Another door closed, another wall built, another bridge burned
Turkey violates international refugee law and Europe remains silent
Charles Bradley, one of the most talented artists to reside in my music library, wrote a song called “The World (is going up in flames),” and it doesn’t just have a wonderful rhythm to it—its lyrics speak volumes that echo the reality of today. He sings “the world is going up in flames and nobody wanna take the blame.” Today’s reality involves a major crisis that nobody wants to take the responsibility in handling, better yet, take the blame for further erupting.
Throughout the migration crisis, Europe has been crippled in its response to manage the large influx of migrants crossing its borders. The same cannot be said for Turkey, who has registered almost 3.6 million Syrian refugees in its borders, becoming one of the largest refugee hosting countries. Turkey has also been praised by European countries, and beyond, for its provision of shelter, schools, medical care, and social programs to residing refugees.
However, this climate has begun to shift, as President Recep Tayipp Erdogan stated, “We want our refugee brothers and sisters to return to their land, to their homes. We are not in the position to hide 3.5 million here forever.” As a result, Turkey’s borders have become increasingly sealed off to incoming refugees, with the construction of walls and the use of violence to further push back those desperate to seek safety within its borders.
According to Human Rights Watch, Turkish authorities in Istanbul and nine provinces near the Syrian border have stopped registering all but a handful of recently arrived Syrian asylum-seekers, and more controversial, the attempt to limit the refugee population in the country has led to unlawful deportations, coerced returns to Syria, and a denial of healthcare and education for currently residing refugees. The Turkish government has also established stricter controls on international and local refugee agencies, blocking them from further assessing the situation of denied registration, deportation, or denied services for Syrian refugees.
Under international law, Turkey is required to abide by the law of non-refoulement—which says that a state is not required to grant asylum to refugees and asylum-seekers, but requires the state to “adopt a course that does not result in their removal, directly or indirectly, to a place where their lives or freedom would be in danger on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” The prohibition of refoulement also applies to “non-admission at the border,” meaning a country cannot deny an asylum-seeker immediate admission into its territory. Turkey’s actions violates these obligations set out in the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees.
The European Union, an organization based upon values such as respect for human rights and international law, has largely remained silent on the actions undertaken by Turkey. Words are the most powerful tool available to humanity—they can have as great an impact on our realities as our actions. But what is also powerful is silence, and the European Union’s silence says a million words about its approach to the migration crisis. It implies that, at this point, their main concern is to prevent a further increase of migrants entering its territory—even if it means allowing external countries to use whatever means necessary.
More controversial is the role of the EU-Turkey Migration deal, as the EU is preparing to release the second portion of the €3 billion in support of refugees within Turkey. In March 2016, the EU and Turkey established the deal with the aim to discourage irregular migration in the Aegean Sea by combating human traffickers travelling from Turkey to the Greek islands, allowing Greece to return all irregular migrants back to Turkey, and improving the conditions of Syrian refugees in Turkey. In exchange, the EU promised to increase the resettlement of Syrian refugees residing in Turkey, accelerate visa liberalization for Turkish nationals, and increase financial support to the refugee population.
But there is more than what lies above the surface in this deal, as it has proven to be more contradictory than supportive of the EU’s humanitarian image in handling the crisis. Similar to the regional disembarkment platforms, the EU is sacrificing long-term interests in upholding its liberal and humanitarian values for short-term solutions that halt the influx of migrants by throwing the responsibility onto other countries, even if it means these countries are cutting legal corners to do so.
The truth the EU has yet to succumb to is that sacrificing its human rights values will be costlier than the hard and long path to finding morally and legally acceptable solutions. Alongside an increase in law enforcement to manage the migrants, Turkey has completed the construction of a 764 km wall along its border with Syria in order to tighten security and combat illegal crossings. The border is guarded by Turkish security forces, who have regularly stopped, and in some cases, killed, thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers since 2017, thus forcing them back to Syria. As a result, the UN stated that 247,000 Syrians have been displaced at the border between December 15th, 2017 and January 15th, 2018.
But this guilt is not something that can be singly placed upon Turkey—according to a Spiegel article, Turkey was able to blockade its border with the funding provided by the European Union. The article stated that, in exchange for the protection of its borders, the EU provided the Turkish government with €80 million worth of security and surveillance technology, which included €35.6 million to Okotar, a Turkish company, for the production of armored Cobra II military vehicles used to patrol the border. Additionally, Aselan, an arms manufacturer, was contracted by the EU to provide armored and non-armored vehicles at the value of €30 million. While the EU’s €3 billion commitment to Turkey was meant to provide assistance to refugees within its border, €18 million went to a Dutch company that manufactured patrol boats for the Turkish coast guard.
Thus, Europe’s blind eye to Turkey’s breach of international refugee law makes sense—it has had the effect of decreasing migration at Europe’s south-eastern borders in Greece. But as more refugees are forced to remain in war-torn Syria, as international laws for the protection of refugees are violated, and as respect for human rights is ruptured, who will take the blame?
It is much easier to blame Turkey for this catastrophe—but if you give a man a gun and he kills someone with it, do you blame the shooter or the provider of the weapon? Personally, I believe it depends on who the shooter was: a morally-sound person will know better than to use the weapon in harmful ways. But someone who, for example, does not respect moral principles and someone who has a poor human rights record may be less willing to follow legal standards. Thus, the blame should be given to both parties.
The European Union’s provision of silence to Turkey has flashed the green light to do what it needs to handle the crisis, as long as it means Europe no longer has to deal with the migrants crossing through Greece. But while the EU has managed to decrease the number of migrant deaths in the Aegean Sea by providing a safe haven in Turkey, the Turks are cracking under the pressure and the once-upon-a-time critic of Europe’s closed-door policy is now closing its own doors on the migrants.
Instead of dying in the Aegean Sea, as Maximillian Popp from Spiegel states, “people are now dying at the Turkish-Syrian border.” Thus, refugees’ options are limited as another door has been closed on them, another wall has been put up to keep them out, and another bridge has been burned from the horrors and darkness of war to the safety, security, and opportunity for a normal, if not great, life that we in the west have been privileged with.