Turkish government sending Syrian refugees back to war

This video says about itself:

Turkey is sending Syrian refugees back to war zone, claims Amnesty

1 April 2016

Is Turkey a safe country for Syrian refugees?

Amnesty International doesn’t think so.

And with Europe’s deal on returning migrants there taking effect from Monday, “the rights group claims that Ankara has been forcing thousands of Syrians to go back to their war-torn homeland.

“The Turkish government needs to stop this blatantly illegal and inhumane practice’.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV:

Turkey sends refugees back to Syria

Today, 18:21

Turkey indeed actively sends Syrian refugees back to war zones. According to research by the NOS in the Turkish province of Hatay. Eyewitnesses and refugees themselves declare that almost daily buses with refugees cross the border, including in recent days.

Amnesty International wrote two weeks ago in a report that there has been refoulement for over a thousand people in recent months. Nevertheless, last week Monday the EU-Turkey deal started, and the first expulsions of refugees from the Greek islands to Turkey. Turkey strongly opposed the allegations of Amnesty International.

Buses across the border

Correspondent Luke Waagmeester visited Hatay in response to the Amnesty report. He met eyewitnesses who saw buses with Syrian men, women and children cross the border.

He also met people living in the border area, relatives of refugees who have been sent back and a human rights lawyer who collected many files on the refoulements.

Eyewitness

“Two days ago I saw there also four large buses passing by. Children and families,” says Yunus Dolgun. He lives near the border in Hatay.

They went according to Dolgun to the border at Cilvegözü, a border town 50 kilometers west of Syrian Aleppo. “Even last night I saw three minibuses over there. From Antakya to Cilvegözü, from there to Syria.”

Deportations

“Migration Offices in cities across the country bring refugees here, and from here they go to the border at Cilvegözü. From there they will be deported,” said human rights lawyer Hatice Can, who has collecting eyewitness statements for a number of months.

Can gets those statements regularly to the local immigration office in Hatay. “They say it is not their business. But they do not deny in front of me loudly that deportations happen here.”

Syrian Mahmoud Bitar has been living in Hatay for two years. His cousin fled four times to Turkey, and was sent back four times. “She was already in Turkey and ran into an ambush of the border police. The next day they were deported by bus to Syria. The last time was in February.”

Bitar: “The refoulements do happen, no doubt, I’ve seen them with my own eyes and I have friends on the Syrian side of the border who see it happen. I do not know why the Turkish authorities and Europeans close their eyes to it… and pretend it does not exist.”

War zone

The area where the refugees are sent back to is directly a war zone. Hatay is located on the Syrian border, near Aleppo. In Aleppo there has been since the beginning of the war, five years ago, heavy fighting between ISIS, other opposition groups and the Syrian army.

Eyewitness Yunus Dolgun sees from the roof of his home the refugee camp Atimeh, just across the border in Syria. “This entire region is under the control of the jihadist group Al-Nusra Front. You may wonder if the people who are sent back are certain to stay alive.”

Turkey denies

The Turkish government in Ankara denies the existence of deportations. …

A few weeks ago, the EU reached a deal with Turkey on the refugee issue. For every illegal refugee who is taken back to Turkey, Europe takes one Syrian. Turkey also receives three billion euros extra for refugee relief.