A Syrian man in a supply tent in Turkey in 2016. European Parliament/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
Cooperation with the Turkish government has become an essential part of the European policy on migration and asylum. This is for good reason. Turkey now hosts more refugees than any other country in the world, including 2.81 million Syrians. At the same time, nearly one million refugees and migrants arrived irregularly in Europe by sea in 2015, and of those more than 850,000 arrived in Greece through Turkey, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The nature of that cooperation changed in early 2016, when the European Union and Turkey adopted the controversial EU-Turkey Statement on 18 March, with the purpose of ending all irregular migration from Turkey to the EU. Given the potential pitfalls of such a project, it’s important to understand the legal frameworks girding both the agreement and the temporary protection regime in use in Turkey today. In the following I review select aspects of situation facing Syrians in Turkey today, and then clarify how protection of Syrians in Turkey can be improved.
