SYRIAN REFUGEES IN ISTANBUL FACE UNKNOWN FATE AMID GROWING THREAT OF DEPORTATION
▶ Reports of arrests and clandestine removals increase as Turkish authorities respond to struggling economy by hardening their position on the migrant population, write Qodsai Amameh in Istanbul and Tom Rollins in Berlin
Syrian refugees living in Istanbul without residency permits or who have been registered elsewhere in Turkey face being forced to leave the city on Tuesday, either to be resettled elsewhere or sent back across the border to Syria.
Last month, authorities in the Turkish capital said they would crack down on unregistered Syrian refugees and informal labourers in the city, framing it as an effort to tackle “illegal immigration”.
More than 1,000 Syrians have since been deported, according to rights groups and media reports.
As deportations increased, authorities announced that after August 20, Syrians living in Istanbul without proper registration would be returned to the cities where they were registered.
But it is not clear what will happen to those unable to prove they are living in Turkey legally. That is of particular concern to Syrians displaced into Turkey last year at about the time several Turkish cities, including Istanbul, halted registration.
Some Syrian refugees said they feared they would be sent back to Syria.
They said that many of the latest deportations carried out in Turkey contravened national and international laws, saying authorities were even targeting refugees registered in Istanbul, despite Turkey’s claims there was a proper legal process in place.
“Nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen after August 20,” said Muhammad, a Syrian refugee who has lived in Istanbul for several years.
“But everyone is expecting the campaign to become even more ferocious.”
Like all Syrians who spoke to
The National, he asked for his identity to be withheld.
Syrian fears have only increased after a refugee was killed not long after he was deported to Syria.
Hisham Mustafa had the necessary documents to live in Turkey but was arrested without clear charges in May and deported in July.
“We did not know what the police were doing. They took Hisham away with them,” Mustafa’s father said.
Turkish security forces sent Hisham back to Syria using
the Bab Al Hawa crossing, which leads into Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. He was killed by Turkish border guards while trying to slip back into the country, where his three children still live.
Last month, Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu denied the country had deported Syrian refugees, instead claiming on TV that those “who voluntarily want to go back” to their homeland can return to “safe areas”.
Opposition-affiliated authorities at the Bab Al Hawa crossing said that last month more than 6,100 people crossed into Syria. The border post ordinarily deals with up to 3,500 crossings into Syria per month, a spokesman told
The accounts of people deported to Syria suggest that some are being sent back clandestinely through an unofficial border crossing further south, contradicting Turkish claims that refugees are only sent to safe areas in north-western Syria after stating their intention to return voluntarily.
Among them is Zakariya, who said he was arrested while walking home from work last month, despite holding a temporary residency card issued by authorities in Istanbul.
He said that he was among a group of Syrians who boarded a bus before travelling a backroad towards an “iron gate separating Syrian and Turkish territory”.
“I only saw one Turkish soldier sitting in an armoured vehicle at the Turkish gate, before we entered through another gate into Syria,” he said.
From there, they started walking. “There were no towns or villages along the road. We were walking in completely empty countryside,” he said.
Zakaria found shelter in a mosque in Salqeen, where he continues to live. He is waiting to return to his wife and two children in Istanbul.
Other Syrians forced to leave Turkey tell a similar story. Mahmoud said he was deported through the same iron gate after he was arrested during a raid on his home in Istanbul’s Avcilar district last month.
“I have a temporary protection card issued in Gaziantep,” Mahmoud said, referring to a province in south-eastern Turkey.
According to regulations, he should have been sent back to Gaziantep. “Even then, the authorities said that Syrians had until August 20 to leave the city. But the police didn’t listen to me during my arrest,” he said.
Instead, he and other detained Syrians were taken by bus directly to the border. “They forced me to return to Idlib via the Friendship Bridge crossing,” Mahmoud said.
He said members of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an umbrella group of opposition militants in Syria that controls most of Idlib, were waiting on the other side. “They interrogated me briefly and then let me go,” he said.
Turkish authorities have used this crossing to deport Syrian refugees in the past. Human Rights Watch reported last year that Turkish border guards “forced Syrians to return to Syrian territory … across a small dam on the Orontes River known as the Friendship Bridge”, often after refugees were caught attempting to slip across the border.
Officials from the Turkish Interior Ministry and Istanbul province could not be reached for comment.
The latest deportations raise questions about the fate of Syrian refugees after Tuesday’s deadline, with 3.6 million Syrians living in Turkey.
For months, rhetoric and government policy relating Syrian refugees have hardened as Turkey’s economy continues to struggle.
The country may also have been emboldened by its migration deal with the EU. In March 2016, the bloc agreed to pay Turkey €3 billion (Dh12.2bn) provided the country blocked migrants from attempting to reach Greece by sea.
Deportations increased after the deal was struck. Past EU funding has also gone to Turkish detention facilities used to deport unwanted foreigners.
Other neighbouring countries, particularly Lebanon, have restricted entry to Syrians for years, either coercing them to go back to their homeland or returning them by force.
The Istanbul district of Esenyurt, home to a large population of Syrians, now bears posters with messages telling Syrians to go home.
“Syrians have begun to return,” reads one poster that includes an image of smiling Syrian children waving. The poster only references voluntary returns and even provides a phone number for anyone thinking about heading home.
According to Salem, 34, the writing is on the wall for Syrian refugees. He said he wanted to travel to Europe rather than face uncertainty in Turkey.
Smugglers are still using WhatsApp and Facebook accounts to tell refugees they can be transported to Greece for about $1,000 (Dh3,600). “It’s half an hour across the sea, the cost isn’t that bad and once you reach a Greek island, it’s in God’s hands,” Salem said.
Although he is aware of the risks involved in making the journey by sea, Salem said he would still go because “there are no options left”.
Last month more than 6,100 people crossed into Syria from Turkey ... ordinarily there are 3,500 crossings per month