As Turkey enjoyed a national holiday last week, a video covered the country’s social media. The fictional story presents an anti-utopian vision of Istanbul in 2043, the city is ruined and dangerous. A young Turkish man, an ambitious doctor who was taken to hospital as a cleaner due to competition from migrants, complained to his parents that speaking Turkish was forbidden at work because staff and patients spoke only Arabic.
The film, titled Silent Invasion and commissioned and funded by far-right politician Ümit Özdağ, garnered 2 million views on YouTube within a day of its release.
As Europe focuses on the millions of refugees forced to flee their homes by Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine, tensions in Turkey are mounting over those fleeing a protracted conflict: the 12-year war in Syria. .
Turkey, a nation of 84 million, is home to the world’s largest refugee population, with 3.7 million Syrians and several hundred thousand from Afghanistan. Their presence has long been a source of boiling tension. But with deep problems in the Turkish economy and parliamentary and presidential elections ahead of June 2023, some experts worry the situation is nearing boiling point.
“This could lead to violence between host communities and Syrians,” said Omar Kadkoi, a migration policy analyst at the Ankara-based Syrian-based think tank Tepav. He described the current atmosphere for refugees in Turkey as “hostile” and “stressful”.
It is no coincidence that fears of refugees are growing amid the troubled economy. Inflation in Turkey officially reached 70 percent in April. The upcoming elections have added to the atmosphere – and refugees have become easy targets for politicians vying for votes.
Among them is Özdağ, a former member of several right-wing parties who has drawn attention to migrants with his rude language and social media posts targeting individual refugees. Last year, Özdağ founded its own party and vowed to send back all refugees – by force if necessary – at the base of its territory.
Although his Victory Party is unlikely to win many votes, such anti-immigrant rhetoric seems to be influencing the political mainstream. All major parties in Turkey have taken some form of promise to send Syrians back to their country. But all their proposals are considered by experts not only unethical but also unrealistic.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition party, says all Syrian refugees in Turkey will return “voluntarily” if his People’s Republican Party (NRP) comes to power. He says he will provide assurances from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the dictator from whom the refugees fled, to ensure the safety of returnees – an idea many analysts see as a dangerous fantasy.
Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who backed his policy of accepting “our Syrian brothers and sisters” back in March, last week announced a plan to build 100,000 homes in northern Syria, which he said would persuade 1 million people to return.
However, Nigar Goksel, director of Turkish projects at the conflict prevention organization International Crisis Group, said there were bleak prospects for their return to Syria. She contrasts with the employment opportunities, free health care and education available in Turkey, adding: “Who voluntarily leaves a place where basic needs are met, a place where they probably would not?”
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The promise to return the Syrians “is really not a solution,” Goksel said, adding: “It simply raises hopes among the population that are unlikely to be fulfilled.”
Where is all this leading the EU, which many in Turkey accuse of treating their country as a “refuge” depot, after signing a 6 billion-euro agreement to halt the flow of migrants to Europe with Erdogan’s government in 2016?
Kadkoy says the bloc needs to pay more attention to what is happening in the country and urgently speed up the spread of a new round of 3 billion euros in funding announced last year.
Although the EU has strengthened its borders in recent years, Kadkoy believes some people may still be at risk of using smugglers to help them make the dangerous journey across the Aegean, as hundreds of thousands did in 2015.
“Conditions put Syrians between stone and anvil,” he said. “The majority does not want to return to Syria. The feeling of being rejected in Turkey is growing. So they can try to find a safe destination – and for most Syrians, it will be Europe.
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