As the European Union and Turkey struck a deal on stemming the flow of Syrian refugees attempting perilous journeys across the Aegean sea to Greece, another migrant community whose numbers are also swelling says it is being overlooked.
Largely denied the chance for legal resettlement in Europe and struggling to find work or support in Turkey, Afghans account for around a quarter of the migrants risking their lives in the small boats leaving Turkey’s shore.
Ahead of an emergency European Union summit with this month, the EU executive has announced the first payouts from a €3bn fund meant to help Turkey cope with an influx of more than 2.7m Syrian refugees and encourage them to stay put.
But while Afghans are unlikely to be prevented from using services such as medical centres and education facilities set up with European funds in Turkey, the fact they speak Pashto and Dari, rather than Arabic, risks excluding them from projects designed for Syrian refugees, aid workers warn.
“The EU is not even discussing these issues and is exclusively focused on Syria,” Kati Piri, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Turkey, said last month.
“Even if the Syrian crisis would be solved tomorrow, there would still be a serious refugee crisis, with a large number of refugees in Turkey who don’t have access to their rights.”
Afghan migrants in Turkey said over the past few years they had been denied interviews with UNHCR that would formally determine their refugee status, a key step in the journey to being resettled.
Polat Kizildag, programme coordinator at Asam, an organisation which registers asylum seekers in Turkey, said they were generally told they were ineligible because Turkey was the third country on their journey and the expectation was that they apply for refugee status in their second, in many cases Iran.
Human rights groups have said Iranian forces deport thousands of Afghans without giving them a chance to prove their asylum status and that they are pressured to leave the country.
Selin Unal, UNHCR spokeswoman in Turkey, said the most vulnerable, including Afghans, still received interviews, adding that close to 500 Afghans had been interviewed last year. She said the sheer numbers meant those most at risk were prioritised among UNHCR’s active case load of some 254,000 non-Syrians.
Resettlement woes
More than 63,000 Afghans came to Turkey last year, a sharp rise from 15,652 in 2014, according to Asam, counting only those who registered. Some came directly from Afghanistan, others from Iran, where they had tried unsuccessfully to settle.
The exodus from Afghanistan has been prompted by an increasingly precarious security situation, with 11,000 civilians killed or injured in 2015, as well as widespread corruption undermining faith in the future and a war-ruined economy that cannot provide enough work for its population. Kabul and other Afghan cities have seen a spate of suicide bombings and other attacks as the Taliban has stepped up its insurgency following the withdrawal of international troops from most combat operations in 2014.
False perceptions
According to the European Commission, 64,109 asylum requests were registered in Turkey in 2015, more than 11,000 of them from Afghan citizens, but only 459 were concluded, either by granting or rejecting refugee status. Some are still waiting in Turkey, but others are among the thousands to have crossed illegally to Europe.
Under a law passed two years ago, Afghans and other refugees have access to healthcare in Turkey and Unal said the most vulnerable could also benefit from social security schemes. In January, Turkey also passed a new law to give refugees access to legal employment, a move praised by the European Union, although the programme has not yet been rolled out.
But many of the Afghan refugees, hampered in part by language difficulties, are unaware of their rights and rely on illegal labour such as fruit picking to survive.