We have previously posted about Derya, the Irani asylum-seeker who was protesting for more than a month in front of UNHCR on the claim that she has no life security in Turkey because of the life threats she has been receiving from her brother. Reports arrived a couple of days ago that non she has been missing.
A woman supporter who went to visit Derya in front of the UNHCR building could not find her and asked to the security guard, the guard responded that ‘someone took her’. The lawyers who support Derya could not find any information through UNHCR, DGMM or police stations. We are looking forward to find out where Derya is, we are urging the authorities to take an action to find her, particularly on this significant day, 25th of November, the international day for the elimination of the violence against woman.
Iraqi displaced people in one of the camps in the Kurdistan Region. (Photo: Kurdistan 24/Alexandre Afonso)
ERBIL – Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration on Thursday stated that they had brought back hundreds of Iraqi nationals who had fled to neighboring Turkey over the past few years as refugees because of Islamic State (IS) threats.
This article was originally published by Kurdistan 24
Via Focaal Blog – Cemile Gizem Dinçer and Eda Sevinin interviewed Nicholas De Genova in Istanbul when they attended the conference “Migration, Social Transformation and Differential Inclusion in Turkey”.
The Greek group ‘Racist Crime Watch‘ published new evidence of police violence and illegal push-backs of asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey via the Evros river. In a letter to the Commissional for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatović, they address these mistreatments:
Another video evidence of police violence and illegal deportation of asylum seekers in Evros
Dear Commissioner,
Further to our 9 and 29 September 2018 letters, we are sending another update with information published in Hurriyet Daily News and reprinted (without editing) here.
Via Hurriyet Daily News (13th November) – Turkish villagers warmly welcome migrants after Greek police beat them naked
Residents of the Kiremitçi Salih village in the northwestern Turkish province of Edirne warmly welcomed a group of migrants they found naked and exhausted in their fields late Nov. 11.
Sara Mardini, Sean Binder and Nassos Karakitsos have been imprisoned for almost three month now. At the beginning of this month, Human Rights Watch published an article telling their story and researched the accusations made against Sara and Sean based on a 86-pages police report and other court documents.
As part of the EU-Turkey-Deal the EU offered a payment of 3 billion Euros until 2018. The way the budget is used has always been criticized, particularly because of the lack of transparency and efficiency in distributing the aids in a fair manner for those in need, both by the refugees and the actors in the field. Now in its final report even the EU’s ECA criticizes the distribution of the budget, stating that a large amount of it has been wasted due to a lack of efficiency and effectiveness. Furthermore it clarifies that for a big amount of the EU-money it is unknown what it actually was spent on.
Once more it becomes clear that while in the context of the EU-Turkey-Deal the sealing of the European border to Turkey is effectively enforced, the promised support for the refugees in Turkey does often not reach them.
EU unable to fully trace €1bn spent on refugees in Turkey
Via euobserver – The EU is unable to verify with certainty how over €1bn of European taxpayer money was spent on Syrian refugees in Turkey because of Ankara’s data protection laws.
This article was originally published by euobserver.
Striking Audit Results by the EU’s ECA
Via AIMS Turkey – The EU’s European Court of Auditors (ECA) released their final report on the Facility for Refugees in Turkey yesterday. A short summary of the 63-page report, which contains quite astounding observations regarding the implementation of the EU-funded projects toward refugees in Turkey has been compiled by Y. Emre Küçükkaya and published by AIMS Turkey.
photo: Woman Defence “telling her you are not alone and helpless, we turned our back to male violence and our face to Derya”
Derya, a woman asylum-seeker from Iran and a survivor of SGBV has been demonstrating in front of UNHCR Ankara office since one month now. UNHCR has already left the authority of refugee status determination totally to Directorate General of Migration Management on September. However, many refugees like Derya has filed their asylum applications earlier to UNHCR and expecting to receive attention and possibly a positive answer of resettlement to a third country from the international institution. Derya’s resistance has been brought to public attention in Turkey through some news covers and solidarity attempts of feminist groups. Here we put together Derya’s story through the humanitarian lawyers and her own account.
Accoding to Dicle Var from Evrensel News, Derya’s request for resettlement is neglected by UNHCR although she has fled from her family’s violence in Iran, and is claiming to not have life security in Turkey as well. As her sit-in protest in front of UNHCR has been brought to media, lawyers from Refugee Rights Center of Ankara Bar Association and International Women Solidarity Association (UKDD) took action for her. However the lawyers were let neither in the UNHCR building, nor to negotiate with the authorities, they were instead referred to Human Resource Development Foundtion (IKGV, a local implementing partner of UNHCR). The officers from IKGV confirmed that they are following Derya’s case, and added that she has psychological problems and she has to stay in Turkey and do the things that are necessary to adapt to normal life. The lawyer Çelik (from UKDD) condemned the attitude of the IKGV and pointed that such institutions do not have a women’s rights based approach towards women refugees, therefore she will keep on supporting Derya’s struggle and bring it to agenda in different platforms. Continue reading Through 30-days of struggle, Derya keeps asking for resettlement from UNHCR→
Via The New Arab – Turkish coastguard are searching for ten migrants lost at sea after their boat sank in the Aegean Sea, according to the country’s state-run news agency.
This article was originally published by The New Arab.
Birgün introduces striking data on the migrant labour in Turkey as indicated by the report prepared by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) titled “Migrant Labour in our Country”.
Via Birgün – According to the “Migrant Labour in Our Country” report prepared by CHP (Republican People’s party) Labour Bureau, the majority of migrants, with Syrians making up the largest number, are working irregularly, under heavy exploitative conditions, and dozens of them have lost their lives in workplace homicides.
This article was originally published in Turkish by Birgün.
The Turkish police in the state of Adana launched a security campaign in cooperation with the Foreigners’ Bureau with the aim of searching for Syrians’ Turkish identity documents, in particular the Turkish temporary protection ID, the “kimlik.”