As Turkey prepares for a landmark runoff in its presidential election, the fate of Syrian refugees are on the ballot. They have become easy targets for leaders across the political spectrum, who contend that immigrants are changing the nation’s character.
has gone a step further, making the removal of all Syrian refugees a core campaign promise. In the early hours of Saturday, posters of the 74-year-old former accountant were plastered across Istanbul with a new and ominous message — “Syrians will leave.”
Since Turkey allowed refugees to work, they integrated quickly. By 2014, formalized protection measures offered them health care and education. A temporary identification card, called a kimlik, was meant to protect Syrians against forced return. Turkey’s interior minister said last year that more than 700,000 Syrian children had been born in Turkey since the start of the war., the welcome wore thin.
The most infamous is in Istanbul’s Tuzla district. A mutual friend of Sabika and Islam’s spent a week there, recounting to them conditions so tough that one of the refugees cried at night to be deported. “If you’re going to take us back, then take us,” he remembers the man pleading. “But don’t leave us here.”that Turkish officers have also used violence or the threat of violence to force people into signing “voluntary” return forms.
On Sabika’s death certificate, the time of death is listed as 12:30 p.m. The cause is simply: “Injury at work.” He was first at the morgue when the gray day dawned. By 10 a.m., a small group of grim-faced relatives and acquaintances had joined him.With northern Syria divided by warring factions, the vehicle carrying his body would have to cross dozens of checkpoints before reaching his hometown. A relative from the same tribe had been the one to break the news to Sabika’s“Their worry right now is how to get the body back to them,” he said.
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