By Eslam Abdelmagid Eid
Since the outbreak of the protest in Syria in April 2011 (Arab Spring), and the increase in violence against the demonstrators, a first batch of 252 Syrian refugees arrived in Turkey.
Currently, the conflict is still raging in Syria, without a foresee settlement in the short term, especially in light of the clear polarization between the international and regional powers regarding the mechanisms of settling the crisis, also due to the Russian military intervention, supporting the regime of President “Bashar Al-Assad”, which has turned the balance of the forces on the Syrian arena. These deteriorating conditions have led to a continued high rates of flows of Syrian refugees to the neighboring countries, and especially Turkey.
In the beginning, the Syrian refugees entered to Turkey without a visa, in the frame of the so-called “open door” policy. President Erdogan said that Syrians would have been welcome in Turkey by any means, and the Turkish government announced, in October 2011, that it would have guaranteed refugees with a temporary protection card.
However, Ankara soon started changing its policies in support of refugees, despite the gains Turkey was making by using this issue to pressure the Europeans for financial support. So it recently took decisions to restrict refugees asylum,with also forced deportation, mainly after the noticeable decline of the ruling Justice and Development Party in the last municipal elections, in the big cities and especially in Istanbul.
In the last century, Turkey had witnessed large mass migrations, including the arrival of 350,000 Greek Muslims in 1923, following a population exchange agreement between Greece and Turkey, and it also received 340,000 people of Turkish ethnicity who had been expelled from Bulgaria in 1989, in addition to those coming from the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, bringing the total number of immigrants to Turkey from 1923 to 1990 to 1.4 million people.
Nevertheless, the influx of Syrian refugees is completely different from previous migrations of the last century, with reference to the number and ethnic origin. Over a period of less than eight years, the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey was estimated in about 4 million people, equivalent to the 64% of the total number of Syrian refugees in the world. The migrations of the last century were of people belonging to the Turkish ethnicity , which facilitated their assimilation into the crucible of Turkish society.
In addition to the difficulty of integrating Syrians into Turkish society, the country is currently witnessing an economic crisis, an unprecedented decline in the value of the Turkish lira, an unemployment crisis, with an increase in the labour market of the number of cheap Syrian workers. The spread of the Corona virus in the recent period has worsened the situation. This and more has become a heavy burden that haunts decision-makers in Ankara.
We will go through this topic to find clear answers to important questions such:
What were the reasons that led President Erdogan to adopt the open-door policy? How President Erdogan exploited the Syrian refugee issue? What are the reasons that prompted Ankara to adopt a different policy in dealing with Syrian refugees? What is the European Union’s position on Ankara’s escalation of the Syrian refugee issue? What is the fate of the Syrian refugees after the last municipal elections in the country? What are the Turkish steps towards achieving the process of societal assimilation of Syrian refugees within Turkish society?
The steps that have formed the Turkish position on the issue of Syrian refugees
At the beginning Ankara saw the opportunity to overthrow one of the regimes hostile to the Turkish project, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, thinking that the fall of the regime in Syria was only a matter of time, as happened in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. So Turkey immediately began facilitating the entry of refugees to Turkey with the so-called policy of the open door.
But, over the time, the Russian intervention to support the Syrian regime in 2015, in addition to Iranian support, shattered Erdogan’s hopes for the fall of Bashar Al-Assad. Indeed the regime and its allies now have a most favorable balance in the country. So Erdogan began to to redo his calculations. The huge number of refugees has become almost impossible to manage. Hence, in conjunction with the economic crisis and the decline in the popularity of the Justice and Development Party in the country, the Turkish policy towards refugees has changed, with harassment and deportation of many of them.
Open Door Policy
Ankara has adopted an open-door policy since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011, but this did not hide the Turkish ambitions that were behind this decision, and the attempt to benefit from the difficult situation that the neighbor Syria was going through. So the principle announced by Turkey was based on several motives, including:
1- To make political pressure on the Europeans through the Syrian refugee card:
The first signs of the Turkish blackmail to Europeans began with the retreat of Turkey’s allies and their repeated losses on Syrian soil, until Turkey reached in 2016 an agreement with the European Union regarding the status of refugees and European aid. With the increasing internal crises in Turkey and the intense popular pressure opposing the presence of refugees, President Erdogan appeared in a difficult position.
So he turned again to use the refugee card to threaten the Europeans. Erdogan announced, in conjunction with the 2019 Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria, called “Peace Spring” and condemned by European Union, that
there are millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey
and Turkey could open its doors to the Syrian refugees directed towards Europe, in an explicit and clear threat. Erdogan, in his agreement with the European Union, struck a wall wide open, but Ankara was not satisfied by only the amount of money received. Therefore it worked to exploit such a card to blackmail Greece as well, in the ongoing conflict between the two sides over the Mediterranean gas and Greece’s alliance with Turkey’s opponents (Egypt and Cyprus). So Ankara has allowed hundreds of refugees to go to the Greek and Bulgarian borders. Indeed Erdogan ordered his police forces (Gendarmas) and Turkish border guards in the border state of Edirne, and on the shores of the Aegean Sea, to mobilize thousands of immigrants, and to drove them in small boats towards Greece.
The number of refugees who crossed the borders into Europe reached about 18,000, which angered Athens, that in turn confirmed that it would not allow immigrants to enter it and would not be subject to the continuous Turkish blackmail.
2- Earning the internal sympathy and promoting the policies of the Justice and Development Party abroad:
Erdogan sought to pursue an open-door policy at the beginning, for taking advantage of the refugee issue with the acquisition of great popular sympathy in Turkey, and in political Islam currents. Even nationalist currents supported him in this regard, as they did not object to taking such measures, given that the political exploitation of this issue will greatly help to consolidate Turkey as a major regional player in the region, taking also in account the expectations about the fall of Assad.
Erdogan also wanted to exploit the issue to promote his policies abroad, by playing on the strings of the historical religious dimension of the former Ottoman state, and relying on his arms abroad, led by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world, to obtain regional popular support, trying to project the image of the conflict in Syria into a sectarian picture. Also this policy had the aim to win the sympathy of the Sunni majority in the region, and thus to pave the way for the Turkish presence in Syria by gaining great Arab and Islamic sympathy through Turkey’s embrace of the largest percentage of refugees in the world, exploiting the human dimension of the issue.
3- Naturalization of refugees to support the party in the upcoming elections:
The Turkish Citizenship Law provides that foreign nationals who have lived in the country for five years are allowed to apply for citizenship. It is worth noting that the arrival of the first wave of refugees took place in April 2011, and thus some immigrants have already completed the time period required for the naturalization process. Consequently, about 2.5 million Syrians may obtain citizenship within the next five years if the government expresses the political will to naturalize them. Given their potential gratitude for President Erdoan’s role in providing them with refuge and opening the way for them to obtain citizenship, it is expected that most of these potential new citizens will vote for Erdogan’s “Justice and Development Party”.
While it is unlikely that all refugees will be granted citizenship immediately, opening the door to naturalization could actually alter the influence of the AKP vis-à-vis the three opposition parties: the left-leaning Republican People’s Party, the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party, and the pro-Kurdish “Democratic People’s Party”.
The policy of harassment and forced deportation
Due the raising calls from the Turkish public opinion for the deportation of refugees, the shrinking of the l space controlled by Turkey’s allies in Syria, and the successive victories of the regime and its major ally Russia, Erdogan and his ruling party began to change their policy of welcoming refugees. Erdogan declared in July 2019 that his government would take several measures to encourage Syrians to return to their country. In this context, he pointed out that the free medical services provided to them will be canceled, and a tariff will be imposed to cover the costs of hospital services. In addition, a forced deportation would be foresee for the perpetrators of crimes.
Therefore it is clear that the refugee issue has become a heavy burden for the Turkish government for several reasons, among them:
1 – The exploiting by the political opposition of to popular anger towards the refugee
The Turkish opposition forces saw the Syrian refugees file as a trump card to gain the confidence of the Turkish public opinion to put pressure on Turkish President “Recep Tayyip Erdogan” and his party that has ruled Turkey for 18 years. The success of these campaign led to some ruling party candidates making pledges to the voters to return the Syrian refugees to their country as soon as possible.
The opposition accused the Justice and Development Party government of working to change the ideological and demographic composition of the Turkish people, based also on the participation of a number of Syrian refugees in promotional campaigns for the candidates of the Justice and Development Party for the municipal elections.
This aroused the ire of the Turkish nationalists and secularists, that accused Erdogan, and the Justice and Development Party, to work in the future for employing them to achieve special party gains. The result was a remarkable decline in the popularity and loss of the ruling Justice and Development Party. In a number of large cities, led by Istanbul, and the victory of the opposition candidate, specifically from the Republican People’s Party, “Akram Imamoglu”, over the ruling party’s candidate, “Ben Ali Yildirim,” despite the re-election, on the pretext of questioning the integrity of the first elections on the part of President Erdogan and his party.
2- Change the demographic composition and the Turkish national identity
The majority of the Syrian refugees are generally concentrated in South Turkey , in addition to the major Turkish cities in the north.The concentration of Syrian refugees in the south has upended the demographic balance in several governorates. According to the General Directorate of Migration Management in the Ministry of Interior, the five border provinces of Kilis, Hatay, Mardin, Sanliurfa and Gaziantep received more than half of the refugees.
The pre-war population of Kilis (130,000) has doubled over the past few years, and its Arab population has witnessed a steady increase. During the 1960 census, the percentage of Kilis’ residents who declared their mother tongue Arabic was less than 1 percent. That percentage is now 49.2%. In Hatay Governorate, the influx of refugees increased the Arab population from 34 percent to 47 percent.
The Hatay situation also highlights the sectarian impact of the war, as the refugees are almost exclusively Sunni Arabs. In the past, most of the Arabs in Hatay belonged to the Muslim Alawite sect (to which the Assad regime in Syria belongs), but today they are divided almost evenly between Sunnis and Alawites, and the cities of Mardin and Sanliurfa did not differ much, as the two cities are known by their majority Kurdish and the form of increasing numbers. The Syrian Arab refugees are experiencing a demographic and ethnic change as well. In Mardin, the percentage of Arabs increased from 21 to 29 percent, and in Sanliurfa from 13 to 28 percent.
In the big cities are settled a quarter of the refugees. Istanbul currently hosts about 360,000 Syrians, or 2.4 percent of the city’s population. Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, hosts just over 83,000 refugees, or about 2 percent of its population. While medium-sized cities such as Bursa, Konya and Kayseri hold tens of thousands of Syrians, indicating that refugees are also spreading across western and central Anatolia.
3- The current economic crisis in Turkey
The economic deterioration in the country and the sharp decline of the Turkish lira, in addition to other reasons, on top of which is unemployment, due also to the cheap salary of Syrian refugees workers, that sometimes take the job of Turkish citizens, Erdogan, and his party, did not hesitate to exploit this point to try to gain the confidence of the street again.
After the severe shock to the ruling party regarding its first position on the refugees issue, Erdogan and his party blamed the refugees for the deterioration and stagnation of the Turkish economy and the decline in the value of the Turkish lira, due to the increase in the number of Syrian refugees , which negatively affected the labor market and caused pressure on public goods and services, such as transportation, education and hospitals. Turks in general have started pointing fingers at low-paid Syrian workers, considering it one of the reasons that led to the increasing unemployment crisis, as some private sector owners tend to employ Syrians who do not have official work permits, because of their low wages.
In addition, despite the crisis, some Syrians managed to get high-paying jobs and some of them investing their money in companies and businesses. A report issued by the Syrian Economic Forum stated that since 2011, Turkey has witnessed the registration of more than 6,500 companies and economic activities established or contributed to by the Syrians, which also contradicts Turkish claims.
The future of Syrian refugees in Turkey
There is no doubt that the future of the refugees is still ambiguous, like the fate of the entire Syrian crisis, and its political and military adornments. But some indicators still appear on the scene from time to time that we can rely on to determine or at least predict the fate of the Syrian refugees in Turkey through two main pillars.
1- The impact of the last municipal elections on the refugee situation
During the election campaign for the candidates of the competing parties, whether the opposition or the Justice and Development Party, the refugee issue won a large and important part of their electoral rhetoric. Despite the slight relative difference in the intensity of the propaganda directed by the two sides towards the refugees, they agreed to tighten the screws on Syrian refugees.
The sympathy of the voters, despite the ruling party’s initial exploitation of the humanitarian and moral character of this issue to obtain international financial and political support related to Turkey’s military operations in Syria, and on the other hand it receives the satisfaction of its followers at home and abroad from the religious currents that consider it the first defender of Islam and Muslim issues.
But unusually, the Justice and Development Party candidate in Istanbul, Ben Ali Yildirim, tweeted, saying, “If there are Syrians affecting the stability of Istanbul or forming a security problem or adversely affecting normal life, we will not leave that without ‘measures’, We will not tolerate that, and we will return them, because the important is the stability of Istanbul residents. ”
In contradiction to the previous speech, which was supportive and sympathetic to the refugee issue to the extent that the party described the relationship between the Turks and the Syrian refugees, the relationship of migrants with the supporters during the Muhammadiyah migration, which was just empty propaganda used by Erdogan and his party’s media.
The position of the opposition did not differ from the position of the ruling party. Rather, it was also strongly worded towards this issue to exploit the great anger of the Turkish citizens towards the Syrians. In front of the voters, “We intend to return all the Syrian brothers to their homeland, and I am sorry for that. Every person must return to the country in which he was born.”
In the end, the municipal elections witnessed a defeat for the ruling party in the big cities, including Istanbul, Ankara, Adana and Mersin, and the success of the opposition, which was characterized by the sharpness of the rhetoric directed towards the Syrian refugees. This definitely changed the relationship with refugees, specifically in Istanbul, with the Republican People’s Party and its candidate, Akram Imamoglu. In Istanbul there are about a quarter of the total number of Syrian refugees in Turkey.
After the elections, a massive security campaign, and deportation, quickly started against the Syrians who hold the” Temporary Protection Card “(Kimlik) issued from a state other than Istanbul, and against those without the card. A number of them returned t to Syria, which was supported by Imamoglu, who said in a press interview that “sending people who are not registered in Istanbul to the rest of the cities, is a necessary measure because we cannot bear all this burden”, wondering at the same time why these measures were not taken from the beginning.
It is worth noting that the elections were local municipal elections, related to the service side only, and had nothing to do with the authority, or political decision issued directly by the president, and did not affect the border municipalities in which the presence of Syrians is frequent. But despite this, the elections represent ed a severe pressure factor on the current Turkish government , due to the noticeable decline of the ruling party in the big cities. Dealing with the refugee issue will be the first step through which the ruling party will try to restore the confidence of the street, especially as the opposition will also seek to exploit the gains it made during these elections to pressure the government to deport the refugees.
2- Fate of the agreement with the European Union
Since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis and until now, Erdogan is using the refugee card to pressure the Europeans. In November 2016, he threatened to open the borders to Syrian immigrants wishing to go to Europe, after the vote of the European Parliament in favor of freezing Turkey’s accession negotiations to the European Union. Then Erdogan reached an agreement with the European Union stipulating that Ankara should keep the migrants in Turkey and stop the flow of migrants at the borders of the Union in exchange for financial aid of billions of euros.
But Erdogan returned again to use this paper against the Europeans in order to obtain more aid, and to obtain some other benefits, such as facilitating the Turks to obtain entry visas to the European Union and trying to hold negotiations to sign a customs agreement between the two parties, in addition to easing European objections to Erdogan’s policies in the region.
So, the fate of the agreement with the European Union is still murky, but current indications suggest the possibility of Erdogan’s success in obtaining more concessions from the Europeans for several reasons, including:
1- The issue of immigration and asylum is highly sensitive to the European Union, given the stormy changes caused by the first wave of refugees from Turkey to Europe in 2015-2016 in the European political scene, fueling populist anti-immigrants and raising the popularity of extreme right-wing parties. One of the factors that fueled the British withdrawal from the European Union.
2- The European Union does not want to appear as suppressing the refugees flowing to its borders, due to its desire to preserve its humanitarian image in front of the international community, and to preserve the credibility of its objectives in one way or another.
3- The European Union may be forced to return to the dialogue table with the Turks, to relieve pressure on Greece, one of the member states of the Union, which Ankara has allowed the influx of refugees to its borders recently, which Greece will not be able to bear the consequences, due to the economic crisis afflicting the country, worsened from the Corona virus, as in the European Union in general.
Concluding remarks
1- Turkey’s position on the Syrian refugee issue does not follow a single and permanent pattern. The only constant of Turkish policy in this regard was the exploiting of the issue at various intervals in different ways. At the beginning it announced its adoption of the “open door” policy. Later it began to follow a strict policy in dealing with this issue.
2- The result of the last municipal elections does not actually have the necessary volume of powers to change, or at least affect, the country’s policy towards refugees, but it can be considered an early warning bell for Erdogan due to the loss of his party in the major cities of Turkey, which may push his government to more strict decisions in dealing with Syrian refugees, with signs that are already happening now.
3- Turkish pressure on the European Union with the Syrian refugee dossier succeeded previously, and is likely to succeed in the coming period due to many factors, including:
A- Europeans are very dread of the continued rise of the extreme right-wing movement in the Union, which may adopts a racist and hostile stance to receive refugees.
B – The Europeans’ great obsession with shaking the image and credibility of the Union in front of the international community, as the continued intransigence of the Union in not receiving refugees could lead to a weapon that Erdogan could use to embarrass the Europeans in front of the international community.
C-The inability of the European Union at the present time to finance the economically collapsing Greece in order to provide it with aid to support the migrants, which Erdogan push on the Greek borders, due to the global economic crisis resulting from the repercussions of the Corona pandemic.
4- There is no doubt that the biggest losers among the parties to the crisis in general are the Syrian refugees, because they have become just a card in the hands of Ankara to move it wherever it wants to achieve its interests, even at the expense of the suffering of the refugees, whether to gain financial or political support from the Europeans, or to try to gain the confidence of the street. Once again, it is not ruled out that they will be a scapegoat if popular pressure continues on Erdogan, or if an agreement is not reached with the European Union.
Author: Eslam Abdelmagid Eid
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)