"Changing Fortunes: Iraqi Refugees in Turkey" International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies,...

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IJCIS 5 (2) pp. 199–213 Intellect Limited 2011

International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi StudiesVolume 5 Number 2

© 2011 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ijcis.5.2.199_1

DIDEM DANISGalatasaray University

Changing fortunes: Iraqi

refugees in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article deals with changing conditions for Iraqis in Turkey. It examines the evolution of Iraqi migration, issues of reception and onward movement from Turkey. Research conducted among Iraqis in Istanbul is used to illustrate the recent changes in the patterns of movement, especially among Iraqis for whom Turkey is a transit coun-try and who utilize communal networks as a key resource in a difficult environment.

IRAQI EMIGRATION TO TURKEY

Nearly 500,000 Iraqis entered Turkey after the Gulf War of 1991. Soon after the US attack, two uprisings broke out in Iraq and were repressed violently. The consequence was an abrupt exodus: large numbers of the Shi’as and Kurds fled to neighbouring countries. From March to April 1991 many Kurds and smaller numbers of Iraqi Turkmen and Christians arrived in Turkey. This was not the first flight from Iraq to Turkey, however. At the end of the Iran–Iraq war, some 100,000 Iraqi Kurds – afraid of a massacre similar to the events of Halabja in March 1988 – sought refuge in Turkey. When hundreds of thousands of Iraqis began to cross the Turkish border in 1991, there were already some 30,000 refugees remaining from the 1988 incident (Kaynak 1992: 47).1 In 1991 the Turkish authorities were unprepared for such a massive and abrupt refugee movement and were reluctant to open the borders. This attitude was related to both a limited refugee reception capacity and to aspects of Turkey’s internal Kurdish problem (Kiris¸ ci 1993: 1994). Obstruction at the

KEYWORDS

Iraqi refugeessocial networkscommunalismmigration strategiesirregular migrantscyclical migrantsTurkey

1. Figures on asylum seekers are not very reliable since they are given differently in various references. The Turkish minister of Foreign Affairs at the period announced that the number of Iraqis seeking asylum in Turkey reached 62,920 (Cumhuriyet, 6 September 1988). Three days before the declaration of

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frontier did not last long, however, largely as a result of international pressure. Iraqis entered Turkey and were placed in temporary camps near the border. On the suggestion of the Turkish president, Turgut Özal, the United States and Britain created a ‘safe haven’ in Iraq in territory North of the 36th parallel and Iraqi refugees were soon transferred to Iraq. The safe-haven strategy was later adopted elsewhere, notably in Sri Lanka and the Balkans, as a means of addressing major refugee movements (UNHCR 1995).

Iraqi migration to Turkey continued at a reduced pace during the 1990s, prompted mainly by severe social and economic impacts of international sanc-tions on Iraq. Air strikes undertaken during the Gulf War had caused massive damage to infrastructure; on 6 August 1990 the UN Security Council then imposed a ban on commerce with Iraq (Resolution 661), with the exception of the transfer of goods for medical and humanitarian purposes.2 Continuing migration from Iraq between 1991 and 2003 was associated with these pressures and with a mood of deep discontent, especially among youth. Lafourcade (2001) notes the impact on a younger generation of their parents’ nostalgia for the 1970s, when Iraq was seen to have been stable and prosperous. More important as a factor inducing departure was a loss of faith in collective well-being. Increasing doubt about a unified and prosperous society, spurred by feelings of national humilia-tion, pushed some Iraqis to search for individual survival strategies. Lafourcade (2001: 89) describes their feelings as a ‘desire for abroad’. The Iraqi authorities, unable to address people’s problems, opted to increase oppression. Meanwhile in the North rival Kurdish groups were engaged in repeated clashes.

The movement of people out of Iraq was limited by problems of exit and difficulties with entry into states in which they hoped to find security. Chatelard (2005: 120) refers to ‘constraints on movement’ – controls exercised by the Iraqi government on the movement of information, capital and people, together with strict immigration policies in countries favoured by Iraqis for asylum claims. These could not stop the impulse for departure, however. According to Chatelard (2005: 123), between 1990 and late 2002, no less than 1.5 million Iraqis ‘permanently left their country’.

LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION

Iraqi migration gained pace and took on a new shape after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A reduction in state-imposed constraints on exit, such as simplification of procedures to obtain passports, facilitated emigration. Movements of Shi’as and Kurds, who had been the main participants in migrations before 2003, slowed as these populations perceived new prospects in the post-Ba’thist environment. A fall in emigration immediately after the invasion was also related to negative attitudes among western governments to Iraqi applications for asylum. For the United States, in particular, Iraq was a country progressing towards peace and democracy and there was no need to leave the country. A reduction in emigration in 2003–2004 was accompanied by some return movements of refugees who had left in the 1970s and 1980s (Marfleet 2007). The head of the Iraqi Turks Culture and Solidarity Association (IYKYD) in Istanbul comments:

Migration [to Turkey] continued until 2003. In 2003 returns started. People were going back with great hopes. And the ones who stayed were waiting a few more years for improvement of the situation.

(Interview on 11 November 2009)3

the minister, the newspaper stated that the number of asylum seekers in Turkey was around 120,000 (Cumhuriyet, 4 September 1988). Later Turkish authorities declared that there were 117,000 asylum seekers, of whom 51,542 were accommodated in camps in the border zone (Kaynak 1992: 45–47). Overall, after the analysis of various figures in different references, we can estimate that the number of Iraqi asylum seekers in Turkey was around 100,000 in 1988.

2. See the work by Al-Ali for telling examples of severe impoverishment caused by these embargoes and their impacts on the everyday experiences of Iraqi women (2007).

3. Data were collected in April–May 2009 and September–November 2009 in Istanbul; we interviewed twenty displaced Iraqis of various legal statuses and of various ethnic and religious backgrounds, as well as officials of organizations in contact with Iraqis.


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Iraqis who continued to emigrate immediately after occupation were those disappointed by the new order in Iraq and who faced continuing hard-ships. Turkmen and Assyro-Chaldaean Christians, who faced atrocities and whose conditions of life worsened with changing power relations, continued to emigrate through social networks developed during the long decades of migration. On the other hand, the Kurdish exodus slowed down because of optimism that the Kurdish fortunes were likely to improve greatly under the new circumstances.

The hopes of most Iraqis soon faded. After 2005 violence and insecurity became general in the southern and central areas of the country. Iraqis inter-viewed in November 2009 in Istanbul typically asserted that each day in Iraq brought more difficulties and dangers. A complaint frequently was that ‘Before there was only one Saddam, but now there are a thousand of him’.

There was no security after 2003. You did not know from which side you would be attacked. The government itself was a gang. We could not go to the police when we had a problem. It was not clear which side the police were on. You can only rely on yourself and on your relatives in Iraq ... The last threat came to me via my brother. They told my brother that I should leave Iraq or I would be killed. Then I left. As a matter of fact, I always had the idea of leaving. How can a government which is unable to protect itself protect its citizens?

(Iraqi asylum seeker, aged 38, interview in Istanbul, 17 November 2009)

Despite the hardships experienced in Iraq between 2003 and 2006, and continuing migration, asylum applications from Iraqis were suspended at UNHCR offices in Turkey. This was justified by widespread claims in western states that, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was embrac-ing peace and democracy. In fact, conditions in Iraq were deteriorating daily and suspension of refugee status determination did not inhibit efforts to leave. The number of Iraqis arriving in Turkey, as in other neighbouring countries, increased steadily as can be seen in Table 5.

Between March 2003 and February 2008, more than a million people died in Iraq.4 For the Iraqis I interviewed in Istanbul, the main problems were general disorder and fear associated with threats of violence. They experienced these dangers more intensely than compatriots who had left the country earlier:

Now there are many groups in Iraq. We don’t know who is who. They • put a gun to your head. They can be people of the Ba’ath, of the mafia or al-Qa’ida. What is important for me is not who they are but being threatened by them. Everything changed the moment they held the gun to my head, all my life went away from my hands ... I took my passport, I prepared the documents and I left the country in 15 days. Meanwhile I put my wife, my mother and my child into the house of a trustworthy family. We left behind our house, all our belongings. In two weeks I left behind all my life and I quit. (Iraqi Christian male asylum seeker, age 40, interview on 9 May 2009)We made the decision [to leave Iraq] in under one week. We did not bring • any belongings with us. We would not be able to stay there longer. If we stayed we knew that we would be killed. (Iraqi Sunni Arab woman, age 43, interview on 12 November 2009)

4. For the findings of collective research conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) and Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS), see Susman (2007). According to Iraq Body Count, the period from March 2006 to March 2007 had been ‘by far the worst year for violence against civilians in Iraq since the invasion’ (Iraq Body Count 2007).


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They broke the glass of my barber’s shop. Then I received a letter of threat. • In the letter, they were threatening to kill me if I stayed there. I decided to leave because I was worried for my daughters … After me, my maternal aunt, my mother and my brother got in here. (Iraqi Sunni Arab man, age 40, interview on 9 November 2009)

Antonio Guterres, general secretary of the UNHCR, has suggested that two million Iraqis left their country between 2003 and 2007 (UNHCR 2007a). Few were granted formal refugee status and UNHCR resettled only 1500 Iraqis between 2003 and 2006, a tiny proportion of those in need of immediate reloca-tion in a place of security (Younes and Garcia 2007). In 2005, the overall recogni-tion rate of Iraqis as refugees by the UNHCR was a mere 7.3 per cent (increasing to 30.3 per cent on the basis of other types of recognition) (UNHCR 2006a: 52).5

The UNHCR’s Return Advisory and Position on International Protection Needs of Iraqis outside Iraq, published in December 2006, finally recognized the problems of general insecurity across Iraq and in particular of bombings, kill-ings and sectarian tensions in central and southern governorates. It proposed that asylum claims from Iraqis originating from these regions should not be rejected. The UNHCR recommended: ‘No Iraqi from southern or central Iraq should be forcibly returned to Iraq until there is substantial improvement in the security and human rights situation in the country’ (UNHCR 2006b, 2007b). Following the Return Advisory, UNHCR decided to provide interna-tional protection for Iraqis fleeing their country (with the exception of three governorates under the control of the Kurdish Regional Government) and who were unable or unwilling to return, declaring that they were ‘persons of concern to UNHCR as prima facie refugees’.6 This decision in effect acknowl-edged that efforts to stabilize Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein had failed. It was eventually reflected in policy changes in a number of states,

5. For host governments, it is becoming increasingly common to confer a ‘humanitarian protection’ instead of a full refugee status, since the latter compels them to present better social and economic services.

6. Prima facie status is also known as group determination of refugee status. It means the recognition of refugee status on the basis of the readily apparent, objective circumstances in the country of origin that gives rise to large-scale influx. It provides protection from refoulement and basic humanitarian treatment for those in need of it.

Iranians

(%)

Iraqis

(%)

Others

(%)

General rate of recognition

(%)

Total number of the recognized

File Persons

1997 52 25 24 35 578 –

1998 56 30 30 40 891 2230

1999 59 18 31 43 841 1903

2000 57 27 28 49 1186 2726

2001 70 34 56 61 1287 2867

2002 72 38 35 63 1344 2885

2003 79 – 45 76 1600 3300

2004 75 – 31 69 934 1748

2005 67 – 36 59 736 1368

2006 90 – 39 79 1051 1878

2007 88 100 72 85 3588 7121

Source: Danıs D. and Bayraktar D. (2010: 12)

Table 1: Recognition rate of non-European asylum seekers in Turkey during 1997–2007.


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7. According to the New York Times, ‘more than 30,000 Iraqis have been resettled in the United States since the 2003 invasion as refugees or with special visas for those who worked closely with the American government’ (Semple 2009). Among them some 1500 have been granted asylum. Sweden has received between 40,000 and 80,000 Iraqis since 2003. In 2007 the number of Iraqi refugees in Sweden was some 18,000 but the Swedish government began to adopt a stricter asylum policy in 2008 (Labott 2007; Jordan 2008).

notably in the United States, where the authorities had granted refugee status to only 466 Iraqis between 2003 and 2007.7 After 2007, US policy changed, officials declaring that the United States would resettle Iraqis and announcing an initial quota of 7000. During the 2008 fiscal year some 13,800 Iraqi refugees were admitted; over the course of two years to 2009 a total of 19,910 were admitted (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2009).

The combined effect was an increase in applications for asylum by Iraqis worldwide – and notably in Turkey. Most important, almost all claims in Turkey by Iraqis whose asylum files had been suspended between 2003 and 2006 were recognized as legitimate and in 2007 recognition rate for the Iraqis applying for refugee status increased to 100 per cent.

COMMUNALISM

The Geneva Convention of 1951 defines a refugee as a person who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted, ‘for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwill-ing to avail himself of the protection of that country’ (UNHCR 2011). Today this definition is widely considered to require revision in a world in which economic and political pressures are often combined and new types of refu-geehood have emerged. This is clear in the case of Iraqis.

One outcome of the Iraq crisis after 2003 was reinforcement of communal-ist networks (Danıs 2008a). Here ‘communalist’ suggests an extensive social network nourished by ties of kinship, of being from the same place of origin, of the same ethnic or sectarian affiliation. These networks are of prime impor-tance in the context of generalized violence. During the years of international sanctions, when the Ba’th regime proved incapable of providing adequate assistance to Iraqi citizens, people used familial and social relations to support basic needs. More recently these ties have embraced nepotism, stigmatization of ‘others’, mistrust and hostility among groups. One of my Iraqi informants in Istanbul argued that communalist ties have pros and cons:

[In Iraq] all the parties are communalist. If you talk about politics, if you approach some groups then you become the enemy of others … When there was gossip about me that I would marry an American citizen, because of my relatives, I received death threats; it happens in Iraq. People accuse you of being American, an American spy or a Christian. (Iraqi male asylum seeker, age 38, interview in Istanbul, 17 November 2009)

The pace of Iraqi emigration began to diminish after 2008. According to some researchers, this was related to the communalist agenda – the fulfilment of projects initiated by sectarian armed groups. Certain neighbourhoods that were once ‘mixed’ became homogeneous zones inhabited only by one group. Here, a decline in violence came at the cost of fragmentation of Iraqi society (Al-Tikriti 2008). Communalist relations became a means of support not only for those who remained in Iraq but also for exiles who wanted to establish a new life away from their homeland; some Iraqi exiles determined their migra-tion strategies according, in part, to their social capacities based on ethnic, religious or kinship ties. One result has been that different ethnic and reli-gious groups have different patterns of migration.


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IRAQIS IN TURKEY

Migration from Iraq to Turkey has been limited in comparison with movements to Syria or Jordan. According to a report published by UNHCR (2007), there were only 10,000 displaced Iraqis in Turkey. This is certainly an underestimate (see below) but reflects the influence of factors such as geographical distance, language differences (most Iraqis do not speak Turkish), the high cost of living in Turkey and the low number of humanitarian organizations working on refu-gee assistance – all disincentives for Iraqis contemplating exit. Most important, however, have been difficulties in obtaining residence permits.

Iraqis consider Turkey primarily as a transit country – a place to stay tempo-rarily in order to move to a third country. They do not have entitlements to permanent refugee status in Turkey: a geographical limitation clause in the 1951 Geneva Convention and the fact that a Settlement Law allows only foreign-ers of Turkish origin to obtain Turkish citizenship present major legal obstacles to permanent settlement, so that Iraqis perceive Turkey as a stepping stone to security in other states. With the exception of Iraqi Turkmen, who receive a more positive reception, Iraqis do not expect to stay permanently in the country. Legal structures keep them either in irregularity or push them to obtain tempo-rary status, which means that they must live in expectation of departure.

There are four groups of Iraqis in Turkey: irregular migrants, asylum seek-ers, cyclical migrants and residence permit-holders.

1. Irregular migrants

Iraqis have been the largest group of irregular migrants arrested by Turkish security forces. Almost 100,000 Iraqis constituted half of all those apprehended from Middle East and Asian countries and a fifth of all cases in Turkey between 1995 and 2004 (Apap et al. 2005: 34). According to information provided by the Foreigners’ Bureau, 96 per cent of Iraqis apprehended by Turkish Security Forces between 1995 and 2000 were arrested because of ‘illegal entry, exit or stay in Turkey’ (EGM 2001: 33).

A continuous increase in the numbers of Iraqis arrested by security forces until 2001 was followed by a sudden decrease in 2003, when only 3757 Iraqis were apprehended (Danıs 2008b). This decline was not pecu-liar to Turkey; Iraqi emigration in general had declined due to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and to general expectations in Iraq of a better future. Thus, in 2003, Iraqis lost their top ranking in the hierarchy of irregu-lar migrants and fell to third position behind Moldovans and Pakistanis. Despite increasing violence in Iraq, the number of irregular migrants has continued to decline.

2. Asylum seekers

Since the 1990s Iraqis and Iranians have constituted the two largest asylum seeker groups in Turkey. The totals have never been high – until 2002, Iraqi applications in Turkey amounted to only 3000 to 4000 cases each year ( Içduygu 2003: 23). Given the size of the total out-migration from Iraq, this is a low figure and this can partially be explained by the geographical limitation that Turkey maintains on the 1951 Geneva Convention (Kirisci 2000). Asylum procedures in Turkey are based on the Convention, ratified by the Turkish government with geographical and temporal limitations: i.e. restrictions on the government’s commitments in relation to ‘events occurring in Europe before


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8. For a terse account of debates relating to the temporal and spatial limitations of the Convention see Marfleet (2006).

January 1, 1951’ (the original wording of the Convention, which has caused much controversy).8 According to this limitation, the Turkish state’s legal obli-gations concerning refugees are applied only to persons who seek asylum as a result of events in Europe, so that non-Europeans cannot obtain permanent refugee protection in Turkey. In 1994, the government implemented a new regulation in view of developments that had seen Turkey become one of the most commonly used transit routes for migrants from Africa and Asia. Despite this, and the demands of the European Union, Turkey continues to maintain the geographical limitation.

The number of Iraqi irregular migrants arrested by police forces was for many years much higher than for Iraqis who made official asylum applica-tions – according to official sources, some 80,000 Iraqis were arrested between 1995 and 2001, while there were some 20,000 Iraqis seeking asylum in the same period, as seen in the table above. This wide discrepancy indicates the strong disinclination of Iraqis to enter asylum procedures, which were unlikely to produce positive outcomes. Another factor discouraging Iraqis from seek-ing asylum was the suspension of Iraqi cases in UNHCR offices between 2003 and 2006. After the invasion of 2003 many western countries post-poned the processing of cases until a political resolution could be achieved in Iraq. According to the UNHCR, in early 2006 only 2200 Iraqi asylum-seekers(people who had entered procedures for refugee status determination) were present in Turkey (Danıs and Bayraktar 2010: 19). The situation changed only in

Source: Apap et al. (2005: 34).

Table 2: Breakdown of irregular migrants arrested by Turkish security forces between 1995 and June 2004 by their nationalities.

1 Former Soviet republics: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.

2 Central Asian countries: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan.

Country Number of people arrested

Afghanistan 28,911

Bangladesh 13,418

Pakistan 28,442

Iran 22,199

Iraq 99,402

Syria 5018

North Africa 9397

Former Soviet Republics1 100,018

Central Asia2 6473

Albania 3988

Bulgaria 9111

Romania 19,067

Turkey 24,419

Others 107,986

Total 477,849


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March 2007, when US officials announced a new policy for Iraqis. Even though the Americans’ initial quota of 7000 refugees was far from satisfactory, it encouraged other states holding Iraqi files to adopt a more flexible approach.

With the UNHCR decision of 2006 Iraqis were finally accepted widely as refugees. This nonetheless limited de facto refugee status to central and south-ern governorates; when the policy was revised in 2009, five cities including the major centres of Kirkuk and Salahadin were included in the central provinces. Here there were high levels of conflict associated with tensions between Kurdish militias, local non-Kurdish organizations and Iraqi national forces, producing a series of displacements on a broad front described by the International Crisis Group as ‘a new trigger line’ (ICG 2009a, 2009b). One result was a significant increase in the number of Iraqis applying to the UNHCR Turkey bureau: by April 2009, 8315 Iraqis were registered (see table 4 below). At the same time, the composition of the Iraqi migration population in Turkey began to change. The combined effect of new conflicts in Iraq and the increased number of Iraqis

Source: Compiled from UNHCR statistics (UNHCR 2005).

Table 3: Asylum demands in Turkey from 1995 to 2005.

Iran Iraq Others Total

1994 1803 2475 179 4457

1995 935 2890 152 3977

1996 1552 2691 192 4435

1997 1484 3028 129 4641

1998 2206 4895 229 7330

1999 4221 2635 435 7309

2000 4185 2160 664 7019

2001 3708 1933 1034 6675

2002 2815 1128 388 4331

2003 3310 366 604 4280

2004 2064 954 916 3934

2005 1047 1717 1150 3914

Total 29,330 26,872 6072 62,302

File Person

Afghanistan 1199 3206

Iran 2375 4186

Iraq 4113 8315

Somali 714 1244

Others 907 1250

Total 9308 18,201

Source: UNHCR (2010).

Table 4: UNHCR-Turkey active work load, April 2009.


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accepted in the United States brought more Muslim refugees. Chaldaeans, with 60 per cent of the total, still made up the bulk of Iraqi asylum seekers registered by international organizations in Turkey but there was now a signifi-cant increase in the number of Sunni and Shi’a Arabs.

UNHCR recommendations of 2007 led to a new era for Iraqi refugees in Turkey. There soon emerged a division of work between international insti-tutions, civil society organizations and Turkish authorities in the manage-ment of Iraqis’ applications for asylum. This included the UNHCR office in Ankara and Istanbul, the Human Resource Development Foundation (IKGV), the International Catholic Immigration Commission (ICMC) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Although state administra-tion of migrant affairs is located in Ankara, Istanbul has become a hub for NGOs that provide legal and social support. These include Caritas, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, Amnesty International, the Asylum Seekers and Migrants Solidarity Association (SGDD), the Chaldean Assyrian Solidarity Association (KADER) and associations founded by Iraqi Turks, such as the Iraqi Turks Culture and Solidarity Association (ITKYD). One result of more efficient bureaucratic processes is that Iraqi refugees now remain in Turkey for much shorter periods. While in Turkey, they are placed officially in ‘satellite cities’ – Anatolian towns assigned by the Interior Ministry for temporary residence of registered asylum seekers and refugees.

3. Cyclical migrants/‘suitcase traders’

While the overall size of irregular migration of Iraqis to Turkey seemed to decline after 2003, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of persons officially entering the country. This sudden upsurge is related to the liberalization of the passport regime in Iraq and has had implications for increasing economic transactions between Turkey and Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, when departures from Iraq soared due to worsening economic conditions, Ba’thist leaders looked for new policies to inhibit emigration. One of the methods was to oblige professionals, mainly doctors and engineers, to deposit a large sum of money in Iraq to pay for tourist visas with the aim of ensuring their return (Hiro 2003: 15). After 2003, procedures for obtaining visas were simplified and guarantee payments were removed. Consequently, while the number of Iraqis who entered Turkey before 2003 was less than 20,000 annually, it increased to 111,000 in 2004 and to 250,000 in 2008.

Changing commercial relations between Iraq and Turkey have also been important. The Iraqi market, which was abandoned in 1991 as a result of the instability in the country, has become a significant target for Turkish business-men. After 2003, while Turkish entrepreneurs resumed business in Iraq, Iraqi merchants began to participate in greater numbers in bavul ticareti (a Turkish expression that literally means ‘suitcase trade’ denoting exportation of Turkish goods). This economic activity started in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The appetite for consumption in the Soviet bloc, repressed for so long under communist regimes, was met by traders who shuttled between their countries and Turkey. Due to the frequency of their movements they were often described as ‘cyclical migrants’. The production and trade of goods in the market areas of Istanbul such as Laleli, Osmanbey and Merter attracted shuttle traders from states of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa (Aslan and Pérouse 2003). Iraqi Turkmen played an important role in these exchanges. Thanks to their linguist assets – knowledge of Turkish


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and Arabic – they were soon among an important group at work in Laleli and Osmanbey. According to my informants in Istanbul, commerce with Iraq started in 1996–1997, although international sanctions at first restricted trade. Since 2003, there has been a boom in business with Iraq, facilitated by easier access to passports in Iraq and a radical reduction in controls on imports and exports. ‘Suitcase’ trading has increased the number of Iraqi cyclical migrants entering Turkey by legal channels. This commercial activity relies on the pres-ence of legal residents, who are mostly made up of Turkmen.

4. Legal residents

Iraqis in this group are exclusively Turkmen who had once been migrants but have acquired long-term residence permits or Turkish citizenship. They are naturalized thanks to the 1934 Law of Settlement, which was revised in 2006, with minor changes. It states that only persons of ‘Turkish descent and culture’ have the right to settle in Turkey. Until the 1990s there was a long tradition of Turkmen migration to Turkey for educational purposes. Most Turkmen studying in Turkey did not intend to remain there – but serious political and social problems in Iraq after the Gulf War led many to do so. Soydaslık/ethnic brotherhood provided Turkmen easy access to Turkish citizenship and their educational credentials and their families’ financial support (most came from relatively well-off Iraqi families) facilitated adjustment to Turkish society. There are no official data about the size of this group but an indication is provided by discussions associated with out-of-country voting in the Iraqi parliamentary election of January 2005, for which more than 280,000 expatriates were registered in fourteen countries. Only

Source: Danıs and Bayraktar (2010: 23).

Table 5: Iraqis entering Turkey during 1990–2008.

1990 15,473

1991 3859

1992 12,664

1993 12,085

1994 15,045

1995 14,381

1996 13,558

1997 17,574

1998 18,277

1999 17,591

2000 20,759

2001 16,378

2002 15,765

2003 24,727

2004 111,475

2005 107,968

2006 123,118

2007 180,217

2008 250,130


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4178 Iraqis were registered to vote in Turkey – a figure hotly debated in Turkish newspapers. According to Turkish media estimates there were at least 40,000 Iraqi Turkmen in the country. The former head of ITKYD has repudiated this estimation, claiming that the correct figure is 7000 to 10,000 in Turkey, of whom 5000 to 7000 are in Istanbul (Danıs et al. 2009: 508–10).

Turkmen migration has continued because of the incessant oppression and violence faced by their communities in Iraq (Duman 2010). The welcom-ing attitude towards Turkmen in Turkey has begun to change, however. Even though the Settlement Law facilitates residence and citizenship procedures for Turkmen, in practice it has become increasingly difficult to obtain legal documentation. This is associated with the changes in Turkey’s foreign policy towards Iraq, where the presence of Turkmen has become an important tool for Turkish authorities in their efforts to express concern about coercion of minorities. As the government in Ankara has prioritized the well-being of the Turkish population in Iraq it has been more reluctant to allow Turkmen to settle in Turkey. This pattern is also consistent with the greater reluctance of the Turkish government to accommodate other ‘ethnic brothers’ such as ethnic Turks from the Balkans and central Asia (Danıs and Parla 2009).

WHY ISTANBUL?

For Iraqi Turkmen the existence of historical, cultural and commercial links, and the presence of Turkmen associations and of relatives and acquaintances in Istanbul, draw them to Turkey and assist them in processes of integration (Bayraktar 2008). For other Iraqis migration to Turkey presents many prob-lems – of language and culture, and in terms of expense, as travel to Turkish cities is much more costly than to Damascus or Amman. Why then do increased numbers of Iraqis move to Turkey?

A key issue is the widespread belief among Iraqis that applications for refugee status and family reunification are more rapidly and more favourably processed in Turkey. In the words of a UNHCR official, those reaching Turkey are seen ‘as (having) passed a kind of natural screening’. This belief is proba-bly related to acceptance rates that reached 100 per cent after 2007. Officials to whom I spoke during research also observed that Iraqis who came to Turkey after this date were ‘above the rest in the economic sense’ and ‘people who can meet certain guarantees’, with the result that they achieved acceptance more readily than those applying elsewhere. In my interviews I observed that applicants reaching Turkey, and especially those reaching Istanbul, were indeed of higher socio-economic status than those travelling from Iraq to some other destinations in the Middle East. With tickets for air travel from Baghdad to Istanbul priced at $700 to $800, the costs for a family are substan-tial and those who leave Iraq by this means have some assets or at least have means of mobilizing resources. Viewed from this angle, Istanbul functions as a filter for western countries that wish to choose people who are economically and socially ‘appropriate’ for consideration as refugees.

Istanbul has also been an important destination for Iraqis wishing to apply for family reunification programmes, notably those operated by Australia and Canada. Before 2007, when asylum applications from Iraq were suspended, reunification was one of the few means by which Iraqis could settle legally in the West and was used systematically, especially by Iraqi Christians. A further important factor for choosing Istanbul is the development there of extensive social networks supporting Iraqi migrants. For decades Iraqis who moved to


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Istanbul established solidarity networks involving relatives and friends. Even those who stayed briefly in Istanbul engaged in dissemination of information that assisted new arrivals and facilitated further migration. Such networks have been influenced strongly by ethnic and religious affiliation, so that ethno-religious fragmentation that begins in Iraq continues in the process of migration.

Certain neighbourhoods in Istanbul are identified with specific Iraqi communities. In the Fatih-Aksaray area there is a concentration of Iraqi Turkmen; here too are the offices of five Turkmen associations. Kurtulus-Harbiye is favoured by Iraqi Christians; the Catholic charity Caritas, which provides legal assistance for refugees, has its office in the area. A central quar-ter, Kurtulus-Harbiye has a cosmopolitan character: here there are also other non-Muslim groups, cheap accommodation and the opportunity to remain ‘invisible’ to the authorities. Many residents are Kurds displaced from south-eastern Anatolia whose presence creates a familiar social environment for the Iraqis. Osmanbey-Sisli is the location for export-oriented textile shops; here young Turkmen work in the stores as sales people for Arab customers, living nearby in areas such as Feriköy and Sisli.

CONCLUSION

Patterns of Iraqi migration to Turkey have been complex. They reflect the changing circumstances in Iraq, in the international environment in which refugees move and in Turkey – including changes in Turkish domestic and foreign policy. Unlike most other states of the Middle East in which Iraqis seek security, Turkey has not provided a regime of ‘tolerance’ under which Iraqis are accepted, albeit as ‘guests’ or ‘visitors’. Many Iraqis have been apprehended as illegal migrants and relatively few have entered asylum procedures. But changes in international policy vis-à-vis Iraq, especially those undertaken in the United States, have prompted greater interest in Turkey as a transit country. As more Iraqis enter Turkey, patterns of communalist support are becoming more evident, as solidarity networks develop to serve specific migrant interests. It is increasingly clear that ethnic affiliations associ-ated with conflict in Iraq are also operating to provide solidarity and support for those who find themselves in exile.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is based on research conducted in the framework of collective work on Iraqi migration patterns coordinated by Geraldine Chatelard and Philip Marfleet. I would like to express my gratitude to the research coordi-nators and also to my assistants Damla Bayraktar, Emin Salihi and Gül Çatır. The research was supported by ORSAM (Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies), and this article draws on a report published by the same institute in 2010, under the title Away From Iraq: Post 2003 Iraqi Migration to Neighboring Countries and to Turkey. We had a chance to exchange our ideas thanks to Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS), who sponsored a panel at the conference Future of Iraq: Social, Economic and Political Issues in Question that took place in 16–17 January 2010 in Beirut. I am grateful to all these insti-tutions that made possible the realization of this research. Finally I would like to express my gratitude to Philip Marfleet, who did thorough and rigorous editing of the article.


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SUGGESTED CITATION

Danis , D. (2011), ‘Changing fortunes: Iraqi refugees in Turkey’, International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 5: 2, pp. 199–213, doi: 10.1386/ijcis.5.2.213_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS

Didem Danıs teaches sociology at Galatasaray University, Istanbul. She received her doctorate from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, having researched social networks of Iraqi transit migrants in Istanbul. Her two main research areas are international migration and urban sociology. Recent publications include ‘Integration in Limbo: Iraqi, Afghan and Maghrebi Migrants in Istanbul’(2009) and Beyond Integration: Migration and Modes of Migrancy from Turkey to France’ (2008).

Contact: Galataray University, Sociology Department, Ciragan Cad. No.36, 34357 Ortakoy, Istanbul, Turkey.E-mail: [email protected]


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