EU court fines Turkey for unlawfully expelling Syrian refugee
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) fined on Tuesday Turkey 12,250 euros ($12,940) for forcing a Syrian refugee to sign a document that said he was returning voluntarily.
The court ordered Turkey to pay around 12,250 euros ($12,940) including costs and expenses to Muhammad Fawzi Akkad. The court said that the man was forced to sign a document he didn’t understand at first, according to the Reuters news agency.
Avin Juma, an administrator official at the Human Rights Organization of Jazira region, told North Press that the return of refugees from Turkey will be by force. They will not be returned to their original cities and homes, but to settlements that were built in places whose residents were forced to flee and leave their property.
On May 5, Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu revealed his country’s intention to build about 250,000 homes in northern Syria, as part of a plan to return Syrian refugees.
The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying, “we are preparing a new project for the voluntary return of one million Syrians who are in our country as guests.”
Juma’a described this project as settlement, as it would create strife and hatred among the Syrians themselves.
Mustafa Abdi, the administrator official of the Violations Documentation Center in North and East Syria, told North Press that the settlement construction project that Turkey claims is “Part of its plan to create a real manipulation of the social structure of the region’s population.”
“These settlements are a blow to the social structure. It has catastrophic consequences and will increase the state of national and sectarian extremism and hate speech,” according to Abdi.
Turkey’s project is based on seizing the land and property of the displaced from those areas. Turkey will then turn them into homes inhabited by others. The refugees are forced to do so, Abdi said.
Turkey plans to build 240,000 housing units in regions of Syria under its control, Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu announced on Saturday during a visit in the region of Tal Abyad in northern Syria.
Soylu met with tribal leaders around Tal Abyad and highlighted Turkey’s willingness to help Syrian refugees “return voluntarily” to Syria, citing the 60,000 housing units recently built by Turkish NGOs in Idlib governorate in northwest Syria.
Abdi called on the European Union to move and pressure Turkey to correct the defect it committed, stop its bad project, adding that the EU should not turn a blind eye to this project, which amounts to be war crimes.