Ankara policies leave Syrians stranded at borders

After the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad in 2019, the Turkish authorities began to forcibly deport Syrian refugees in a systematic manner according to a plan and procedures that were implemented to create a demographic change in the three areas with the aim of getting rid of the refugees on its territory. On many occasions, the Turkish officials confirmed that they would deport them to their country and set a number of plans under the name of “voluntary return” in which the refugees are forced to sign forms under inhumane conditions including detention, abuse, and threat of weapons. This is confirmed by the eyewitness testimonies contained in the report.

Since the beginning of June, the pace of forced deportation from Turkey to Syria has increased, targeting those in which they describe them as “illegal refugees” and “violators of laws”, especially the Syrians. Most of the people who were deported had a temporary protection card “Kimlik”, but hey were arrested while going to work or being in one of the neighborhoods without any reason, and they were forced to sign voluntary return documents, to be forcibly deported to Syria, which is still unsafe and suffers from the consequences of war and security chaos and witnesses a bloody armed conflict, which is a clear violation of the international humanitarian law and many international conventions.

The Monitoring and Documentation Department of North Press Agency contacted 16 people via internet for setting the report based on eyewitness testimonies of five people including Syrians and Iraqis who have been forcibly deported to Syria in addition to testimonies by human right activists who follow violations that the refugees are subjected to in Turkey. The testimonies reveal information that shows the circumstances of the refugees inside the detention centers and their deportation towards northern Syria through the border crossings of Tel Abyad, Bab al-Salama, and Bab al-Hawa.  

All names mentioned in the report are pseudonyms to protect the people and keep them safe.

“Tuzla” a cage for forced deportation

“The Turkish authorities stopped me at the metro station while I was going to work and asked me for my ID, then I gave them the necessary documents including the job card and the residence permit, after that they asked me to accompany them to update the data and that the process would only take minutes, only to be surprised after about 15 minutes that I was transferred from the police station to Tuzla center in Istanbul that is allocated for deportation,” says Saeed al-Ahmad, a 20-year-old young man from Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, who is married and works as a tailor. He was residing in Esenyurt neighborhood in Istanbul city before being deported to Tel Abyad in northern Syria. 

The young man was arrested with dozens of people for two weeks at the Tuzla center and tried with them to protest against the detention and illegal deportation method, but in each attempt with the authorities they were met with a huge amount of racist insults and abuse, where Saeed described the detention conditions as “inhumane”. “We were subjected to insults, beatings, starvation and even communication with our families was prevented as if we were criminals”, he said.

“After we stayed two weeks at Tuzla hell, they tied our hands with plastic tapes and transferred us to another center in Urfa which was no less worse than Tuzla, and we were forced to sign deportation papers without taking into account the presence of our families in Istanbul. All that was ended in moments and in a way that has nothing to do with humanity, and in a manner full of racism”, he continued. 

The deportees were given a choice between Bab al-Hawa crossing and Tel Abyad. After that, they were forced to be deported to Tel Abyad crossing despite the fact that most of the people who were with the young man came from areas in northwestern Syria, and they were deported on July 10, and the young man was detained with about 60 people in a shelter that does not accommodate more than 30 people.

“Since our deportation, I have been living in a case of anxiety, on the one hand I am thinking about the fate of my wife and children who are now living alone in Turkey without a breadwinner, and on the other hand the extortion that I was subjected to by the factions during the investigation period in Tel Abyad which lasted for four days, until finally they decided that I will not be released until I pay a sum of money”, Majed al-Walid, one of the young men who were with Saeed and from Aleppo, says.   

The young man contacted his brother in Europe who sent him money, but he does not know where he will go and what he will do about his family.

While working on the report, the Department was able to access information confirming that a number of people who were deported are being held in prisons of the Syrian National Army (SNA) which extorts their families by fabricating false charges if they do not pay large sums of money as a ransom.

 Return besieged by financial extortion

“My brother Jalal was transferred to Tel Abyad crossing, but I was transferred to Bab al-Salama crossing because I paid the Turkish officer $1,200 that I had with me when I was deported, and if it were not for that, I would have been expelled with my brother in Tel Abyad,” says Hazem al-Akram, 42, from the city of Aleppo who was deported through Bab al-Salama crossing to the city of Azaz in Aleppo northern countryside, while Jalal al-Akram was deported to Tel Abyad crossing on the pretext that he is not from the area.

The young man was arrested with others who were with him after he was deported for the second time by the civil police. All were subjected to extortion as they were given a choice between paying amounts of money starting from $1,000 or that they would be charged with false charges. So, the young man had to pay $2,500 that his wife had sent him to return to Turkey through smuggling roads.

The situation is no different for Salma Muhammad, 20, from the city of Hasakah, who was stopped by the Turkish authorities while she was going to a pharmacy in Aksaray neighborhood, where she was living, to buy medicine for her four-year-old child who was with her, without carrying any ID with her, only to be transferred to the Tuzla center later after she was arrested on the pretext of having no IDs.

“There is no difference between a woman and a man, everyone’s hands are tied with plastic tapes, and they are starved for long hours, and beaten with electric sticks, not to mention racist insults”, Salma says.

“Since we arrived Tel Abyad, we did not move outside the shelter for security reasons according to the description of the factions loyal to Turkey, and the charge they accused me of was that my brothers joined the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Hasakah, based on which I was transferred to the anti-terrorism center for security investigation three times, where I was subjected to verbal and physical abuse and intimidation, as well as making me away from my son for a week until my husband sent $4,500 then they released us”, she adds.

Flagrant violations of asylum

The forced deportation of refugees from Turkey includes different nationalities, as they also deported Iraqis, Afghans, and Moroccans to Syria. 

“I was arrested on the pretext of the illegality of my identity papers because my residence permit was issued from Bursa region while I am existing in Antakya, a province southern Turkey, without a residence permit”, says Farah al-Samer, 28, an Iraqi woman who was deported from Turkey to the Kelli camp through Bab al-Hawa crossing on June 19 last year without her husband’s knowledge.

Farah was not allowed to contact her husband or any of her family members. She was transferred with a number of Syrian refugees to a deportation center in Antakya. The number of deportees with her exceeded 100 people, including 15 Iraqis who were deported to the Kelli camp in Idlib Governorate and others to Tel Abyad, according to the young woman’s estimates.

The young woman pointed out that after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won the elections, the pace of racism increased. “Their only concern is not to deport us on the pretext of reducing the population of migrants. They want to make Turkey refugee-free. This is what we saw through forcing us to sign under the threat of arrest for months”, she says.

Shocking numbers 

The number of refugees deported from Turkey since the beginning of the year has exceeded 21,000 people, according to statistics by administrative officials of Bab al-Hawa, Bab al-Salama and Tel Abyad crossings. The Turkish authorities deported 11,500 people in August, 5,500 people in July, and more than 5,000 people in June, including at least 74 Iraqis.

“The deportation operations through Bab al-Hawa crossing take place from Istanbul to the detention and deportation center in Antakya, in coordination with the Foreign Relations Bureau of the Salvation Government in the presence of the General Security Service, affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). In Tel Abyad, the deportees are handed over to the SNA factions, one of the sources pointed out.  

Legal, human rights perspectives

“The general consideration in the international law is that forced repatriation without regard for refugees’ rights, according to legal procedures stipulated, is a violation of the international law. This practice is considered as a violation of human rights and refugee standards”, Mu’tasim al-Keilani, a specialist of the international criminal law, says.

“Most international conventions prohibit the forced return of persons to areas where they may be subjected to torture, harsh treatment or persecution”, al-Keilani, who lives in France, told North Press.

“The conditions of detention, imprisonment, and deportation are fraught with many legal questions, according to hundreds of documented testimonies of victims who were arrested and deported in illegal ways, through coercion, violence and beating, to force the deportees to sign voluntary return papers”, Dr. Faten Ramdan, head of the Sans Menottes Association, told North Press.

“Based on the testimonies of the deportees, it is obvious that there are clear violations of the Turkish law firstly and of international human rights and refugee protection laws”, Ramdan pointed out.

Based on the conventions and treaties that prohibit the forced deportation of refugees, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its Article 14 provides that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution, and that this right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” The Geneva Convention of July 28, 1951 stipulates in its Article 33 that “No Contracting State shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. The benefit of the present provision may not, however, be claimed by a refugee whom there are reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who, having been convicted by a final judgement of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country.”

Based on this, Turkey must grant temporary residence (Residence Permits) to asylum seekers from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, unlike citizens of European countries who have the right to obtain asylum and full protection in Turkey.

The Article 49 of the IV Geneva Convention of 1949 says, “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.” This does not apply to the behavior of the Turkish government as it forcibly deport the Syrian refugees without their consent and without the existence of a vital reason that undermines Turkish security, but Turkey is considered the third safe country, according to the classification and description of the European Union that there is no internal or external war situation in Turkey currently.

The Article 49 also stipulates that “Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.” Thus, any return of refugees to Syria should be conditional on a political resolution that includes at least an effective and tangible implementation of the provisions of UN Resolution 2245, the start of a transitional phase, and reconstruction projects so that a safe and neutral environment and a decent life are available, so any voluntary return is contingent on achieving stability and sustainable peace.