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DOI | [db:DOI] |
Seeking a Path to Europe, Refugees and Migrants Ultimately Turned Back by Covid-19 | |
Erol Yayboke; Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. | |
2020-04-02 | |
出版年 | 2020 |
国家 | 美国 |
领域 | 地球科学 ; 资源环境 |
英文摘要 | Seeking a Path to Europe, Refugees and Migrants Ultimately Turned Back by Covid-19April 2, 2020
Soon after the Syrian civil war erupted a decade ago, Turkey became host to more forcibly displaced people than any other country in the world, a designation it still holds. Today, over 4.1 million mostly Syrian refugees and asylum seekers live across the country. Feeling like it had dealt with this challenge largely on its own for the first five years of the crisis and following the “migrant crisis” of 2015 in Europe, Ankara reached an agreement with Brussels in March 2016. Turkey would take back refugees and asylum seekers and stem further flows in return for 6 billion euros in promised support. Though Syrians, Afghans, and others continued to seek refuge in Turkey in the subsequent years, life has not always been easy for them there. As of March 2019, only 31,000—or 1.5 percent—of the 2.2 million working-age Syrian refugees in Turkey have the legal right to work. Turkey deserves credit for being comparatively generous to Syrian refugees, to whom President Erdogan regularly referred as brethren in the early days of the civil war and for whom even Turkish citizenship became an option in 2016. However, while it is technically a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Refugee Protocol—the main documents constituting international refugee law—Turkey maintains geographic exclusions, meaning that only those displaced from Europe can be considered refugees. While it did adopt its own EU-inspired asylum law in 2013, it largely considers its refugee policies in a domestic rather than international legal framework. Thus, there was little to be done when Turkey returned people to parts of northern Syria it controlled in 2019, which, depending on the details, could be a violation of international law. This complicated recent history came to a head at the Turkish-Greek border in late February. Following increased fighting in Idlib, Syria (the last holdout of Turkish-backed opposition forces), over 700,000 displaced Syrians have sought refuge near the Turkish border since December 2019, stuck between the Assad regime’s advancing forces, which have been indiscriminately targeting civilians to the south, and a closed Turkish border to the north. Long annoyed by what they perceive to be a lack of interest and support by the European Union, evidenced by the alleged failure to provide the promised financial aid, Turkish authorities finally reacted after what they felt was a similarly insufficient European response to the Idlib crisis. On February 27, Turkey announced it would no longer be stopping the movement of refugees seeking to journey onward to Europe. Within hours, refugees and other forced migrants were in boats headed to the Greek island of Lesbos and in cars, vans, and buses toward the Turkish-Greek border. Many moved toward the regional hub of Edirne in northeast Turkey from where both Bulgarian and Greek border crossings are easily accessible. February 25, 2020: The Pazarkule, Turkey-Kastanies, Greece border crossing near Edirne shows typical light flows of traffic.
March 14, 2020: The area around the Turkish side of the border becomes an informal forced migrant settlement while new border patrol roads and security fences demonstrate a hardening security posture on the Greek side of the border.
March 22, 2020: The informal settlement expands as the Greek side of the border continues to harden.
Erol Yayboke is deputy director and senior fellow with the Project on Prosperity and Development at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C. Bulent Aliriza is a senior associate and director of the CSIS Turkey Project. Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. is senior fellow for imagery analysis (non-resident) at CSIS. Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s). © 2020 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved. |
URL | 查看原文 |
来源平台 | Center for Strategic & International Studies |
引用统计 | |
文献类型 | 科技报告 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/250137 |
专题 | 地球科学 资源环境科学 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Erol Yayboke,Joseph S. Bermudez Jr.. Seeking a Path to Europe, Refugees and Migrants Ultimately Turned Back by Covid-19,2020. |
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