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2 Syria,
Turkey and the camp cover-up By Erin Banco and Sophia Jones
It's
like a well-choreographed play that Turkish
officials have spent countless hours rehearsing.
First, they helped form "committees" inside every
camp to speak on behalf of the refugees. Now, they
carefully scrub down the facilities only before
admitting visitors, deny access to most media
outlets, and even handpick refugees to speak with
the press and outside organizations.
The
story they've crafted is a simple narrative of
suffering Syrian refugees, fleeing the bloody
crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad, finding
relief, commendable conditions and the chance for
a new life. The trouble is, the situation often
isn't that clear-cut. The government of Turkey is
"hiding something", according to a prominent
Turkish human-rights lawyer - a sentiment shared
by many Syrian refugees inside the camps.
While reporting from refugee camps on the
Turkish-Syrian border, we spoke to several people
who said that they were encountering
"absolutely no
problems". Many other refugees, however, describe
a vastly different reality - inadequate tents,
unsanitary bathrooms, lack of food, preferential
treatment of soldiers, and unnecessary detention
practices.
It is common, though, for
refugees to be paid off by the Turkish government
to refrain from denouncing its wrongdoings,
according to several witnesses in the camps. The
Turkish government is also denying most of those
in the camps legal status as refugees, allying
itself with Islamist factions and marginalizing
liberal elements, locking away "problematic"
Syrians in off-the-books prison facilities,and
obstructing media access, while local religious
and political enmities are interfering with the
humanitarian response.
All of these
underreported issues have conspired to place
already vulnerable people in an increasingly
untenable situation.
Orwa, whose last name
is withheld for his personal safety, is a Syrian
refugee in the Yayladagi refugee camp in
southeastern Hatay province, the site of United
Nations envoy Kofi Annan's most recent visit to
Turkey. It was widely reported that Annan visited
the camp, but according to Orwa and other Syrians
residing there, he did not actually walk through
and talk to refugees.
Instead, the former
UN secretary general only entered the camp's
visitor center and just spoke with men and women
who were reportedly selected by Turkish officials.
Afterward, his press conference focused almost
solely on the then-impending ceasefire across the
border, not about the sufferings of those inside
the camp - which he had neither the opportunity to
witness or hear about.
Similarly, Orwa
told us the Syrian National Council (SNC), the
main opposition umbrella group based in Turkey,
visited Yayladagi this week and met with the camp
committee that is made up of almost entirely of
Muslim Brotherhood members selected by the Turkish
government. While the Brotherhood isn't a major
force in Syria, what it has is money - lots of it.
And it's using that clout to build stronger ties
with the Turkish government and to develop more
support from needy refugees.
Orwa and his
friends from inside the camp were officially
excluded from the conversation. Their "liberal
ideas" prohibited them from participating, he
said. Frustrated and determined to have input,
Orwa showed up at the meeting without permission
but no one listened to him. Instead, the
Islamist-dominated SNC and Muslim Brotherhood are
controlling the conversation about how the camps
are run, while liberal Syrian voices - already
stifled at home - are being similarly silenced in
the camps.
According to several sources
inside the Yayladagi camp, the visit by the SNC
was a rare one. Their last trip to the camp was
close to 20 days before and that was only used for
"propaganda". Orwa said SNC members didn't even
inquire about the needs of the Syrians there.
Refugees in the camp told us that they thought
Turkish officials wanted to paint a rosy picture
of well-appointed refugee camps. But many,
especially those living in Turkish-run tent cities
on the border, are unhappy with the living
conditions.
The SNC recently told the
refugee committee in Yayladagi that they are short
on funds and only had about US$5 million to
distribute - most of it earmarked for efforts in
Syria. But they told refugees they would give them
each a one-time payment of around 20 Turkish lira,
the equivalent to about $11, to buy groceries and
whatever supplies they may need for the camp.
Many consider the response totally
inadequate. "The SNC does not check up on the
refugees to see how they are or what they need,"
Orwa said. "No one talks to us, no one cares about
us. We at least want people to come in and see
what the camp is like." This is a complaint we
have heard before: refugees want to tell their
stories, but they have no one to tell.
Access denied Since the
beginning of the conflict in Syria, there has been
limited access for human-rights groups and
journalists trying to enter the camps on the
border. And after Syrian refugees were targeted
during a cross-border attack in Kilis recently,
there has been an even greater urgency to keep
journalists out of the camps.
Turkish
officials as well as doctors working in hospitals
near the refugee camps said the government wants
to control the information given to the press
because the Kilis attack was disastrous for their
image. Refugees caught in the crossfire told us
that Turkish soldiers who were supposed to be
protecting them did little to help.
One of
the injured Syrians in the Kilis hospital, Ahmed
Bitar, told us the Turkish officers did not defend
refugees but instead hid for their own safety. As
news of the attack on Kilis spread to other camps,
refugees in Yayladagi marched to the border in
protest. They said if the Turkish government was
not going to protect them, they might as well go
back to Syria.
Several Free Syrian Army
soldiers and officers likened the situation in the
camps to that in Syria. The only way, they said,
to get in and out of the camp if you are not a
refugee, and if you do not have special
permission, is to sneak in illegally. We heard all
manner of stories on the lengths some have gone to
- from aid workers scaling the 10-foot-tall walls,
to human-rights activists slipping through holes
in the fence, to women journalists wearing
niqabs and pretending to be refugees.
Increasingly, such extreme measures are the only
available options to those seeking access to
refugees.
Just one day after the incident
in Kilis, we called Suphi Atan, the Turkish
Foreign Ministry's camp coordinator, to verify our
authorization to enter the Reyhanli camp, which we
had received just one day earlier. He told us that
there was simply "no more permission" for the
camps. A dial tone followed. When we tried a more
direct approach, we were similarly rebuffed. An
officer who was guarding the main gate of the
Yayladagi camp told us, "Your job is not inside
the camp, it is outside of it," and barred us from
entering.
Doctors inside a Hatay province
hospital agreed to speak with us as long as
identifying information about them and their
facility's name were not used because the Turkish
government has forbid them to speak to press. "You
have a right to get information," one physician
said, "Just not from the hospitals. Only from the
government."
Halfway through our interview
with the head of the medical center, a man walked
in and sat down next to us, his security badge
peeking out of his jacket. His presence
immediately changed the tone of the interview,
causing the hospital administrator to begin
extolling the virtues of the Turkish government's
treatment of refugees.
As the number of
wounded Syrians taken from the border to hospitals
in Turkey has surged in the past two months,
information about them has dwindled. One Syrian
man in the hospital had just arrived hours before
our visit. As he lay on the hospital bed in the
emergency ward, he violently shook from loss of
blood, his teeth chattering as family members who
carried him to the border looked on.
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