ANTAKYA, Turkey — People in the region call it Tuscany with minarets.
Turkey’s southeastern quadrant, along the Syrian border, is one of its most picturesque, where olive groves dot the rolling farmland and the mountains are sluiced by Evian-clear streams. In the mornings, old women go down the hills to pluck apricots from the market. In the evenings, tourists stroll along the cobblestone promenades, happily searching for a simit, a bagel-like roll, or a scoop of lemon ice cream.
But recently there has been a surge of new arrivals: Syrians, especially battlehardened Syrian fighters. It is not unusual to see rebel soldiers limping around the holiday town of Antakya on crutches, and countless apartments across this area have been turned into makeshift combat field clinics, crammed with young, burly men nursing gunshot wounds.
Turkish security services insist that they are closely patrolling the 550-mile border. But medical supplies, materiel and fighters slide across the frontier every night, making this charming, quaint part of Turkey the most important base for the growing Syrian rebellion.
“The Turkish police are watching the border, but with their eyes closed,” said Ahmed al-Debisi, a Syrian pharmacist and opposition member based in Antakya, who is trying to clandestinely make gas masks out of Coke cans and cotton balls, in case the government of Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, unleashes chemical weapons.
Syria’s intensifying civil war is turning into a nationalsecurity headache for Turkey. Beyond the strain of hosting more than 40,000 refugees — which Turkish officials said was initially manageable but is now “creating problems” — a Syrian border post recently fell into the hands of a group linked to al-Qaida, and about a dozen Libyan fighters with bushy beards and black backpacks were recently spotted hanging around Antakya’s main hospital, waiting for their wounded “brothers.”
Another border zone, just inside Syria, was seized by Kurdish militias, leaving the Turks deeply concerned that the unraveling of the Assad government could reinvigorate Kurdish militants in Turkey.
When asked last week whether Turkey would strike inside Syria if Kurdish militants used Syria as a base, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said: “That’s not even a matter of discussion; it is a given.”
The conflict next door offers no easy answers. Originally, the Turkish government tried to play nice with Assad, asking him to institute policy changes. When he refused, Turkey threw open the doors to the Free Syrian Army, the dogged rebel group whose nominal leaders operate from a heavily guarded tented camp inside Turkey near the border.
The Turks have been delicately trying to steer events in Syria, pushing the opposition to unite, hosting several highlevel meetings with Syrian rebel leaders and helping the rebels get weapons, but they are fearful of being dragged in deeper.
“The Turkish people don’t want an intervention,” said Ilter Turan, an international relations professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “This society is enjoying the fruits of economic prosperity, and they don’t want it destroyed by some external engagement.”
In Antakya, the grumbling is growing louder — on both sides. It is a tourist town, known for its ruins, its old churches and a museum housing one of the finest collections of Roman and Byzantine mosaics anywhere in the world. The farmland around the town is spectacularly fertile, producing cherries, olives, huge sweet melons and a cuisine renowned in food-obsessed Turkey for being especially innovative and fresh.
Abdulmecit Ercin, an insurance broker and Antakya native, remembers all the tourist buses that used to wend their way along the Asi River beneath his office window.
But since the conflict began in Syria, and the border was partially closed, the buses have largely disappeared.
“In the market,” he lamented, “there’s no energy, no life.”
Many Syrian rebels in Turkey, when asked why they defected, began their answer with the same word: “atfal,” Arabic for children.
“The government is slaughtering children,” said Mulham al-Masri, a former captain in the Syrian army who defected a few months ago.
He said he had been plotting his escape for weeks, talking to a cousin in the Free Syrian Army via cell phone and then walking out of his barracks one morning, in full uniform, and slipping into a black Hyundai vehicle stuffed with rebels.
One of his comrades, Nabil al-Amouri, also formerly an officer in the Syrian army, said many other officers wanted to defect, but they were worried about revenge. “These guys have killed civilians, and they’re now afraid of the families,” al-Amouri said.
Every night, the border is bustling along illegal crossing points. Medicine and supplies flow into Syria, and bloodied fighters trudge out.
But Antakya used to be a hot weekend destination for Syrians crossing the border to shop. One tourist operator said he used to get 2,000 customers per day, but now it is down to zero. The operator, who did not want to be identified because he was embarrassed about going bankrupt, said he had just laid off the last of his three secretaries.
“This conflict did not affect us,” he said. “It finished us.”
Information for this article was contributed by Sebnem Arsu of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 12 on 07/29/2012