Turkey has illegally returned thousands of Syrians to warzone: Amnesty

It comes after Ankara last month agreed with the European Union to take back all refugees who cross illegally to Greece in exchange for financial aid, faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership talks.

Syrian refugees use mobile phones to communicate with their relatives minutes after arriving by dinghy on the Greek island of Kos on August 20, 2015. Yannis Kolesidis/EPA

ANKARA // Turkey has illegally returned thousands of Syrians to their war-torn homeland in recent months, highlighting dangers for refugees sent back from Europe under a deal due to take effect next week, rights group Amnesty International said on Friday.

Turkey last month agreed with the European Union to take back all refugees who cross illegally to Greece in exchange for financial aid, faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership talks. Also under the scheme, one Syrian refugee will be legally settled in Europe in return for every refugee taken back by Turkey from Greece.

But the legality of the deal hinges on Turkey being a safe country of asylum, which the rights group said in a new report was not the case. Amnesty said it was likely that several thousand refugees had been sent back to Syria in the past seven to nine weeks, flouting Turkish, EU and international law.

Turkey’s foreign ministry denied Syrians were being sent back against their will, while a spokesman for the European Commission said it took the allegations seriously and would raise them with Ankara.

Despite this, the EU appeared to be steaming ahead with its pact with Turkey on Friday, with Germany announcing plans to take in the first group of Syrian refugees for resettlement.

German interior ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said that most of the arrivals expected on Monday would be families with children, putting the number in the “double-digit range”.

He said they would likely arrive in the northern town of Friedland.

The arrival of the group to Germany will coincide with the first refugees being sent back to Turkey from Greece.

A European Commission source said Greece hoped to send 500 people back to Turkey on Monday “barring a last-minute problem”.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday it had asked for access to Syrians returned to Turkey from Greece “to ensure people can benefit from effective international protection and to prevent risk of refoulement”, referring to unlawful deportations of refugees at risk of persecution.

Ankara said it had maintained an open-door policy for Syrian refugees for five years and strictly abided by the “non-refoulement” principle.

“None of the Syrians that have demanded protection from our country are being sent back to their country by force,” said a foreign ministry official.

But Amnesty said testimonies it had gathered in Turkey’s southern border provinces suggested authorities had been rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women and children almost daily since the middle of January.

“In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s director for Europe and Central Asia.

The EU’s aim is to close the main route by which a million refugees crossed the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before heading north, mainly to Germany and Sweden.

* Reuters, Agence France-Presse