Syrian Refugees in Turkey

“This is not my war! Those who have decided for starting this war yesterday, are the same with those who decide for where and how we will live tomorrow. Because today we are the ones who are in a fix. And we are only today, neither yesterday and surely not tomorrow! This is where we start life. You call it the “journey to hope”. Who knows on which stop of this journey hope is. On every long journey, we’ve met with long waitings and uncertainties” (One of the women at the Istanbul central bus terminal waiting to leave for Edirne; (September 2015)

According to the latest figures of UNHCR, which defines the Syrian refugee crisis as the biggest that it has observed within its jurisdiction throughout the last 25 years, the war in the region has displaced almost 7.7 million Syrians internally and created more than four million refugees. The same figures indicate that, as of September 2015, there are 1.938.999 registered Syrian refugees in Turkey. With almost 45% of the whole refugee population, this is the highest number of refugees hosted in one single country. Only in June 2015, a flux of 24.000 people occured into Turkey, mainly from Tel Abyad and other spots of the Northern Syrian region. 53% of the Syrians in Turkey are below 18, and more than 75% are composed of women and children with special protection needs. Thoughout the last four years, more than 60 thousand Syrians babies are assumed to born here.

The Turkish Ministry of Interior, Directory General of Migration Management announced in August, that 262.134 Syrian and Iraqi refugees fleeing the current war zones are accomodated in the 25 refugee camps built up in 10 cities. The numbers speak for themselves: Almost 90% of the refugees in Turkey prefer for one reason or another not to live in the camps but seek survival in cities. The refugee camps which actually have been praised for their high standarts are close to inspections by independent observers. Most of them refugees living outside the camps are concentrated in the immediate border regions, such as Hatay, Antep, Kilis, Urfa and Mardin. In Kilis, the number of refugees is almost the same (108.000) as the total local population (110.000). With more than 700.000 people each, Urfa and Antep are reported to be hosting the highest number of refugees in the border region. Though it is difficult to mention exact figures, the existence of particularly Syrian refugees in larger cities including Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya, Adana and Mersin, is also a fact. The estimates for Syrian refugees in Istanbul point for 300.000 people.

Yet, city life for refugees is tough: Most of them are complaining about the high rents for unspeakably bad housing conditions. Often several families gather together in small and inadequate habitations for reducing the cost of rent. According to AFAD (Prime Ministry, Disaster and Emergency Management Authority), one quarter of the refugees who live outside the camps take shelter in ruins or hovels, even in tents or abandoned prison houses. Exploitation in the labor market –if they are ever able to access it, since they have no work permit-; limited access to health and education services, and the rising anti-refugee sentiments and racist discrimination within Turkish society manifested in daily life interactions, are the most crucial problems. Children and women are the most affected ones. In a TV interview, a small Syrian child who works as streetseller replied to the question how people were treating him, followingly: “They do not treat me. They rebuke me”.

It is becoming more and more difficult for refugees to sustain their life in Turkey, which especially since May this year constantly moves a growing number of people to try leaving for Europe, by risking death while crossing borders, or as the case may be, the sea. The reason behind the latest attempt of “bare walkers”-as they call themselves-, a group composed of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees, after being refused by bus companies, to walk from Istanbul to the Turkish- Greek border city Edirne, was their determination: “we’ll drown no more!”.

As a matter of fact, starting with the first group of 252 Syrians who entered the country in April 2011, Turkey has been pursuing a policy of so called “open door” towards Syrians. Despite this “welcoming” policy and an investment of 6,5 billion US Dollars in refugees’ needs up to this time, Turkey’s arrangements and policies have been critisized for failing to satisfy the requirements of the situation. The main reason behind this inefficacy lies in the related legal framework: Altough Turkey signed the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 Additional Protocol on the status of refugees, it applies a geographical limitation to the former. Accordingly, asylum rights are limited to people with European origin and situations of mass refugee influx. Therefore, the legal status of Syrians in Turkey does not correspond to that of refugee. Actually, they are labelled as “guest”, which implies unpredictability and precariousness. The results are manifold: the ambiguity related to this statuslessness not only increases their vulnerability as human beings with basic needs. It also implies unpredictability concerning the duration of their presence in Turkey, since they have no right to make official applications for asylum in third countries either. Although Turkey introduced a new Law on Foreigners and International Protection and a new “temporary protection” regulation last year, one third of urban refugees are not registered and cannot make use of the services as part of this regulation. Furthermore, these implementations did not cause a major difference in the charity or so-called generosity based understanding of state policy on the matter. The following quotations from two different local authorities in Islahiye (Antep) may examplify this understanding:

“The guest status means that Syrians do not have rights in Turkey and that the State has the right to make the decision to deport them at any time.”

“Being a strong state means that you feel pity. The Turkish state feels pity towards Syrians and this is why we feed them and let them stay in Turkey."

Consequences of this charity based “guest” policy can also be observed at the societal level: recent research reveal an increase in anti-Syrian sentiments since the spring of 2014. It is becoming more obvious now that a negative public opinion towards refugees emerged in Turkish society, based to a certain extent to the dissatisfaction of local people with the Turkish government’s allocation of resources to Syrians. Especially “Turkey’s poor believe that Syrian refugees have been looked after with the taxes they pay”.Local inhabitants of the cities in the border region complain about the aid and services given to refugees, since they feel themselves neglected despite their own poverty. The existence of the refugees is perceived as the reason competition in the labor and hosing market, i.e.more refugees mean higher rents, and lower wages. It must also be stated that “Syrians” has become a defamation-catchword, which includes all refugees with various backgrounds, and is being used interchangebly with or instead of expressions such as beggar, burglar, exploiter, criminal, unmodern, etc. In several instances this attitude manifested itself in violent verbal and physical attacks against refugees and their dwelling places, which in some cases ended with injuries and even murder. Reports of the Amnesty International also point to the fact that more than a dozen people were wounded and killed by Turkish border officials while trying to cross the border from non-official crossing points.

It must also be noted that the refugee population is not a homogenous one. The religious and ethnic diversity among the refugees may be determining both the way they are treated by the Turkish state and society, and their access to services provided by different actors within. The Yazidi community, for instance, which escaped the ISIS massacre in the Mount Sinjar in 2014, is the least welcomed and protected among the “guests”. It is not a coincidence that they were the first group to appear in Edirne to cross the border to leave Turkey much earlier than the “bare walkers” last month. Alevite and Christian Syrians are also reported to be not welcomed, a reason why most of the Christians prefered to seek refugee in Lebanon in the first place. Different ethnic and religious affiliations within the refugee community may also shape their relations among themselves, as they continue to reflect the confrontrations in their home country. That is to say that the relation between Kurdish and Arab Syrian refugees may be based on mistrust and discrimination rather than cooperation and solidarity. The situation of the Syrian Dom within this context seems to be the worse. 

As the war in the region seems not to come to an end in a predictable future and that there are already more than 7 million people internally displaced within Syria, it is foreseeable that the refugee influx will continue both into Turkey - and since Turkey is not only a receiving but also a “de facto” transit country - to European destinations. Hence, Turkey needs to reconsider its refugee policy, by accepting that this is not a temporary crisis situation and construct an overarching rights-based policy accordingly. Many Syrian refugees admit that they would like to return home: “I don’t exchange our country for any other. I even accept its mud. If the war would end today, I would not wait a second to return". Yet, until the expected conditions in Syria are met, it is obvious that Turkey and other refugee hosting countries need to take the required legal and political steps to end the precarious, statusless position of those people and implement long term, especially socio-cultural and labor-market integration policies, by paying regard to their dignity, as well as diversity, with regard to their age and gender composition, education level, professional skills, religious affiliations and the respective needs.