Ruken Tuncel/JINHA

ISTANBUL – After President told, “We may grant citizenship to Syrian refugees.” verbal attacks against Syrian refugees began on social media. As the specialists who carry out works on the rights of refugees, interpret the attacks as racist, they point out that Turkey should grant refugee status to Syrian refugees before citizenship.

After the announcement of President Tayyip Erdogan about granting citizenship to Syrian refugees on July 2 in Kilis, the hashtag #ÜlkemdeSuryieliIstemiyorum (I don’t want Syrians in my country) began trending on Twitter. Well, while the government doesn’t even want to open the border to these people fleeing from war and doesn’t grant refugee status to these people, what is it changing its mind? We talked to the specialists who carry out works on the immigration and refugee rights. Their commun opinion is; first discussing on integration policies and then putting agenda the granting citizenship to refugees.

Anthropologist and founder member of Hamiş Syrian Culture Center, Şenay Özden, criticized the society’s criticism on the government reveals over the refugees. She evaluated no reaction come to the Twitter hashtag as shame. Şenay stated that the hashtag #ÜlkemdeSuryieliIstemiyorum (I don’t want Syrians in my country) is a racist and xenophobic hashtag. Şenay said, “The people should understand that they shouldn’t critize refugees while they want to critize the government. They should know that what they did is racism not critizing the government.”

Şenay addressed the announcement of President Tayyip Erdogan about granting citizenship to Syrian refugees and she said, “We discuss grating citizenship without knowing the conditions for granting citizenship. They cannot grant citizenship to 3 million people in one day. Syrian people are rational like us. They will vote for people who defend their interests. There isn’t a paragraph “You should vote for the AKP” while naturalization contract signing. If the people, who began this hashtag, haven’t been able to develop a policy for five years except for protesting the refugees, what they do is racism. I checked the accounts that share this hashtag. All these accounts stand against Kurds, Armenians and Arabs. They will stand against all people they meet.”

Dr. Cavidan Soykan from Human Rights Center of Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, meanwhile, said; they have carried out works and they are aware of that there is xenophobia that can turn into racism in Turkey. There are reactions against Syrian people in many cities and they have warned that many times. Cavidan said, “We advocate the integration policy as human rights defenders and Association for Solidarity with Refugees. Turkey should grant refugee status to Syrian refugees; their rights should be recognized in the legal system and as a continuation of the integration policy should aim to citizenship in the long run. And everything should be well planned. For example; these people have language problem. They haven’t been provided full access to business world yet. There are serious problems in their education life. Education, health, work life and cultural adaptation policy should be thought as a whole; the citizenhip should be thought as a step of all these.”

Assoc. Dr. Deniz Şenol Sert, who carries out works on migration and immigration policies after war, made evaluations on this issue. Discoursing about “granting citizenship” isn’t a right while these refugees haven’t been granted refugee status. This discourse caused a hashtag #ÜlkemdeSuryieliIstemiyorum (I don’t want Syrians in my country) began on Twitter. This issue has a serious importance. You cannot say “We said and this happened”. We should consider this issue comprehensive. One can be granted citizenship when one person live in this country for five years and can speak in Turkish at a certain level. There is a law like that. We should solve these people problems not talking about granting citizenship to these people.”

(mg/gd)