By Robin Wright
The New Yorker - December 8, 2014 Issue
Gaziantep, a city in southern Turkey
some forty miles from the Syrian border, has become a bustling hub at
the center of the Middle East’s latest conflict. It’s a destination for
spies and refugees, insurgent fighters and rebel leaders, foreign-aid
workers and covert jihadists—all enmeshed in Syria’s multisided war.
I
recently drove to one of Gaziantep’s upscale neighborhoods, an area of
pastel apartment blocks with balconies, and took pictures of American
Patriot-missile batteries on a nearby hillside. They were pointed at
Syria. The missiles were deployed, last year, to defend against Scuds
fired at rebel militias by the government of Bashar al-Assad. (Several
Scuds had struck close to the border, and occasional artillery shells
landed in Turkey.) Now the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and
al-Sham, a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL, are also just across the border, less than an hour away. During an inspection visit in October, NATO’s Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, told American troops manning the missiles, “Your mission is more important than ever.”
Until this summer, when ISIS
began seizing large portions of Syria and Iraq, Gaziantep—or Antep, as
the locals call it—was best known for its baklava. The city’s 1.5
million inhabitants have thrived as Turkey’s economic boom during the
past decade brought rapid development to the Anatolian hinterlands. The
Forum Mall, which opened last year, has a Popeyes, an Arby’s, a KFC, a
McDonald’s, a Burger King, and a Starbucks. In October, “Fury,” with
Brad Pitt, played at the cinema. I watched a red Lamborghini as it
roared down a wide boulevard.
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