The economic crisis and xenophobic statements from media and political parties – mostly with ties to the opposition – have fueled anti-immigrant sentiment in Turkey. With an eye on next March’s local elections that will clarify control of key cities like Istanbul and Ankara, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s new executive director has tightened immigration controls and carried out mass arrests in which tens of thousands of foreigners have been captured and deported. According to lawyers and activists, these operations violate the most basic rights.
“We’re scared. Many of us are stuck at home, but to pay the rent you have to go out and fight for it. The problem is that when you leave your home, you don’t know if you’ll come back,” says one Nigerian pastor who asks that his name be withheld due to the sensitivity of the situation. Most of his compatriots in Turkey, he explains, are dedicated to buying consumer goods that they send to their country for resale, but every time they go on The markets go, they risk being stopped at the new mobile police checkpoints set up as part of the plan against them. The new Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya’s irregular immigration was launched in Istanbul this summer and will be expanded to other major cities in Turkey.” “There are checks in the markets, at bus stops, in the subway. And the arrests are massive. There are many Nigerians in deportation camps. Many of them had a residence permit but could not extend it or it was not approved,” he says Pastor.
According to the Interior Ministry, more than 112,000 undocumented foreigners have been detained since mid-June, and around 48,000 of them have already been deported. Lawyers and activists interviewed emphasize that those detained include asylum seekers, people in the process of renewing their residence permits and even people with proper documents. In addition to those deported, scores of foreigners have left Turkey in recent months amid increasing hurdles to renewing their papers. “As a result of our comprehensive controls, and this is very good news, 120,531 foreigners whose visas or residence permits had expired left our country even though they knew that we would arrest them,” Yerlikaya congratulated on October 12.
“These operations to combat irregular migration focus on effective detention in the country and the establishment of an efficient and flexible deportation mechanism,” a Turkish Interior Ministry source tells this newspaper. The aim is to “reduce the pressure of irregular migration” and “create a deterrent effect”.
According to official statistics, 1.13 million foreigners with a residence permit live in Turkey, which is 225,000 fewer than at the beginning of the year. The number of people under international protection (Iraqis, Afghans, Ukrainians) has also fallen by almost 20,000 people to 287,000, and the number of Syrian refugees – who have special status – has increased from 3.74 million to 3.25 in just a year and a half sunk.
“What happened to half a million missing Syrians?” asks Syrian-Turkish activist Taha Elgazi. The answer, he affirms, is that some are still in the country but without papers, others have emigrated irregularly to Europe and others have returned to Syria “due to circumstances” and “under pressure from the government”, such as this Ban on settling in certain districts or provinces. “Recently, discrimination and racism, particularly against Syrians, have increased significantly. There were also violent attacks and people became afraid,” he complains.
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More than 50 Latin Americans arrested or deported
“It’s crazy,” complains a Latin American diplomat. According to data collected by this newspaper through diplomatic sources, there are more than fifty citizens of Latin American countries who have been arrested and deported – or are in the process of being deported – including several Venezuelan students receiving scholarships from the Turkish Ministry of Education. who were expelled despite their embassy’s attempts to prevent this. “Recently, the father-in-law of one of our citizens was arrested and deported. “In the end he decided to leave the country because he was afraid they would arrest him too,” explains another diplomat. The most famous case was that of two Moroccan tourists who were legally residing in Turkey and were deported to an area in northern Syria after their arrest last August because Turkish authorities believed they came from that country.
“The Turkish Interior Minister has clearly stated that he intends for Turkey to stop being a transit country [para los migrantes] because that also makes it a target country,” explains the Ambassador of the European Union in Ankara, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, in an interview with EL PAÍS, in which he explains that contacts are being maintained with the Turkish authorities in order to “update this “. Anti-immigration agreement of 2016.
This pact, which made Ankara the guardian of the EU’s southeastern border, led to a decrease in the arrival of migrants and refugees from that country to European territory and routes were redirected towards the central Mediterranean. This also makes Turkey the country in the world that receives the most refugees (3.5 million), although the number of foreigners barely exceeds 7% of the country’s population, even taking into account an estimated two million migrants in an irregular situation .
Nevertheless, migration has occupied much of the public debate in Turkey in recent years, in an environment of growing xenophobia, fueled in the press by articles blaming foreigners for economic problems, the rise of online scams or blamed on rising property prices (despite the fact that foreigners only make up between 3% and 4% of buyers, compared to more than 15% in Spain).
Rosa Martínez and her boyfriend Adrián Cuadrado had their documents in order. Both – whose names have been changed for fear of reprisals – came to Turkey from Cuba four years ago to “work and have a quiet and comfortable family.” “We got into debt when we left Cuba and here we work in beauty clinics [la floreciente industria turca de los injertos capilares y otras cirugías plásticas emplea a numerosos trabajadores migrantes como traductores]. After working for three years and paying off our debts, the problems for migrants began when we started living,” lamented Martínez.
In February, she says, they moved into a new apartment, but the owner began harassing Martínez and, faced with her repeated rejections, she reported the boyfriend to the police. “He locked us in the house until the agents arrived. Even though we proved the complaint was false, they took my friend away. “The problem here is that they give any reason to put foreigners in a detention center,” argues Martínez. Ebru Bese, an experienced immigration lawyer, confirms that she has found numerous cases where any excuse, such as unsubstantiated allegations or complaints, is used to detain foreigners and reverse their immigration status.
Over the next two and a half weeks, Adrián Cuadrado “disappeared.” Nobody knew where he was, nobody could communicate with him, the authorities gave no information. By the time the Cuban managed to contact his partner, he had passed through two detention centers: one near Istanbul and another in Kayseri, 780 kilometers away.
“There are people who we don’t know where they are,” explains Irfan Güler, a lawyer who specializes in such cases: “They usually take them to Tuzla [un municipio en el extrarradio de Estambul] and from there to cities in the east of the country such as Erzurum or Agri [a más de 1.200 kilómetros]. It is a policy aimed at hindering the work of lawyers and preventing us from timely appealing deportation decisions.”
EU-funded centers
Turkey has 28 deportation centers across the country, 14 of which were built and another seven renovated with EU funds transferred in exchange for the 2016 anti-migration agreement. These are prison facilities where foreigners are detained while they await expulsion. In a country where prisoners “have fewer rights than a common criminal,” says lawyer Gülden Sönmez: “When a Turkish citizen has committed a crime , he can be held in police custody for a maximum of 48 hours and must then appear.” Judge. But if you are a foreigner and have not committed a crime, you can remain locked up for months without access to translators or lawyers.”
“They have neither killed nor stolen, and they are in a prison where they are mistreated like dogs, beaten and humiliated, spit on and made to sleep next to feces. “My partner was in a cell with more than 15 prisoners, two per mattress, all lying on the floor and with only one toilet for everyone in the cell,” says Rosa Martínez. Lawyer Ebru Bese confirms that the Ankara Bar Association, of which she is a member, has received complaints about poor conditions in deportation centers, including ill-treatment, torture, rape and suicide. “But we were not given access to the investigation, there is a lot of opacity,” he claims.
The EU ambassador admits to being aware of the complaints about immigration detention centers, but defends himself by claiming that “the EU has funded training for migration management and asylum processing training so that it is compatible with international law and human rights.” and that “The centers are run by the Turkish authorities.” The inside source, for his part, denies that these abuses occur and claims that the centers “accommodate irregular immigrants in a humane manner” and “meet their basic needs.” “Our main aim to shorten the length of stay of irregular immigrants in the center is to ensure rapid deportation procedures,” he added.
After four months of detention – during which his residence permit expired without him being able to do anything to renew it – and when he found that neither the actions of the lawyers nor the interventions of the Cuban consulate had any effect, Adrián Cuadrado decided to leave To sign a voluntary deportation document, since mid-October he was taken to Istanbul Airport to board a flight to his country (which had to be paid for by his partner). Lawyers and activists interviewed believe that the lengthy detention to which detained foreign nationals are subjected and the treatment they receive actually represents a strategy aimed at getting them to sign deportation documents. “They are forced to sign voluntary deportation forms, and those who refuse are mistreated,” says Bese.
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