Turkey clamps down on Syrians
MUSTAFA, a 21-year-old Syrian in Turkey, was at the shoe factory in Istanbul where he worked making army boots when three policemen stormed in, asking if everyone had their papers. He and three other Syrian refugees did not.
Within a day, Mustafa and a busload of other refugees would be driven to Turkey’s southern border and forced to go back to their war-torn country.
“They told us things like ‘Don’t come back to Turkey’ and ‘Go liberate your country’,” Mustafa recalled, speaking by phone from his hometown of Salqin in the opposition-held Syrian province of Idlib. He asked that his full name not be published, fearing for his safety.
Mustafa is among hundreds of Syrian refugees who have been detained and reportedly forcibly deported to Syria in the past month, according to accounts by refugees. The expulsions reflect rising anti-refugee sentiment in a country that once flung open its borders to millions of Syrians fleeing civil war.
For weeks, Turkey has been carrying out a campaign to reinforce its rules requiring Syrian refugees to stay in cities where they are registered with the government. Accounts by Mustafa and other Syrians suggest that along with that campaign, some unregistered refugees are being forced out of the country. AP interviewed six Syrians who said they were among large groups deported to Syria in the past month.
The Turkish government categorically denies claims of forced deportations for registered and unregistered Syrians, saying only voluntary returns are allowed. Turkey is bound by an international law that protects against return to a country where a person faces persecution.
“I am officially denying such claims, it is not possible,” said Ramazan Secilmis, an official with the Directorate General of Migration Management. He said 337 000 Syrians had voluntarily returned over the course of the war to Turkish-controlled zones in northern Syria.
But in a report late last month, Human Rights Watch accused authorities of detaining Syrians and coercing them into signing “voluntary return forms” before returning them to danger. It called on authorities to protect the basic rights of all Syrians regardless of registration status.
There are no statistics on those forcibly returned. The Bab al-Hawa crossing – one of several crossings run by Syrian opposition authorities – saw 6160 deportees from Turkey in July, a 40% jump from the month before, according to an infographic on the crossing’s official Twitter page. It did not elaborate on the circumstances of the deportations.
Asked if it was aware of any forced deportations, the UN refugee agency’s Turkey spokesperson, Selin Unal, said it was “following up on a number of reported cases” related to unregistered Syrians. Unal said it “could not confirm that large numbers” of registered refugees had been returned to Syria.
“UNHCR’s priority is that persons in need of international protection continue to benefit from this protection,” she said.
Turkey opened its borders to Syrians in April 2011 and is currently home to 3.6 million who fled the civil war, now in its ninth year.
But as Turkey suffers an economic downturn and rising unemployment, calls among Turks for Syrians to go home are growing. Analysts say rising resentment against Syrians was one reason President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party lost the race for mayor of Istanbul in June. | AP