Afghan alienation: New refugees dream of crossing to Turkey

Doaa Emam

The American withdrawal from Afghanistan prompted many Afghan citizens to emigrate in order to save their lives after the Taliban has taken control of many positions of the Afghan army, against which the terrorist movement launches successive attacks. As long as security cannot be established, fleeing Afghan families will take paths that are not very different from those taken by the Syrians before.

Turkey is supposed to be one of the most prominent countries for new Afghan refugees to go to under the rule of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially in light of the internal conflicts between Afghan government forces and the Taliban, which has spread throughout 70% to 80% of Afghan lands, leading to the situation getting out of control and the country closer to civil war.

But these migrations will benefit the Turkish opposition, especially the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which rejects the presence of refugees inside the country, and its leader pledged in previous statements to return refugees to their country within only two years of rule if the party comes to power.

The CHP and the Turkish government have traded accusations, with CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu criticizing Erdogan’s agreement to allow Afghan refugees into the country as part of the US government’s resettlement plan.

“A secret deal was made between US President Joe Biden and his Turkish counterpart that allows thousands of Afghan immigrants fleeing the Taliban through Iran to reside in Turkey,” Kılıçdaroğlu said, stressing that the opposition, if it reaches power, will not accept or abide by any agreement reached by Erdogan with Washington.

“As a member of the coalition that will govern Turkey in the future, we do not accept those deals that the United States has concluded with Erdogan, and all that has been said is binding only on him and not on the Republic of Turkey,” he added.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu responded to the CHP, saying that Turkey is extending a wall along the Iranian border to enhance security, indicating that Istanbul has succeeded in managing illegal immigration from Syria and other parts of the Middle East, as the Turkish government has deployed 500 guards and 82 armored vehicles on the border and prevented illegal immigration of 505,000 people in 2020 and an additional 253,000 people this year.

The Turkish government has also sent guards to the border with Iran and deployed drones to help stem the flow of irregular migrants from Afghanistan. In this regard, Samir Salha, a professor of international relations, said that the American step to withdraw from Afghanistan cannot be separated from balances and coordination at the level of the international coalition to deal with the Afghan file, stressing that the asylum that has begun to increase in recent days is pushing the Turkish parties towards a political debate that includes the future of those fleeing the Taliban.

Salha pointed out that Turkey does not designate those coming from abroad as immigrants, but it gives them residence for humanitarian conditions in the event that they are from countries with shared borders that suffer from wars and conflicts. This matter is not compatible with the Afghan case, where the open borders with Iran constitute a danger and require a detailed Turkish-Iranian discussion regarding border control.

Afghan immigration to Turkey is not new, but it started since the 1970s, Salha noted, adding that some unofficial statistics indicate that there are tens of thousands of Afghans in Turkey. But fears are growing about the migration of minds saturated with ideas that contradict the secularism of the state, in addition to those who come to Istanbul as a stop before crossing into Europe.

It is noteworthy that about 3.6 million Syrian refugees live in Turkey, and most of them came between 2014 and 2015. According to official statistics, 600,000 Syrian children were born in Turkey, and 100,000 children are added every year. There are more than half a million young Syrians who attend Turkish schools and 30,000 are enrolled in universities, and these numbers constitute a crisis for the Turks, who are looking for a solution to the refugee crisis, especially since only 6.8% of these Syrians want to return to their homeland.