RISING TENSIONS IN TURKEY
Since the start of the conflict in Syria more than seven years ago, Turkey has hosted a steadily increasing number of refugees from that civil war. The country is now home to the largest number of refugees worldwide, reaching around 4 million people today. 98 percent of the Syrian population in Turkey live in local communities, not in refugee camps or temporary protection settlements. Over 64 percent of the urban Syrian households live close to or below the poverty line.
Syrians make up about 3.7 million of them, 44 percent of whom are children. They are sheltered under “temporary protection” regulation which Turkish authorities say automatically applies to all Syrians seeking asylum as the country does not officially recognise Syrians as refugees under international refugee law. Turkey has a responsibility under international law not to return Syrians to Syria if they would face torture, violence or persecution. This rule of nonreturn – called “non-refoulement” – is a core principle of international law related to refugees and incorporated into human rights standards prohibiting torture and other inhuman treatment. The principle was integrated into domestic law by Turkey in 2011. Despite not recognizing the Syrians as refugees, Turkey is obligated to uphold the rule of nonreturn.
While it is illegal to forcibly deport people to Syria, as it exposes them to a real risk of serious human rights violations, Turkey claims that all those who return to Syria do so voluntarily. Turkish officials say 315,000 people have left for Syria on a voluntary basis. However, a Human Rights Watch report published in September said that Turkish authorities in Istanbul and Antakya had arbitrarily detained and deported dozens of Syrians and possibly many more to northern Syria between January and September 2019 despite active hostilities there. Deported Syrians said that Turkish officials forced them to sign forms they were not allowed to read, in some cases after beating or threatening them, and transported them to Syria. In late July, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu denied that Turkey had “deported” Syrians but said that anyone “who voluntarily wants to go back to Syria” can benefit from procedures allowing them to return to unspecified “safe areas.” Human Rights Watch research directly contradicts this, finding that Turkey has unlawfully deported Syrians to Idlib governorate, one of the most dangerous areas in Syria.
An Amnesty report published in October confirmed the already mounting evidence of a crackdown on Syrian refugees inside Turkey since the summer. "It is likely that hundreds of people across Turkey were swept up, detained and transported against their will to one of the world's most dangerous countries," the report said.
Among the cases highlighted in the report is that of Qasim (not his real name), a 39-year-old father from Aleppo. He said he was detained in a police station in the Turkish city of Konya for six days, where officers reportedly told him: “You have a choice. One or two months, or a year, in prison – or you go to Syria.” In a second case, John, a Syrian Christian, told a similar story, alleging that Turkish migration officials told him: “If you ask for a lawyer, we will keep you six or seven months, and we will hurt you.
Turkey’s recent deportations of Syrians from Istanbul and Antakya result from policies that have increasingly denied large numbers of Syrian asylum seekers protection. Over the past four years Turkey, which initially had an open border policy for Syrian refugees, sealed off its border with Syria, with hundreds of thousands of Syrians now trapped with little assistance in displacement camps and villages on the other side of the closed border. Turkish border guards have carried out mass summary pushbacks and killed and injured Syrians as they try to cross. In late 2017 and early 2018, Istanbul and nine provinces on the border with Syria suspended registration of newly arriving asylum seekers. On July 22, authorities in Istanbul set a four-week deadline for Syrians living without approval in Turkey’s largest city to return to provinces where they are registered or face forced removal to those regions. The order followed two clashes in the city earlier this year when crowds attacked Syrian shops and properties.
Erdogan is facing increasing domestic pressure to reduce the refugee presence, which he knows could pose a challenge to his power. The July statement came amid rising xenophobic sentiment across the political spectrum against Syrian and other refugees in Turkey, with increased calls by some politicians and sectors of the electorate for Syrians to go home.
According to opinion polls, public discontent is growing. Those feelings, analysts warn, are being aggravated by Turkey’s recession-hit economy and high levels of unemployment. Turks who are resentful of the Syrians view them as offering cheap labour and taking jobs from Turks, and using services including health and education. A poll in 2016 showed 72 percent had no problems with refugees. These days and across the political spectrum around 80 percent wish for their return to their home country. A sharp 2018 economic downturn has had an effect. This is also a historical pattern for host countries. “As the number of refugees and length of time they remain in a country grows,” Fletcher School’s Karen Jacobsen notes, “citizens… become less willing to provide for them.”
JUST THE BEGINNING
In September, Erdogan stood up at the UN with a large poster board map of Syria, marked with a 30 kilometer-wide border zone that he said could house up to 2 million Syrian refugees. “The refugees can be resettled, saving them from tent camps or container camps,” Erdoğan said. “This is not a burden that we can bear exclusively as the Republic of Turkey.” The plan was criticized by international human rights monitors. Regardless of any assurances, "safe zones" established during other conflicts have rarely been safe, and cannot justify forcibly returning refugees. Historically, civilian safe zones carved out from a war zone have also become targets for warring factions. The Srebrenica massacre of 1995 happened in a UN-designated safe zone.
Turkey’s latest incursion into northern Syria in October upped the ante. Erdogan threatened to unload many of the estimated 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey after European capitals responded with concern over his decision to send the Turkish military into Syria to push a Kurdish separatist group off the border. He argued his plan to open a security zone along the border to house hundreds of thousands of refugees was necessary, even as the international community expressed grave concern that this amounts to ethnic cleansing. In a speech before his AKP, Erdogan warned that any condemnation from Europe would result in his, "opening the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way.”
The military’s seizure of a strip of land inside Syria 120 km (75 miles) long and around 30 km (18 miles) wide running from the town of Ras al Ain to Tel Abyad, has created a physical place for deportees to be sent. But Syrians in Turkey from these areas number 471,000. How many will want to go back is unknown. Convincing refugees from elsewhere in Syria will be even harder. The government states that all returns would be voluntary, pointing to those having returned to areas earlier occupied by Turkey.
Last week, Erdogan met his German, French and British counterparts on the sidelines of a NATO summit in London to hold talks on developments in Syria and his “safe zone” plan. After the summit, Erdogan said one country, which he did not name, had pledged support for the plan but that Germany, France and Britain had not done so. He had previously said that Qatar could back it .The European Union and Turkey’s allies in NATO have rejected its calls for financial assistance and condemned the Turkish offensive, which they said might hinder the fight against ISIS in Syria. Turkey has dismissed the concerns. US Secretary of Defense said this week that the situation in northern Syria had stabilised, but he added that the U.S. "expected turmoil" as Turkey moved Syrian refugees into the region.
