powerful Islamists. The nominal military leadership of the Free Syrian Army isn’t in better shape. Corralled in a camp in Apaydin, they have offered little to the men fighting and dying inside Syria in its name.

In the real struggle, within Syria, it has always been a revolution of ordinary people, of farmers and taxi drivers turned armed rebels, of students and laborers who have become community leaders. But, if the accounts of the refugees in Turkey are any indication, these revolutionaries despair of receiving the help they need to beat Assad. Early on, they had baptized their uprising a “revolution of orphans,” bereft of support. As he scurried away with a thin foam mattress tucked under his arm, one man said, “Before we thought that the world didn’t know what was happening to us, now we realize that you do and you don’t care.”

“We only have God and our own hands!” said another man, who had been standing nearby. It was a view shared by many. Said the young man searching for his wife: “Tanks we can stand in front of, we can try and stop them, stand in front of them, die as martyrs, but how can we stop a helicopter? We are now in Turkey, we don’t want to be here.” Growing more agitated, he says, “We want weapons, we want to fight… We want weapons, we want weapons, we want weapons.”

More: Syria’s Year of Chaos

Abouzeid is a Middle East correspondent for TIME. Follow her on Twitter at @raniaab.

Hapak is a contract photographer for TIME. In December of 2011, Hapak photographed The Protester, TIME’s Person of the Year.

Related Topics: News, Peter Hapak, photography, Photojournalism, politics, Portraits, refugees, Syria, Turkey


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Showing 15 of 16 comments


Ziad AbuFadel
These so-called asylum seeking refugees are pure Islamist garbage from the very bottom of Syrian society. They are what Al-Qaeda is made of and deserve no sympathy from rational and secular people. This Rania Abou-Zeid is a professional liar who cannot bring herself to see the murderous policies of the Obama regime and its reactionary allies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Long live secular Syria under the leadership of our president, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad.

Like
3 months ago 2 Likes

SentAway
Dear America,

Instead of pointlessly putting your troops in random countries around the world, why don't you use your 'super power' and send them to Syria where they desperately need help?

Like
3 months ago 4 Likes

Mathias Issa
Bullshit! The Syrian rebels are the only ones killing in Syria! This is nothing but media manipulation

Like
3 months ago

Ustaz Bidin
Assad, evil man of the year.

Like
3 months ago 6 Likes

Guest
Comment removed.
Like
3 months ago 4 Likes

Crunshere
I am sorry that you think this way, it is more wise to know what Islam all about and then speak like this, Islam is mot destroying muslems all people around the world, but people find all excuses for thier own evel. All religions sent from God to worship him, but ppl want to make wars and obtain power, I pray that Allah will guid you to see the right way and help you in finding out the truth.

Like
3 months ago in reply to Guest 2 Likes

mdshams22
Please stop this none sense !! Pleople are not Zombie anymore

Like
3 months ago 1 Like

jonMcc
Incredible images - soulful beauty amid carnage, fear holding hands with hope, eyes saying what words cannot.

Like
3 months ago 9 Likes

Ziad AbuFadel
What are you sniffing? Airplane glue. These are the faces of Islamist terrorists who are targeting secular Sunnis, Syrian Christians and Alawis. Grow up and read something other than Mad Magazine.

Like
3 months ago in reply to jonMcc

SickOfTheStupid, Obama or Romney different puppets, same fist of fascism
If the US and Saudi Arabia would stop sending in armed mercenary's into Syria I am almost positive the violence would subside.



Like
3 months ago 5 Likes

Kodes100
Ah - NO it wouldn't!

Like
3 months ago in reply to SickOfTheStupid 4 Likes

Ziad AbuFadel
Oh yes it would. I am Syrian and I know it would.

Like
3 months ago in reply to Kodes100 1 Like

SickOfTheStupid, Obama or Romney different puppets, same fist of fascism
uh yes it would http://rt.com/news/syria-oppos...

Like
3 months ago in reply to Kodes100 2 Likes

Theodros Arega
I wish I had a power to end this misery. Those eyes are questioning our silence.

Like
3 months ago 20 Likes

Ziad AbuFadel
You are wrong. These are the eyes of Islamist murderers who would stop at nothing to kill innocent Syrian Christians, secular Sunnis and Alawis. I am Syrian. You are not. We support Dr. Bashar Al-Assad and despise the reactionaries in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. You should be ashamed of yourself for sympathizing with these Islamist terrorists.

Like
3 months ago in reply to Theodros Arega 2 Likes

SickOfTheStupid, Obama or Romney different puppets, same fist of fascism
You do have the power it starts here at home , replace our illegitimate corrupt war mongering government with one that represents and defends the people ,not the profit.

The US is responsible directly or indirectly for the majority of the violence in the middle east due to our imperialistic foreign policy .

Like
3 months ago in reply to Theodros Arega 11 Likes
15 Comments


Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/04/12/victims-of-assad/#ixzz228xytR3n