Guests, Asylum-Seekers, Refugees or Transit Migrants? Syrians in Turkey in ‘Purgatory’

Abstract

The total number of registered Syrians in Turkey reached 2.5 million by the end of 2015. After five years during which Turkey claims to have been maintaining an ‘open-door’ policy for those seeking protection, the Syrians in Turkey are still given only ‘temporary protection’ status, which limits their access to the labor force, education, healthcare, and other support systems. With a majority of those who are registered being under 18 years old, not knowing Turkish and having minimal access to a basic education, the problems of integration into and acceptance by the host-country society will only grow in time. The Syrians, when they can find employment on the black market, are paid less than half the minimum wage, work without security or job safety, or even any guarantee of payment. As the Syrian border area is being militarized and repressed parallel to developments in Turkish politics, and the situation in Syria is not improving but dislocating more people each day, more and more Syrians are joining the transit migrants in making life-threatening journeys to reach Europe, paying whatever savings they have left to human smugglers. Whether or not they will one day return to their left-behind ‘paradise’ or reach their ‘imagined paradise’ – Europe – they seem to be stuck in ‘purgatory’ in Turkey without any prospect of making the place a ‘home’.