NEWS CENTER – According to the data released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of forcibly displaced people in the world has exceeded 100 million. This figure is the highest since the Second World War.
The number of refugees who settled in Turkey with the Syrian war is close to 5 million. This number and the Turkish state, which has been living with refugees for 10 years, were dragged into the days when hate speech against asylum seekers increased from time to time. In fact, while the formations such as the Victory Party, which has only established its policy on this, have come to the fore, on the other hand, there are also results such as attacks, hate crimes and even the ‘normalization’ of racist discourse. The wrong policies of the AKP and MHP governments also allow these discourses to be accepted by wider segments.
Answering the questions of the ANF on the occasion of 20 June World Refugee Day, HDP Migrants and Refugees Commission Co-spokesperson Gülsüm Ağaoğlu made assessments about the racism emerging from Turkey’s refugee policies.
There is a serious racist and chauvinistic attitude towards refugees. In particular, the Victory Party seems to come to the fore in this sense. There is also an xenophobia that is kneaded with this nationalism and expanded even more. What kind of danger does this pose for people who become refugees?
Until the Victory Party came out, Turkey had already mixed it with a monist ideology that did not want to see them against the “others” and denied their existence. This is the ideology of the Republic of Turkey; namely monism. In that sense, everything that is useful for this monism is useful material for them, and hate speech is derived from this material. The emergence of the Victory Party turned into something like another version of the AKP here. In fact, we witnessed similar examples in the protests of the so-called social democratic parties, namely the CHP’s Bolu mayor, regarding refugees. In other words, it should not be interpreted as just the Victory Party and the exit of Ümit Özdağ.
There is already a suitable ground for this situation in Turkey. There is an incredible intolerance towards those who are not like him, who are not like him, who do not think. As in the case of Ümit Özdağ, this is the only thing, perhaps the only political discourse, at the center of his politics. I mean, it finds ground for itself here. But today, the refugee issue arises at all party bases, even at our party’s base, due to different reasons.
On the other hand, the same nationalist outcry began to rise in the world. Especially in Europe, there is an anti-immigrant/refugee dichotomy. In fact, EU policies have already covered the continent with a steel wall against those coming from the Syrian war. When we look at it in this sense, what do the conditions of being a refugee correspond to under current conditions?
First of all, immigration is a consequence. Due to wars, civil wars, sometimes epidemics, natural disasters, but mainly because of war, people have to give up their places of residence, their belongings or common memories and take shelter in another country. No one wants to leave their home, the city they live in, out of the blue. In the 1990s, in the practices against Kurds in Turkey, people left their places of residence and migrated to big cities. Therefore, as long as the wars and the many reasons we have mentioned continue, as in the last example of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, refugees will continue. In this respect, we argue that war is the most important cause of refugees and that it is necessary to abandon wars and move to peaceful policies. And that’s why we consider it the problem that creates the refugee, not the “refugee”. Otherwise, the problem is not immigration, but the wars that created it.
Of course, the rise of right-wing parties is also visible in Europe. Le Pen’s appearance in the elections in France, Germany is preparing relatively suitable political grounds for it. Turkey’s policy, on the other hand, is a practice of fascism. In fact, the AKP, that is, the palace government, supported the war in 2011, assuming that the regime in Syria would change and Assad would fall. He even had a big political dream about it. He supported the Muslim Brotherhood as it would go to a similar political power change.
It didn’t work, then Turkey started to calculate how to turn the refugees who had to migrate into a useful material. It started to use it as a more prominent threat against Europe from time to time, and it succeeded in this. In Europe, he ignored these policies, saying, “Please let the refugees stay inside Turkey and not reach me”.
Merkel even called the Antep and Nizip camp, which we went to at that time, “this is an exemplary camp”. We call that camp a concentration camp. When we went, those camps were not subject to civilian control in any way, they were only seen by parliamentarians from Europe. Later, we saw in the reports of the medical chambers that he was allowed to enter there, an epidemic that threatened public health in places, bad conditions and many things that were reflected in the camps afterwards. While we had access to this information, Merkel was telling here as an exemplary camp worldwide.
Everyone knows that Turkey’s practices towards refugees stem from the EU’s two-sided stance, which is ignored. Nowadays, the EU is transferring money to Turkey again in a new application. We do not know how and in what way these funds are used for the benefit of refugees. That’s why it’s not transparent. The EU does not accept refugees, and in order not to receive them, it transfers money at the expense of their stay in Turkey. In summary, being a refugee corresponds to a situation that is caught between these policies.
When we look at it from one side, as you mentioned, there is an extremely intertwined policy of both domestic and foreign actors in this issue. Well, if we go back to the practices in Turkey in the last period; Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced that a residence limit has been imposed on foreigners as part of the “dilution” project in 1,200 neighborhoods. This is likely to increase. There is also a project to send to Syria; What are the results of these practices?
While Turkey was saying “We will not send refugees back, they will go voluntarily”, we also knew that it was doing this. They will resettle one and a half million refugees in areas of their own choosing where the jihadists live. As a matter of fact, there is such a political decision in the background of the intervention in Syria. They’re also going to build a kind of ghetto there.
Before the Istanbul elections, Binali Yıldırım once said on state television that we will create a “safe zone” along the border where we will settle refugees. However, since we are a party to international agreements, no refugee can be stationed near the borders of the country from which they have to leave for security reasons.
Now, in this new application, they are going to an arrangement where the temporary admission of those who are not included in the temporary admission agreement will not be made, they will be kept in conditions that we will call “concentration camp” until that is done, and their relations with the outside will be cut off. In other words, we know more or less how long this will last, that is, how long they will stay in those camps, how it will last, what the conditions of those camps will be. Earlier practices were in such bad conditions as a concentration camp. The people living there, especially children and women, were forced into prostitution. With the initiative of the camp administrators there. We are worried that all this will happen again.
It is also said that they will implement a policy of thinning so that the refugees do not exceed the local population, and that they will not even be admitted to places where they find that this is the case. Their statements are in this direction, but we know what the demographic change they have continued in the background of these statements. For example, we learned that in Maraş, Alevis are trying to settle refugees in areas where they live intensely.
While refugee policies continued in this direction, an operation was carried out against GÖÇİZDER, such as pressure, arrest and counting his work as a “crime”. How do you evaluate this edition?
GÖÇİZDER is an institution where we also do joint work and make statements. First of all, it is an association that keeps the documents of those who were forced to migrate within the borders of the Turkish state. The fact that the majority of these documents are related to the Kurds, and that they report the violations of human and life rights experienced by the Kurds, of course, was the main reason for the approach towards this association. We also know that there is a lot of hostility towards Kurds, from singing songs in Kurdish to banning Kurdish plays.
Finally, 20 June is World Refugee Day. What would you say in terms of reminding HDP’s program on this issue, especially for Turkey?
First of all, the “geographical reservation” in the refugee convention to which Turkey is a party should be removed. This is a geography where people coming from the east are not accepted as refugees and only those coming from the west are called refugees. Making necessary practices to ensure the constitutionally guaranteed basis of “equal citizenship”; For those who have declared their will to return, the conditions for their return must be met. The safety and conditions of returnees must also be supervised by civilian inspectors. Or, providing the conditions for those who live here and who decide to live together in harmony. In other words, the state must have an integration policy. This policy also includes the personal history of the persons,
Refugees in Turkey are subject to more specific rights violations, including refugee women and refugee children. They should be arranged according to their originality.
One of the most important is that refugees are working in Turkey in cheap and cheap conditions. Subject to this, they come face to face with the Turkish poor in the labor market. Because of this, even our base says “it eats my bread”. And we say: They are not eating your bread. The state makes them work under the conditions of both the poor and the poor. The way out of here is together, a common struggle.
