Ankara: The campaign for Turkey’s June 7 legislative elections has been rich in political point-scoring while ignoring one of the biggest challenges the country faces in the years ahead - the future of the almost two million refugees from the civil war in Syria.
Turkey is hosting 1.8 million Syrian refugees, more than any other country, and they have already become significant minorities in several cities, causing social tensions.
But with the Syrian conflict showing no sign of ending after more than four years of fighting, the refugees’ future legal status is one issue which none of the parties wants to touch.
“The government is doing its best - intentionally and wilfully - to keep the subject of two million Syrians away from the agenda,” said Murat Erdogan, director of Hacettepe University Migration and Politics Research Centre (HUGO).
He told AFP that issues such as education, citizenship and legal status were too heavy to deal with in the tense election atmosphere.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who makes no secret of his support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), boasts of Turkey’s “open-door” policy and says the refugees cannot be sent back to Turkey’s enemy Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
“We cannot deliver to the tyrant our Syrian sisters with kids in their laps desperately seeking shelter, white-bearded old men tearfully seeking sanctuary,” Erdogan said in a typically emotive speech Sunday in the southeast province of Sanliurfa near the Syrian border.
Only 250,000 Syrians reside in 25 camps in 10 cities near Turkish-Syrian border. The remainder are scattered throughout the country including the mega city Istanbul hosting 330,000 Syrian refugees.
Yet there has been no hint of any concrete policy over what to do with the refugees, with the parties not wishing to appear heartless but also taking care not to alienate voters by promising the refugees a more permanent status.
Turkey does not have a fully-fledged asylum policy compatible with international standards. Non-European refugees like Syrians are eligible only for temporary asylum-seeker status.
Turkey refuses to call Syrians “refugees” due to the temporary nature of their asylum. Instead it uses the term “guests”.
“Turkey’s asylum system functioned half-way when the refugee numbers stayed low. But this system is no longer working after the influx of two million Syrians,” said Metin Corabatir, president of the Ankara-based think tank Research Center on Asylum and Migration (IGAM).
“None of the political parties are talking about any asylum policy. This is a politically sensitive issue,” he told AFP.
A Turkish official said progress must be made on Syrians’ rights to work and education “whoever comes to power after the elections.”
He told AFP that Syrians would have to work to make their living because international donors may cut aid the more the conflict drags on.
Increasing education is a priority with 90 percent of the refugees in camps receiving some education but for those in cities the level is just 25-30 percent, he said.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu called accepting so many refugees “treason” in a 2014 interview.
He later corrected himself to say treason was actually to produce policies that put refugees in harsh circumstances but Erdogan has pounced on the controversy to attack the CHP.
Hakan Ataman, refugee support projects coordinator at the human rights advocate Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, said the parties feared a backlash from society if refugees were given a more permanent status.
“All political parties hesitate to bring out refugee problems out of fears generated by grassroot sentiments,” he told AFP.
“Unfortunately the society has prejudice about Syrians and see them not as owners of rights but as those who will take away their rights.”
A HUGO survey revealed the growing hardening of the Turkish public’s attitude towards the Syrians, with 30.6 percent saying they should be sent back even if the war continued.
Meanwhile, 62.3 percent said Syrians upset public order and morality with theft, smuggling and prostitution, according to the poll.
Ataman said the government and opposition needed to work for a clearer solution, including even granting the Syrian refugees Turkish citizenship.
“Otherwise they will continue to work illegally and become a target of society,” Ataman said.
