Turkey introduces new restrictions on refugees

Turkey introduces new restrictions on refugees
The number of refugees deported by Turkey rose by 70 percent this year. According to the latest figures, about 30,000 irregular migrants were deported. (Reuters/File)
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Updated 13 June 2022

Turkey introduces new restrictions on refugees

Turkey introduces new restrictions on refugees
  • Ankara bans homeland visits for Syrians during Eid, brings in neighborhood quotas for foreigners

ANKARA: As signs of social discontent rise, Ankara has taken new measures to restrict the movement of Syrians within the country’s territories, banning them from visiting their homeland during the approaching Eid Al-Adha holiday.

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu announced the new precautions on migration control during a press conference in the capital Ankara on Saturday.

The percentage of foreigners who are allowed to live in each neighborhood will be reduced from 25 percent to 20 percent, starting from July 1, closing 1,200 districts to settlement.

Metin Corabatir, president of the Research Center on Asylum and Migration in Ankara, said that Syrians preferred living in districts near to industrial zones where they worked, mostly illegally on lower wages to make ends meet.

“If authorities bring quotas on their settlement, it will both violate human rights and impact the industrial hubs where they are currently working as a critical workforce,” he told Arab News.

Turkey hosts more than 4 million refugees, 3.7 million of whom are Syrian.

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu announced the new precautions on migration control during a press conference in the capital Ankara on Saturday.
  • The percentage of foreigners who are allowed to live in each neighborhood will be reduced from 25 percent to 20 percent, starting from July 1, closing 1,200 districts to settlement.

Begum Basdas, researcher at the Center for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School in Berlin, thinks that none of these measures can be recognized as migration management.

“The new restrictions brought by the authorities continue to be ad-hoc reactions to mislead the public that they are in control of the situation,” she told Arab News.

“If the government and the oppositional parties wish the Syrians to return to Syria some day, they should promote cross-border relations instead of banning them. Half of the Syrians in Turkey are young people, many of them being born in Turkey. They have no real connection or memory of Syria as they have grown up in Turkey,” Basdas said.

“If the authorities would be sincere in ‘voluntary returns’ they would ensure routes for people to visit their homes and return to their lives in Turkey until Syria is safe to return to. The majority of Syrians in Turkey repeatedly say that they have nowhere to return to, and the ban further limits that possibility.”

With rising economic problems in the country and elections on the horizon, incidents of violence against Syrian refugees are escalating. A 70-year-old Syrian woman was recently kicked in the face by a Turkish man over a local rumor that a refugee kidnapped a child.

The refugees mostly maintain a low profile in public to avoid trouble, after increasingly becoming the scapegoat of the country’s heated domestic politics.

Although governments have the exclusive right to manage irregular migration, Corabatir said that there are increasing reports of new asylum-seekers facing problems in being registered by Turkish authorities, which prevents them from sending their children to school or using health services.

“They are trying to remain invisible. Decreasing the quotas in some neighborhoods will only relocate the integration problems from one district to another if refugees are treated like merchandise. It looks like a forced migration within the country,” he said.

Some far-right politicians have also capitalized on the resentment with inflammatory anti-refugee rhetoric for political gain ahead of approaching elections, as some Turks blame Syrians for stealing their jobs and increasing rental prices.

The number of refugees deported by Turkey rose by 70 percent this year. According to the latest figures, about 30,000 irregular migrants were deported. The government, however, opts for a softer approach on refugees, preparing the ground for the voluntary return of 1 million Syrians.

So far, as many as 503,150 Syrians in Turkey have returned voluntarily to areas that have been secured in their country. Turkey has been building houses in Syria’s Idlib province — the number has reached 59,000 — with the aim of creating the conditions for return.

Friedrich Puttmann, a researcher at the Istanbul Policy Center, thinks that there is nothing wrong with distributing refugees across different localities as such.

“In fact, it lets you tailor the respective burden on social services to the capabilities of local authorities and may facilitate social and economic integration. In Germany, for example, there’s an official scheme by the government which distributes asylum seekers upon their first arrival across the country according to every region’s population size and tax revenue,” he told Arab News.

“In Turkey, in contrast, Syrian refugees have moved to areas where they already knew someone or where they could find job opportunities and affordable housing. This has led to clustering and indeed often upset local Turkish citizens who felt left alone by the state,” Puttmann said.

However, he also agrees that to simply undo this development after 10 years of refugees living in Turkey by forcing people to leave their homes, jobs and social environments is not advisable, neither morally nor in practice.

“You tell people to leave, but you don’t give them an alternative of where to go instead. Since many Syrian refugees live in decaying buildings that Turks no longer want to inhabit, Syrians might not be able to afford housing anywhere else unless they receive additional support from the state. Syrians would have to leave their current workplaces and look for new jobs in new localities, which would negatively affect Syrians’ living conditions as well as the respective local economies and, as a result, increase rather than decrease social tensions with Turkish citizens.”

Puttmann also underlines that under these new measures, refugees would lose important social connections with local Turkish citizens that they may have built over time, especially for children at school who have been at the forefront of integration.

“Finally, it would fully ignore the rights of the refugees themselves. In a nutshell, the social problem Soylu is trying to address here is real; however, his proposed solutions are likely to hamper rather than fuel social integration and would violate refugees’ rights,” he said.

Basdas thinks that these latest measures create a false sense of migration management to ease public tensions and to intimidate refugees and migrants to better exploit their vulnerabilities.

“But they also must know that many people forcefully returned to their home countries return to Turkey through irregular routes and without access to registration they further deepen exploitations of the informal economy,” she said.

Under the new measures, taxi drivers have permission to ask clients for their official documents when they travel across different cities. There has been a public outcry recently with the release of videos of illegal migrants jumping from the trucks and mingling with local people in different cities.

“The authority given to taxi drivers to act as security forces to check documents is unacceptable. While we wish for freedom of mobility, the authorities cannot transfer the right to ensure ‘security’ to ordinary citizens. This would potentially have devastating results not only for refugees but also for all citizens of Turkey,” Basdas said.

The ban on visiting family in Syria over Eid has also been criticized by experts.

“The fact that Syrians may be able to safely go there for a few days does not imply that they would also be able to safely live there, which most of them still can’t due to the Assad regime. Instead of travel bans and demographic engineering, it would therefore be wiser to think about practically feasible policies that foster Syrians’ integration in the places where they are now by strengthening social ties with Turkish citizens and creating jobs for all,” Puttmann said.


Italy pledges cash to support Tunisia amid uncertainty

Italy pledges cash to support Tunisia amid uncertainty
Updated 21 March 2023

Italy pledges cash to support Tunisia amid uncertainty

Italy pledges cash to support Tunisia amid uncertainty
  • Rome pushing IMF to bail out Tunisia amid concerns over energy, migration
  • Italian government ‘in constant contact’ with Tunisian President Kais Saied

London: Italy will invest €110 million ($118.4 million) in Tunisia in a bid to shore up stability in the North African country, its foreign minister announced.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Council in Brussels, Antonio Tajani said the money would be transferred via the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation and that he hoped further funding would be approved by the International Monetary Fund.

Italy has been pushing the IMF to unblock a $1.9 billion loan to Tunisia over fears that it could be destabilized without financial assistance, with significant consequences for Italy’s energy supplies and the flow of migration to Europe.

“We are in constant contact with the Tunisian government,” Tajani said. “I hope that the IMF will reach an agreement with the Tunisian President Kais Saied to ensure stability.”

International opposition to bailing out Tunisia centers around fears that Saied, who has drawn ire over constitutional changes, crackdowns on political opponents and his recent rhetoric about sub-Saharan migrants in his country, cannot be trusted to agree to significant reforms, let alone enforce them.

“It is important that reforms are made because funding is linked to reforms, and to prevent (Islamist) terrorism from appearing in North Africa,” Tajani said. “The fundamental problem is that of stability in North Africa and Tunisia.”

Tunisia is vital to Italy’s energy security, as part of the route of the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline, which delivers gas to Italy and Central Europe from Algeria.

In 2022, the EU granted €300 million for the construction of an €850 million electricity interconnector project, ELMED, to link Italy to Tunisia’s growing solar farm industry.

Tunisia is also the staging post for significant numbers of migrants attempting to reach Europe via the Italian peninsula from North Africa.

Saied recently prompted a surge in sub-Saharan migrants leaving his country for Europe after accusing them of changing “the demographic composition” of Tunisia and alleging they were responsible for an uptick in crime.

This in turn has resulted in numerous people suffering violence or facing eviction and deciding to cross the Mediterranean.

Data from the Italian Ministry of the Interior indicates that crossings from Tunisia to Italy are up 788 percent from the same period last year, with 12,083 people landing on Italian shores from Jan. 1 to March 13 — a third of the total number who made the trip in 2022.

Laurence Hart, director of the International Organization for Migration’s Mediterranean coordination office, told Italian outlet Agenzia Nova that migrants who would once have found work in Tunisia were being lured to Europe by the country’s growing instability and hostility and by the promises of people-traffickers.

“Migrants leaving Tunisia come from very specific countries, which, looking at the statistics…are the Ivory Coast and Guinea. These are countries with which Tunisia has an agreement on visa-free arrivals,” he said. 

“On the one hand, this stimulates regular migration, because many sub-Saharan (Africans) are regularly employed in the various sectors of the Tunisian economy. On the other, it obviously leaves room for many intermediaries who play on the lack of information or on distorted information for their own personal gain.”


UAE president pardons more than 1,000 inmates ahead of Ramadan

UAE president pardons more than 1,000 inmates ahead of Ramadan
Updated 21 March 2023

UAE president pardons more than 1,000 inmates ahead of Ramadan

UAE president pardons more than 1,000 inmates ahead of Ramadan

ABU DHABI: UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has ordered the release of 1,025 prisoners serving various sentences in the UAE, ahead of Ramadan, state news agency WAM reported.

Sheikh Mohamed’s annual pardon ahead of Ramadan aims to “enhance family cohesion”, the report explained, adding that it created a happier environment for the wives and children of those released as well as enabling them to pursue successful social and professional lives in the future.

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Israel repeals law that banned four West Bank settlements

Israel repeals law that banned four West Bank settlements
Updated 21 March 2023

Israel repeals law that banned four West Bank settlements

Israel repeals law that banned four West Bank settlements
  • The original law, passed in 2005, mandated the evacuation of four Jewish settlements in the northern West Bank along with Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM: Israeli parliament on Tuesday repealed legislation that ordered the evacuation of four settlements in the occupied West Bank, one of the first major moves by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition.
The original law, passed in 2005, mandated the evacuation of four Jewish settlements in the northern West Bank along with Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip. The repeal would allow Jewish residents to return to these settlements on condition of approval by the Israeli military.
Since the 1967 war, Israel has established around 140 settlements on land Palestinians see as the core of a future state. Besides the authorized settlements, groups of settlers have built scores of outposts without government permission.
Most world powers deem settlements built in the territory Israel seized in the 1967 war as illegal under international law and their expansion as an obstacle to peace, since they eat away at land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Yuli Edelstein, head of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, hailed the move as “the first and significant step toward real repair and the establishment of Israel in the territories of the homeland that belongs to it.”

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Jordan says Israel disavows behavior of top minister over flag of expanded borders

Jordan says Israel disavows behavior of top minister over flag of expanded borders
Updated 21 March 2023

Jordan says Israel disavows behavior of top minister over flag of expanded borders

Jordan says Israel disavows behavior of top minister over flag of expanded borders
  • Inciteful rhetoric: The UAE also condemned finance minister Bezalel Smotrich’s statements

Jordan said it has received assurance from Israel that the behavior of a top cabinet minister, who spoke at a podium adorned with an Israeli flag that appeared to include Jordan, did not represent their position, an official source said on Tuesday.

The source told Reuters that top Israeli officials rejected Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s move during a speech on Monday, and said that they respected Jordan’s borders and Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan. Smotrich heads a religious-nationalist party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition.

The UAE on Tuesday condemned the finance minister’s statements as well as his use of a map of Israel that includes lands from Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territories.

In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation affirmed the UAE’s rejection of inciteful rhetoric and all practices that contradict moral and human values and principles, state news agency WAM reported.

The ministry stressed the need to confront hate speech and violence and noted the importance of promoting the values of tolerance and coexistence to reduce escalation and instability in the region, the report added.

The Arab League also condemned the Israeli minister's statements. The Assistant Secretary-General for Palestine to the Arab League, Saeed Abu Ali, said in a statement these statements by Smotrich represent a racist and colonial stance, and considered the statements a blatant threat to peace and security in the region.
The Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League stressed the need to be alert to the seriousness of these Israeli policies and the importance of confronting them with firm international stances and measures in support of the rights of the Palestinian people.
Amman late on Monday summoned the Israeli ambassador in Jordan and said Smotrich’s move was a provocative act by an “extremist” and “racist” minister that violated international norms and Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel.

“These statements are provocative, racist and come from an extremist figure and we call on the international community to condemn it,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said at a news conference.

Safadi received a call from Israel’s national security adviser, assuring him that Israel — which shares the longest border with its neighbor to the West of the Jordan River — respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, the source said.

Smotrich made the speech as Israeli and Palestinian officials met in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for de-escalation talks ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover holiday.


Arab League chief, Russian deputy FM discuss regional issues, Ukraine war

Arab League chief, Russian deputy FM discuss regional issues, Ukraine war
Updated 21 March 2023

Arab League chief, Russian deputy FM discuss regional issues, Ukraine war

Arab League chief, Russian deputy FM discuss regional issues, Ukraine war

CAIRO: Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Sunday expressed his concerns at mounting violence in the occupied Palestinian territories.

His comments regarding Israeli government actions came during a meeting in Cairo with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.

Their discussions also centered around other regional issues and Arab-Russian relations.

Aboul Gheit’s spokesman, Jamal Rushdi, said Bogdanov outlined Moscow’s stance on Syria, Yemen, Libya, and the economic and presidential vacancy crises in Lebanon. Iranian and Turkish policies toward the Arab region were also discussed.

Separately, during his assessment of an Arab strategic report by the Egyptian Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Aboul Gheit said the conflict in Ukraine and rivalries between the US and China were among the most alarming issues since the end of World War II.

“The Arabs are cautious in dealing with the Ukrainian crisis and its effects.

“All of this does not miss China, which is building a large naval power capable of competing with America in the Pacific Ocean and perhaps the world,” he added.