Turkey: Boot-Heel or Achilles Heel TR Jan14

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

• Ethnic Arab Alawites living in Hatay Province typically subscribe to an eccentric offshoot of Shia Islam that scorns Sunnis, especially including refugees from the ongoing Syrian civil war and supporters of the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army (FSA). Meanwhile, the current regime in Turkey is moderately pro-Sunni.
• Mihraҫ Ural, a Turkish-born Alawite long connected with militant leftist and separatist organizations, also leads a pro-Assad Shabiha militia unit that operates inside Syria. He has publicly advocated “cleansing” the Turkish-Syrian Alawite coastline of Sunni enclaves.
• Ural is suspected of perpetrating massacres of Sunnis in Banias Province, Syria on 2-3 May 2013, as well as twin car bombings in downtown Reyhanli, Turkey about a week later. His alleged involvement in both of these terrorist attacks underscores the danger that the Syrian civil war could jump international boundaries to enter a new phase characterized by a prolonged cycle of ethnic cleansing.