Syrian refugees in Turkey 'suffocating' under stifling restrictions and 'voluntary returns' policy

Syrian refugee women are being forcibly deported from Turkey, accused of not having the correct official papers or having entered Turkey via illegal routes; the Turkish authorities appear to arbitrarily impose these measures under the guise of "voluntary return" – a cruel procedure separating women from their families and casting them into the squalid misery of the north Syrian displacement camps.

This is happening when over 90 percent of the population in northwest Syria live under the poverty line, and UN humanitarian agencies working inside Syria are severely underfunded.

Northwest Syria also continues to struggle with instability and a security vacuum to the backdrop of continued bombardment and conflict in an area where the war is still not over after over 13 and a half years.  

Growing repression against refugees

Wafaa Al-Humaidan, 39, can barely hide her tears as she speaks of the injustice she and her children have faced since being deported from Turkey into a displacement camp in Idlib.

Wafaa recounts being forced to leave Turkey after being stopped by a police patrol in Gaziantep city, who asked to see her ID papers and temporary protection card. As she had been unable to obtain official papers – in recent years, Turkey has stopped granting temporary protection in many provinces – she and her five children were deported.

She says the patrol took her and her children to a deportation centre, which looked like a dingy prison, and took her fingerprints several times before their deportation the next day. They kept threatening her, she says; warning her against returning to Turkey.

"When will the Turks understand that we didn't leave our land because we hate it, but because the war, destruction and injustice forced us to leave?" she asks.

"There's nothing we'd love more than living on our land with freedom and dignity if it weren't for that tyrannical, terrorist regime that slaughtered indiscriminately, and whose crimes didn't differentiate between young or old, men or women," she says.

Twenty-five-year-old Radina Helwani was forcibly deported with her child after being picked up by Turkish police in a park in Antakya. Radina had left the house to take a short walk and get some fresh air for the first time in months.

She had arrived seven months prior but stayed at home in hiding, fearful of deportation. However, it was on her first outing that the police caught her – separated her from her husband and expelled her from the country.

Radina, who is from Hama, says she and her husband had sold everything they owned to pay the smugglers and reach Turkey, where they believed they would be safe and be able to find work.

As soon as they got to Turkey her husband rented a small house and they started trying to get hold of the necessary papers to apply for official residency in Turkey, but without success. Radina then found herself thrown back to the Syrian border, with no one to turn to in a region she isn't from and has no relatives in.

"They're suffocating us"

Salwa Al-Sibani, 36, has a different story. She had a temporary protection card (kimlik) which she received in Izmir city. However, the search for a decent job in a textile factory took her to Istanbul.

However, while there, she was stopped by police, who asked to see her kimlik card, and discovered she was registered in Izmir, and hadn't received permission to travel to Istanbul. For this, Salwa and her four children were deported.  

"They're really suffocating us, we're charged for breathing air in Turkey, and they'll seize any misstep as a loophole to [let them] deport. So either a person has to sit like a stone where he got his card, or he'll be deported to Syria," states Salwa.

In a detention centre, Salwa was forced to give her fingerprints under threat of arrest, beating and torture. She complied with their orders without arguing to keep her children and herself safe, she says, adding that she saw several young Syrians beaten for refusing deportation, and neither their pleas nor critical health issues appeared to help them.

No basis in international law

Legal expert Dr Hayyan Al-Youssef says the deportation of Syrian refugees from Turkey as so-called "voluntary returns" or under the pretext of them not holding official papers is inhumane, has no legal basis, and contravenes all international agreements on refugee rights and protections, which include not being forcibly repatriated.  

He points out that the number of Syrian refugees registered in Turkey, and those holding temporary protection cards has dropped to its lowest level since 2017.

This was clear in the latest statistics from the Turkish Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate of Migration Administration (GDMA) which showed "the number of Syrians had dropped by 4,894 as of last May 9, leaving the total 3,115,536."

On World Refugee Day, June 20, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) stated: "Syria remains unsafe and that there is no conducive environment for the return of refugees, particularly since the reasons driving Syrians to seek refuge still exist.

"These reasons have even become more diverse, deeper, and widespread. Chief among these causes is the Assad regime's ongoing repression, killing, and detention by various means, as documented by multiple international and Syrian organisations."

The SNC stressed that the return of the refugees should depend on achieving a political transition in Syria in line with Resolution 2254, and a safe, neutral environment after a transitional governing authority has been formed as laid out in the above resolution.  

It noted that the international response to the tragedy being lived by the Syrian people and towards the "Syrian issue" was continuing to be viewed through the lens of crisis "management" instead of seeking a decisive resolution.

The international community must change its strategy and take decisive action to implement Resolution 2254 because the humanitarian crises in Syria have political roots that must be addressed to reach sustainable solutions.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) released a report on World Refugee Day noting it had documented at least 4,714 cases where Syrian refugees and IDPs who returned to Syria had been arrested by regime forces between 2014 and June 2024.

Of the 4,714 arrested or detained, 3,532, including 251 children and 214 women were refugees returning from countries of asylum or residence to their original places of residence in Syria.

To that end, SNHR has shown in dozens of reports that returning refugees are subjected to the same violations suffered by residents in Syria, amid an absence of any credible legal environment and the predominance of "oppression, despotism, and the centralization of authority."

The network highlighted that the forced repatriation of Syrian refugees constituted a flagrant violation of customary international law and that governments carrying out such practices bear legal responsibility for the torture, killing, enforced disappearance, and other violations potentially perpetrated by the Syrian regime against those forcibly returned.

Hadia Al Mansour is a freelance journalist from Syria who has written for Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Monitor, SyriaUntold, and Rising for Freedom Magazine

Article translated from Arabic by Rose Chacko