Immigration: one to watch

01/09/2014

A tragic side-effect of war is invariably the refugee crisis it creates which, in the case of Syria has reached epic proportions. But, as the AFP is recording, the Turkish are losing patience with the influx of Syrians into their country, and are attacking President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "open door" policy.

Rough estimates are that some 1.2 million Syrian refugees are now living in the country. Some 285,000 Syrians are accommodated in refugee camps in the south and southeast of the country but a far greater number of 912,000, according to official figures, are now living in Turkish cities.

Says AFP, the refugees have become an increasingly visible presence in cities including Istanbul, with entire families huddled together on carpets and begging in the middle of the pavement in the city centre.

This is a country which has had its own people treated roughly when they have emigrated to Europe, but now – in a grisly hierarchy of "discrimination and xenophobia", there have been violent protests against the Syrians in Istanbul and in the southeast.

However, with no end to the Syrian conflict in sight, there is little chance that the refugees will return to their homeland, which means a proportion may well become "motivated" to move on to EU member state territory, either via the Aegean into Greece, or via Egypt and North African states, then thence either to Malta, Italy or Spain. Already, in the latest shipwreck reported off Tunisia, the 36 fatalities were believed to be Syrian.

Another problem, as we reported last December, is that the legal status of the Syrians in Turkey is that of "guest". Officially, they are not refugees, and only become so once they enter the territories of EU member states.

This means, of course, that under international law, Syrians cannot be returned to Turkey, and it is rarely possible to send them back to the intermediate countries, through which they have passed.

With UNHCR now reporting that three million have fled Syria, this is a crisis that is only going to get worse. And Britain is not going to find itself immune.

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