On Friday, local Kurdish government officials announced plans to immediately evacuate 7,000 internally-displaced persons from one camp, al-Mabrouka, that they said had been hit with artillery shells.
"The situation on the ground is becoming increasingly dire, and once again, civilians are paying the highest price," Misty Buswell, Middle East policy director at the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement Friday afternoon. Sporadic border closings occurred as early as 2012, for example. See Asli S. Okyay, “Turkey’s post-2011 approach to its Syrian border and its implications for domestic politics,”. hide caption.
See Human Rights Watch, “Turkey’s Directorate of Migration Management Responses to Human Rights Watch Questions” (Washington: 2018), available at, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, “Syria Regional Refugee Response: Turkey.”, Particularly in the first years of the war, significant numbers of Syrian refugees entered Turkey without registering. Turkey’s Tactical Treatment of the Syrian Refugee Crisis” (Washington: Middle East Institute, 2017), available at, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu says 28,000 naturalized Syrian citizens were eligible to vote in the June 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections. According to a 2017 poll, 33 percent of Turks say the Syrians’ education should only be in Turkish, matching the government’s declared policy.
The number 1.4 million is derived from three separate figures given in Kirişҫi, “Post Second World War Immigration from Balkan Countries to Turkey”: 815,210 immigrants from 1923 through 1939 (p. 63), 21,616 immigrants from 1940 to 1945 (p. 63), and post-World War II, “more than 575,000” immigrants (p. 75). If humanitarian services continue to be cut off, the situation could quickly worsen, Karl Schembri, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told NPR. Check against delivery! M. Murat Erdoğan, “Syrians-Barometer-2017: A Framework for Achieving Social Cohesion With Syrians in Turkey” (Ankara, Turkey: Hacettepe University and others, 2017), p. 19, Table 90-A.
Municipalities receive funding from Ankara based on the number of Turkish citizens who live there, and those funds normally constitute more than half the local budget. Erdoğan got the electorate’s message and now frequently insists that all the refugees eventually will return home. In Turkey, it was banned in 1926 but never completely eliminated in more conservative parts of society, particularly in the Turkish southeast. In 2013, however, the flow of refugees overwhelmed the TSCs, and by early 2014, only a slight majority of the refugees were housed in the camps. Few Turkish officials want to acknowledge that a large-scale return of refugees to Syria is unlikely or that the realistic alternatives are either integration or the development of a permanently disaffected underclass. It ended its visa-free policy for Syrians arriving by air and sea, and it began building a security barrier along its Syrian border.16 It also amended its 2013 Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP) to allow deportation of those deemed to be associated with terrorism or otherwise constituting a threat to public order.17, In 2016, there were also more frequent reports of Turkey closing its Syrian border entirely and of Turkish border guards shooting at would-be refugees to prevent them from crossing; such reports continue to this day.18 According to Human Rights Watch, as of January 2018, nearly 1.7 million Syrian displaced people were residing in makeshift camps on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border.19, At least in part because of the restrictive new measures, registered Syrian refugee arrivals appear to have ebbed in recent years.20 The annual increase in the registered Syrian refugee population—arrivals plus births, minus deaths and departures—declined to 352,000 in 2016. When President Erdoğan raised the prospect of granting Syrian refugees Turkish citizenship in July 2016,53 public pushback was strong.54 Opposition parties objected, convinced that Erdoğan saw the refugees as a potential source of future political support, but even many of the president’s own supporters opposed the idea. Therefore, the challenge of integrating a large population of refugees may be a continuous one. However, it was not until a series of deadly terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016, which claimed hundreds of Turkish and tourist lives,14 that the government began serious efforts to limit the refugee flow. "And it's going to be a complete debacle for public health. 24, 34.
Moreover, signatories were given the option of applying it to all refugees or only to European refugees; Turkey opted for the latter, thus establishing a “geographic limitation.” The 1967 additional Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees removed these temporal and geographic restrictions, but it “grandfathered” the right of 1951 signatories, such as Turkey, that had chosen the Europe-only option to continue to adhere to that geographic limitation.27, At first, Turkish officials were careful to refer to the refugees from Syria strictly as “guests,” lest they inadvertently suggest that the Syrians were “refugees” with Geneva Convention rights.
Despite the need to prevent terrorism, Turkey continues to admit “Syrians who are in need, emergency patients, wounded and coming for family reunification at its border gates … (as well as those who) come with road transport … from Gaziantep, Hatay, and Kilis border gates,” the DGMM response says. Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced plans to return up to 2 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey to so-called "safe zones" in conquered territory in Syria. This brought large numbers of refugees face to face with Turks for the first time, and these encounters seemed only to increase Turkish resentment. Given the unpopularity of the refugees and the opposition’s demands that the Syrians return home, the very word “integration” is toxic in public discourse. In contrast, Article 24 of the 1951 Geneva Convention guarantees refugees a right to work that is essentially equivalent to that of the host country’s citizens.33. 27–28.
"There are a lot of displaced-persons camps there that are completely dependent on aid services, and if they are cut off, that would put lives at immediate risk.".
In addition to the declining fertility rate, Turkey had been a net emigration country foin octobr many years prior to the Syrians’ arrival.
To those who settle outside the camps, the UNHCR provides a one-time payout depending on family size—generally around 10,000 Turkish lira, or about $1,85094—“to cover their short-term basic needs, including transportation, rent and household expenses.”95. There are also more than a half-million adults ages 19 to 24, prime reproductive years. Until early 2013, virtually all of the then-less than 200,000 registered refugees lived in these centers.
A near-negligible 32,000, just 1.5 percent of the total Syrian refugee workforce, hold work permits and work in the formal economy, according to the Turkish interior minister.96 These figures suggest that a slight majority of the Syrians are either unemployed or not in the market, such as housewives and students.97, According to the same TEPAV report, there are some 10,000 wholly or partly Syrian refugee-owned businesses registered in Turkey, employing roughly 44,000 Syrians as well as thousands of Turks. At first, Turkey attempted to accommodate all the refugees in camps, or temporary shelter centers (TSCs), as they are officially called. Syrians say that they feel culturally close to the Turks—perhaps for reasons stemming from shared religious values and customs—whereas the Turks tend to say they see the Syrians as culturally alien.133, It is difficult to project how Turkish-Syrian tensions could shape Turkish society over the long term, but there is considerable reason for concern. Turkey made occasional efforts to bring its border—and the refugee flow—under closer control. Thus, refugees are a regular presence in the lives of roughly 90 percent of Turks.