Turkey’s Interests and Afghan Migration

In our previous article, we pointed out that the interest-driven policies pursued by the world’s states in the context of Afghan migration bring no benefit to the Afghan people. Now to Turkey’s role and approach in these waves of migration.

According to data from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), Turkey, with 3.7 million refugees, is the country hosting the most refugees. Naturally, this figure does not include unregistered refugees.

Germany, which carries the largest share of this burden in the EU, hosts 1.7 million refugees. The EU acknowledges how critical Turkey’s role is. Knowing that the AKP Government with which it negotiates does not sufficiently respect human rights law, it strives to solve the migration problem outside its own borders without closing the paths of negotiation.

The ruling AKP Government, for its part, has abandoned to their own fate and their own struggle for life the migrants it stresses on every platform that it has hosted within the borders of the Republic of Turkey since the 2015 Syrian crisis.

While it is a big question what the financial support from agreements with the EU has been used for, President Erdoğan constantly uses the refugee problem as a trump card to consolidate his government’s position. At times he makes it a justification for cross-border operations, at times he uses it as a threat in negotiations with the EU, and at times it is used to stir society’s nationalist feelings in order to change the agenda and strengthen rhetoric of unity (that is, as material for domestic politics).

The picture that emerges shows that individual and political interests, not the survival of the nation or the peace of society, are being considered first.

*****

No national policy on Afghan migration appears to have been set so far. Neither meeting the humanitarian needs of Afghan migrants nor ensuring the peace of the Turkish people seems to be on the Erdoğan administration’s agenda.

But the subject is handled in different ways in the media, and public perception is being managed to serve the interests we mentioned earlier. On the one hand, stories that migrants commit crimes and harm the social fabric and security are brought to the agenda in various reports. On the other hand, bureaucrats and officials, stressing in their rhetoric that the rights of the Turkish state are being defended on international platforms, calculate how to win a solid position in domestic politics or take steps that will consolidate their own positions. In other words, neither are the refugees’ rights to asylum met, nor is the continued peace of Turkish citizens ensured!..

For this reason, the current AKP government’s migration policy, like the EU’s, can be described as a policy “in which the right to life of Turkish citizens and foreigners is ignored for the survival of the political administration and the satisfaction of personal interests”.

In conclusion, both the Republic of Turkey and the European Union states are evading their responsibilities under the 1951 Geneva Convention. The policies of both sides serve aims other than those they should. So what will become of the Afghans who have been forced to leave their homeland, who need asylum and protection, and who must be kept under control to that end?

Abandoned to their fate, sometimes ignored, sometimes crushed and scorned in the shadow of states’ wars of interest, and struggling to survive in any case, they will probably be forgotten amid the noise of the agenda.