Turkey is violating human rights norms by “routinely pushing tens of thousands of Afghans back at its land border with Iran or deporting them directly to Afghanistan with little or no examination of their claims for international protection,” states Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a new report.
The 73-page report, released on Friday, November 18, is based on the interviews with 68 Afghans, most of whom experienced pushbacks and violence. HRW found that “Turkey has stepped up pushbacks and deportations to Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover there in August 2021.” HRW also reports that Afghans are being “blocked from registering for international protection and that Afghans facing imminent deportation are often given no opportunity to make refugee claims.”
“Turkey should immediately halt these routine pushbacks of Afghans from its borders and give all Afghans facing removal the opportunity to make refugee claims,” explained Bill Frelick, refugee and migrant rights director at HRW, in a press release that accompanied the report.
Turkey’s Interior Ministry reported that 238,448 “irregular migrants” were denied entry to Turkey in 2022. Most were Afghan, states the HRW report. It also says that Turkey reported deporting 44,768 Afghans directly to Afghanistan in the first eight months of 2022, a 150 percent increase compared to the same period in 2021.
According to HRW, Afghan men were particularly at risk of rights violation both at the border and inside Turkey. “None of the Afghan men interviewed who arrived in Turkey without their families since the Taliban takeover had been able to lodge applications for international protection at Provincial Directorate of Migration Management offices,” the organization states.
The report found that Turkish police and gendarmes have also arrested a number of “undocumented Afghans, and often coercing or deceiving them to sign so-called voluntary repatriation forms, then deporting them to Afghanistan. The Turkish government insists on maintaining the fiction that they are all voluntary returns.”
While Turkey stepped up its pushback of Afghan refugees at the border with Iran and direct deportation to Afghanistan, HRW said that the Taliban have “imposed severe restrictions across Afghanistan, carried out revenge killings and enforced disappearances of former government officials and security force personnel, detained and beaten journalists, summarily executed alleged Islamic State fighters, and failed to protect groups targeted for attack by the Islamic State, such as ethnic Hazaras.”
