Taking a harder stance on migration, Turkey increases so-called voluntary returns
Taking a harder stance on migration, Turkey increases so-called voluntary returns
GAZİANTEP – On a Saturday morning this January, families lined up outside Gaziantep’s Geri Gönderme Merkezi, a removal center for non-citizens. Many of the people in line had come to visit relatives inside.
“My uncle is here,” said Halit, a Syrian living in Turkey who gave only his first name. “He wanted to go to Greece, but the police caught him and took him here. He has been detained for five months.”
“Another one of my uncles was also in the center and then he was deported to Syria,” Halit added.
Turkey currently operates 28 removal centers throughout the country. Partly financed by the European Union, they function as detention centers for migrants and refugees.
Inside, detainees undergo an expedited judicial process that rights groups claim lacks transparency and due process. These removal centers, along with increased ID checks in urban areas, are part of a tougher stance on migration in Turkey that has raised deportation rates for irregular migrants and so-called ‘voluntary return’ rates for Syrians in recent years.
From June 2023-June 2024, Turkey deported 141,187 migrants, up from about 120,000 in 2022. In the same timeframe, more than 100,000 Syrians were repatriated to Syria through voluntary returns, raising the total number to about 660,000 since 2016, according to Interior Min. Ali Yerlikaya.
Meanwhile, the number of Syrian refugees with temporary protection permits in Turkey has decreased from 3,737,369 in 2020 to 3,095,039 in September 2024, according to the latest official data from the Interior Ministry’s Presidency of Migration Management (Göç İdaresi).
Although there are many reasons behind this decrease, anti-refugee rhetoric in Turkey often promotes deportations to Syria, which have increased since the February 2023 earthquakes and the May 2023 general elections, according to all the interviewees for this report.
Deportation basics
Many non-citizens are detained either while crossing a border or due to their participation in a police-involved incident, such as a car accident.
The latter was the case for the father of a young Syrian requesting not to be identified at the Gaziantep removal center.
“[My father] was involved in a car accident and, for this reason, he was arrested and taken to the removal center,” the source said. “To pay for a lawyer, we have sold our car, but we have no information about what will happen to him. We are worried that he will be deported to Syria.”
Another reason Syrians end up in removal centers are public complaints, often lodged by neighbors or workers who allege refugees are conducting disruptive or illegal activities without providing evidence for their claims.
Once in the removal centers, detainees may have limited access to communication, including with lawyers and consular staff from their respective embassies.
A western diplomat told Turkey recap they have had difficulty contacting detained nationals in Turkish removal centers in several cases, defining the centers as “black boxes” that are at times “beyond our reach.”
While Turkey’s Regulation on Arrest, Detention and Statement Taking (Yakalama, Gözaltına Alma ve İfade Alma Yönetmeliği) obliges authorities to notify the relatives of detained Turkish citizens, this does not apply to foreigners who are detained.
The communication constraints are especially concerning, as detainees have seven days to open legal procedures if they want to challenge a potential deportation order, according to Ayşegül Karpuz, a Turkish lawyer specializing in migration cases.
“The problem is that it is like a prison,” Karpuz said. ”The options for contacting lawyers are limited.”
Migration authorities inside the centers most often offer two options to Syrian detainees: voluntary return to Syria or transfer to a third country where Syrians can enter without a visa, such as the Dominican Republic or Haiti.
“I don't know of any case [involving] a person sent to a third country, but it is the legal way to justify that there are options beyond deportation,” Karpuz said, adding the aim is to put pressure on the person to return to Syria, as there can be no legal deportation.
Turkey's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and its ratification of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Convention against Torture and the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, oblige Turkey to respect the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits states from sending people to places that are not considered safe.
Syria is not considered a safe country according to reports by the UN and Amnesty International.
Collecting signatures
Former detainees interviewed by rights groups and by Turkey recap have claimed authorities in removal centers routinely force Syrian detainees to sign voluntary return documents.
Ghazi, a Syrian citizen who was detained while crossing the Turkey-Greece border, said he was asked to sign such papers, but refused to do so as the document text was not made visible to him. He had also been warned not to sign anything by other detainees.
“They made us stand in a queue. There were six officials in the room and they had a piece of paper ready for us to sign. On top of the paper, there was another document covering the information,” Ghazi said.
“When I asked for information, they started shouting at me, grabbed me by the neck and shook me. They threatened to take me to the basement and sign it there,” Ghazi added.
Such practices are not isolated incidents, as detailed in a 2022 HRW report, which states many detainees “say they saw Turkish officials beating other men who had initially refused to sign and felt they had no choice.”
The same report found that all interviewees were forced to sign documents and that the officers did not allow them to read the forms or give them information about the documents. Some of the respondents also said officers covered parts of the documents with their hands.
Most people quoted in the HRW report suggested the procedures in the removal centers followed the same patterns with Syrian detainees.
Deportation process
Many deportations and voluntary returns are facilitated through the Öncüpınar border crossing in Kilis, just south of Gaziantep. A kiosk operator at the crossing told Turkey recap seven to eight buses filled with deportees – most often men – cross the border daily. Sometimes, 20 to 30 “deportation buses” can pass in one day.
Deportations are also facilitated through the Cilvegözü crossing in Reyhanlı, Hatay, according to workers near that border gate.
Emin has been deported to Syria from Turkey twice. As a Syrian living in Turkey, he said he was detained the first time because he didn’t have a temporary protection permit.
“We were never informed that we would be deported,” Emin told Turkey recap, withholding his last name. “They took us to the removal center in İskenderun and pressured us to sign a paper.”
Emin said he was told he’d be imprisoned for more than a year if he did not sign the paper, so he eventually followed the orders of migration authorities.
“After forcing us to sign, they deported us. They took our passports and left us at the border,” Emin added.
The second time, Emin was deported from the Gaziantep removal center. Given his prior experience, he refused to sign and then authorities threatened to deport him anyways.
A week later, without having signed the documents, Emin said he was placed on a bus and taken to the border. Similar reports of authorities sidestepping the required legal formalities and due process have raised concerns among migration experts, including lawyer Ayşegül Karpuz.
“At the legal level, during the process there should be a witness who is part of an independent NGO that controls the process. We know that this does not exist,” Karpuz said.
“There are no United Nations people monitoring [the process]. There are some members of the Turkish Red Crescent, but the independence of the organization is not sufficient,” Karpus added.
The Turkey branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Göç İdaresi did not respond to requests for comment for this report. The Turkish Red Crescent (Türk Kızılay) asked us to direct our request for comment to Göç İdaresi.
Recent updates
In more recent months, Turkish authorities in removal centers have begun using video recordings of detainees as additional documentation of their consent and agreement to voluntarily return to Syria.
“In these videos, [detainees] have to say that they are going back to Syria voluntarily,” said Mustafa Karalı, a Syrian photojournalist who monitors migration cases for non-profit organizations.
Karalı told Turkey recap such video recordings were used in two case interviews he conducted with Syrian nationals deported from Turkey this summer.
Over the same period, the Interior Ministry has increased the number of “Mobile Migration Point Vehicles”, or vans that conduct identification check points in urban areas. Such operations are commonly seen in busy public squares or public transport stations, such as Aksaray in İstanbul.
“This makes deportation quicker and more practical,” Karalı said. “The police stop Syrian people. If you have any administrative irregularities, they force you to sign and deport you directly.”
The vans were first introduced in İstanbul, and have since expanded to 30 other urban areas such as Gaziantep and Hatay.
For more than a year, police officers have also conducted annual checks on non-citizens’ homes. This entails a small number of officers visitng the registered addresses of non-citizens to confirm they inhabit the premises.
“They go to people's homes under the pretext of updating statistics, but the IDs of people who are not home get canceled,” migration researchers told Turkey recap, requesting anonymity.
The sources said that if a non-citizen is not at their registered address when authorities conduct such checks, the officers file a report stating the individual could not be found and his or her Turkish identification card (or kimlik) is canceled.
Non-citizens must then re-register for their kimlik cards and the problems in the bureaucratic process can result in deportation, migration researchers told Turkey recap.
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