Turkey’s Asylum Policy... Record of hospitality and confusion
Nour Alwan — Editor at Noon Post
Over the past few years, most of us have witnessed the way governments around the world have evaded the crisis of refugees fleeing to their safe territory, and human rights policies and international organizations failing to redress their situation and contain them. However, Turkey has been closely involved in this issue, and its government had to assume its burden and repercussions. This is not entirely new to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has always been keen on being the hero in every humanitarian issue, especially those affecting the Arab region.
Politics has never been free of charges or about philanthropy and likewise was Turkey’s experience, during which it managed to achieve great political benefits and interests thanks to some not entirely voluntary moves. If we recall history and revisit stories and events that occurred in this country as well as its neighbors, we will discover that its geographic location has defined its political history and fate from the very beginning. However, its political ambitions grew bigger and sought to play an advanced role at the international level, thereby explaining the reason why it is responsible for leading this file.
The recent repercussions brought by the deportation of Syrian refugees from Turkey, raised many questions about the fate of these displaced people and the reasons that prompted the Turkish authorities to take such measures suddenly. Therefore, Noon Post decided to look into the history of the Republic and highlight the experience it had with receiving and hosting refugees, the way refugee policies and laws have evolved, and whether their policies correspond to refugees’ expectations.
Immigration from and through Turkey
The refugee crisis put Turkey through some great challenges, some of which exceeded the country’s actual potential. However, this crisis was not the country’s first, for its geographic location at the intersection of Asia and Europe made it transit and outlet for migrants heading to Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. During the 60s, it has been known as the country of immigration having many of its citizens leaving to work in Europe, especially Germany, where 3 million out of the 15 million Turkish immigrants around the world are living; thereby, making Turkish people the largest community of immigrants living abroad.
If we want to look into the reasons prompting them to leave Turkey and go to Germany, we will find that the “three decades of glory” or the economic miracle Germany has witnessed after the Second World War forced them to sign labor export agreements with several countries. Turkey was one of those countries to sign the “invited workers / guests” treaty.
“Turkey is hosting some 4 million Syrian refugees, adopting an ‘open door’ policy promoted by humanitarian rhetoric and very flexible laws. However, in the past few days, Turkish politics has been missing these features, and humanitarian rhetoric has been replaced by stringent statements”
In addition to the waves of migration out and through the country, throughout the twentieth century and during the Cold War, the country witnessed an influx of immigrants coming from Eastern Europe and the Balkans, whose people fled Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Moreover, many people fleeing conflict and war zones in the Middle East came to Turkey. Since then, the Republic of Turkey has made amendments to its asylum laws so that it can host all these people and deal with their issues and problems.
Turkey currently hosts about 4 million Syrian refugees (registered at a temporary protection system known as “Kimlik”) who gradually fled by the end of 2011 and numbered no more than 8,000 by then. Turkey has followed the “open door” policy, which it has promoted by humanitarian discourses and very flexible laws. However, in the past few days these features have been absent from Turkish politics and humanitarian discourses have been replaced with harsh discourses and arbitrary measures.
Turkish asylum laws… To which category do Syrian refugees belong?
The first Turkish law on asylum and emigration in Turkey was issued in 1934, under №2510. This law had restricted the right of asylum to people of Turkish origin only. In 2006, a new law was adopted recognizing Turkey as a home for refugees and asylum seekers. However, this law stipulated granting citizenship only to those having Turkish origins, with Turkey’s joining of the signatory states to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which is a UN treating defining who a “refugee” is, legal protection and forms of assistance and social rights to which refugees are entitled.
Following this treaty, Turkey has adhered to the “geographical restrictions” set forth in the Convention, which allows it to grant the name of “refugee” only to those fleeing Europe. This condition has thus put it under the so-called “two-tier system of refugee protection,” which stipulates the classification of individuals fleeing their countries into two types. The first is “refugees under the Convention, who are Europeans,” and the second is “refugees outside the Convention” who are non-Europeans, each with different rights and criteria.
This policy has become apparent after 1979, following the Iranian revolution, when Turkey received its first wave of non-European asylum seekers since the founding of the republic in 1923. Thousands had demanded the right to asylum in its territories. However, the Turkish authorities did not officially recognize them as refugees because of the Convention it signed, even though the fugitives were the same persons who had fled the same shooting and war.
The legal framework includes two categories of foreign refugees seeking international protection, namely: European refugees who are officially recognized as refugees in accordance with the bilateral policy, and the second category includes conditional refugees who are to be resettled in a third country.
With the policies’ bias towards European refugees and the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, Turkey was increasingly in need of temporary protection laws that would deal with second-level non-European asylum seekers. This has prompted it later in 2013 to amend the procedures related to the residence of foreigners and visas and adopt Law №6458 on Foreigners and International Protection. This was the first law enacted by the government to address the asylum and migration system inside the country, following which it established the Directorate General Of Migration, including illegal or unauthorized human migration.
Thus, this legal framework has become comprising three categories of foreign refugees seeking international protection. The first category includes European refugees officially recognized as refugees in accordance with the two-tier system While the second includes conditional refugees who are to be resettled in a third country, the third includes those under temporary protection, who would be at risk if they are returned to their country of origin, the category to which most, and not all, of Syrian refugees belong.
After the adoption of this law, Turkey has developed a joint action plan with the European Union in 2015, stipulating the European Union’s provision of 3 billion Euros to Turkey in exchange for the management of refugees within its territories, the stop of their flow to European countries and the closure of land and sea ports from which refugees infiltrate to the European countries’ borders. Indeed, illegal smuggling through the Aegean Sea has decreased by almost half.
Hence, migration has started to be a more serious issue for the Turkish authorities, and has become a major challenge to its social system. Indeed, a large segment of the Turkish public has considered this issue as a security threat to them and the cause of their social problems and economic crises, which unfortunately coincided with the Syrian people’s presence in the country.
How has Turkey dealt with refugees since 1980?
In the early 1980s, after the Iranian Revolution, the country witnessed a significant shift in the number and nationality of refugees. It has received asylum requests from over two million Iranian and Kurdish refugees. Since then, Turkey has started enacting laws and policies to respond to this problem. About 1.5 million Iranians fleeing the persecution of Khomeini and the brutality of his regime had been granted temporary asylum in Turkey between 1980 and 1991. Despite their temporary hosting, the government sought to resettle them in other countries in Europe and North America.
This mass influx, which is one of the largest waves of non-European migration in Turkey’s recent history, was followed by another wave of Iraqi Kurdish refugees. On August 25, 1988, the Iraqi government attacked the Kurdish city of Halabja with chemical weapons. Iranian forces and Iraqi Kurdish fighters occupied the city, leading to the intensification of confrontation between them and the Iraqi army, followed by the escape of the population of this city to the Turkish border.
However, the government refused to receive them at first for fears of infiltration of members of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to its territories. Nevertheless, under local and international pressures, the late Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Özal ordered to open the borders to the refugees on August 28. About 60,000 refugees entered the country. As was the case with Iranian refugees, Turkey provided temporary residence for Iraqi Kurdish refugees, collected about 2,000 of them and forcibly resettled them in Kurdish cities in Iran. The remaining number of them had gradually been distributed and dispersed between Iraq, Greece, France, the US and some Turkish-Kurdish cities.
In the 1990s, Turkey experienced waves of Muslim refugees from Balkan countries such as the Circassians, the Pomaks, the Tatars, the Bosniaks, the Albanians and the Kosovars. The Bosniaks were the most numerous. With the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, the declaration of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s independence in 1992 and the outbreak of ethnic conflicts and wars, 18,000 Kosovars demanded asylum right in Turkey, all of whom were granted temporary asylum, and 320 Bosnian refugees have acquired citizenship, mostly through marriage.
These waves of asylum coming from the Balkans and Iraq illustrated the complexity of the two-tier system in Turkey. Refugees from the Balkans, coming from Eastern Europe, were more “entitled” to get temporary asylum and were more likely to be officially recognized as “refugees” than the Iraqi Kurds coming from a non-European country.
These events coincided with a new wave of Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in 1991 when the forces of the late President Saddam Hussein used violence and repression against the demonstrations that challenged the regime, causing the escape of about half a million Kurds to neighboring countries. About 5,000 of them fled to Turkey and settled in camps on its borders. 100,000 others were distributed outside the camps and some of them returned to Iraq, leaving only 5,000 of them in Turkey.
These waves of asylum coming from the Balkans and Iraq illustrated the complexity of the two-tier system in Turkey. Refugees from the Balkans, coming from Eastern Europe, were more “entitled” to get temporary asylum and were more likely to be officially recognized as “refugees” than the Iraqi Kurds coming from a non-European country, whose chance to enjoy the same situation and right, or even the services, was less than the others. This includes the imposition of more restrictions on their movements and reaching to the labor market, leading to the absence of safety of living and uncertainty about the future.
The new millennium was not calm or stable either, as the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq led to the fleeing of thousands of people to Turkey for fear of war, extremism and ethnic fanaticism, such as the Hazaras, the largest ethnic and religious minority in Afghanistan. They are Muslim Shiites who have been constantly targeted by the Taliban. Since Turkey has always employed a two-tier system, the best option for these asylum seekers was to be resettled in a third country which recognizes them as refugees officially. However, this solution was not available for non-European refugees in Turkey, except for a few exceptions.
Has the Syrian crisis changed asylum policy in Turkey?
Unlike any other wave of immigration, previously witnessed by Turkey, this experience was different, because Turkey became the host country with the largest number of Syrian refugees, in addition to 350,000 non-Syrian refugees, in a short period of time. Thus, Afghans make up 35 percent of the total number, in addition to Iranians and Iraqis who constitute the rest. The concentration rate of Iranian and Iraqi populations in Turkey has doubled in conjunction with the Syrian crisis. Thus, all of those asylum seekers fall under the second level regulations of asylum policy in Turkey, and therefore are not formally recognized by the Turkish government as refugees.
Due to the large number of Syrian refugees, Turkey was forced to add and reform the relevant systems and policies in order to manage the file. The Turkish authorities tried to respond to these rapid changes and contain their conditions in cooperation with a wide range of governmental and international actors, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD), as well as major humanitarian organizations such as the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) and the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).
These organizations were mainly concerned with accommodating the refugees and providing services, such as primary and secondary education for children, free health care and train them to be able to integrate in the labor force. Thus, the Turkish government refused to allow or accede to such programs when refugees arrived in the 1980s and 1990s. The Turkish authorities did not provide the required education for Iraqi Kurdish children who sought asylum in Turkey, and international aid agencies did not provide assistance to some Iraqi Kurdish camps due to turkey’s anti-refugee status, which does not grant the refugees the same rights.
After 40 years of millions of refugees’ fleeing to Turkey, the authorities have taken a sweeping and decisive step in the issue of citizenship, which was limited to the Turkish population only. Thus, Turkey allowed the Syrians to obtain citizenship at the beginning of 2016, in addition to other foreigners who got a work permit, despite the fact that the Turkish government has been exposed to a wave of criticism by some opposition parties and popular political circles.
However, there are still some areas that the Turkish government has not been able to manage properly, especially if we want to compare it with other countries such as Canada, Sweden and Germany. As such, the refugees’ file was essentially based on their role in endorsing these states’ visibility and economic strength, which might partially explain the interest of some countries in the refugees issue and the facilitation of their necessary paper transactions in order to help them integrate in the labor market legally and comfortably.
The lack of information about the asylum process and refugee status within the Turkish system is one of the greatest challenges refugees and asylum seekers in Turkey are facing, prompting some to seek solutions of their own and according to their circumstances.
For instance, Canada, according to a report by the Syrian journalist Hazar Najjar, based in Canada, published on Noon Post’s website, “the refugees arriving in Canada through the United Nations get permanent residence papers as soon as they land on Canadian territory and before leaving the airport; while refugees arriving illegally through the southern border with the United States get temporary residence permits once they cross the border point.” In reality, granting the refugees a legal status is the first step for them to have a new beginning and start the process of integration in education and employment sectors.
As for Turkey, the government began to provide official residence papers to the Syrian refugees, “Kimlik”, in 2013, almost two years after their arrival in the country. According to a report by the International Refugee Organization (IRO), the lack of information about the asylum process and refugees’ status within the Turkish system is one of the greatest challenges refugees and asylum seekers in Turkey are facing, prompting some to seek solutions of their own and according to their circumstances. This means that some of them have started working illegally in the formal sector or have remained without residence permits or official papers; which paved the way for the emergence of exploitation issues, i.e. cheap and insecure labor.
When talking about the refugees in Turkey, the word “Syrian” is often used to refer to a refugee regardless of the person’s true identity or nationality.
As for cultural diversity, Najjar wrote: “In schools and universities, in politicians’ speeches, in all media outlets, and from the very first moment of any newcomer’s arrival, as is the habit of naming refugees in Canada, a fundamental point of the Canadian culture is emphasized, which is: cultural diversity is the source of our strength.
This sort of rhetoric and definitions are absent from the Turkish politics. When talking about the refugees in Turkey, the word “Syrian” is often used to refer to a refugee regardless of the person’s true identity or nationality. Despite the common cultural factors between the Turks and Syrians, the lack of a clear distribution mechanism of Syrians’ locations of residence, the absence of adequate efforts to familiarize the refugees with the culture of the host country and limiting their presence in secluded neighborhoods, has widened the gap between them and the Turkish people as mutual stereotypes and negative perceptions have increased.
Has Turkish politics met the expectations of refugees?
In this regard, Noon Post interviewed Turkish legal expert Mohamed Fatih Yashar, who explained: “We cannot say that Turkey has done well to manage this file. It was not easy, especially with the influx of millions of refugees from several countries, quickly and surprisingly. There was a lack of policies and many mistakes were committed. Nevertheless, Turkey gave priority to shelter war fugitives, and that was all that mattered,” adding that the Turkish authorities “did what other countries failed to do.”
Referring to the lack of expertise required to deal with this issue, Yashar pointed out to the difficulty of containing this problem, which he described as “sudden.” He sees that the Turkish authorities treated Syrians flexibly as if they were guests; however, Turkey could not fully meet the refugees’ expectations at the same time, especially if we take into consideration the priority of saving lives that Turkey initially sought regardless of its actual means and resources, along with linguistic and cultural differences that complicated this task further.
Based on historical developments and the current reality, we cannot deny that the asylum system in Turkey continues to face major challenges and needs to be updated in order to open channels of communication with the refugees and achieve a containment process that will contribute in the creation of a social and moral balance in the host country. Most importantly, re-structuring the Turkish asylum system would provide a formal and clear introduction to the laws governing the refugees’ presence and movement in the country.
