For months, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the Turkish presidential
candidate who hopes this Sunday to finally unseat Recep Tayyip Erodgan, has
vowed to send
home millions of Syrians.
اضافة اعلان
Even after the first vote in mid-May suggested not quite enough
Turks were buying the rhetoric, he returned to his anti-migrant
theme.
“I am announcing it here,” he said the week after the election, “As soon as I
come to power, I will send [10 million] refugees' home. Period.”
Even while he was giving that speech, in Damascus, Bashar Al
Assad was preparing to fly to Riyadh, where he was readmitted
to the Arab League, a sign of impending normalization.
Reopening a sore subject
Viewed from Europe, the return of Assad to the Middle East fold
has multiple facets. But perhaps the most concerning is how it has reopened the
question of Syrian refugees.
Coupled with the increased anti-migrant rhetoric as the Turkish
election drew to a close, those two days in May have reopened what many in
Europe hoped would be a permanently frozen issue.
Jordan, Lebanon feels the strain of refugees
The return of Assad and the beginning of a path to normalization
doesn’t mean that the refugee issue will be immediately back on the table. But
part of the reason why Arab countries, particularly Jordan and Lebanon, were
interested in exploring normalization was that their countries are straining
under the weight of so many refugees.
The hope in Middle Eastern capitals is that Assad inside the
tent might bring about a solution that would allow some Syrians to go home,
thereby easing the burden.
Viewed from Europe, though, it means the weaponization of refugees is, once again, an option.
Viewed from Europe, though, it means the weaponization of
refugees is, once again, an option.
Certainly that is how Kilicdaroglu sees the Syrians within Turkey’s borders.
The number Kilicdaroglu quoted was perhaps exaggerated – the official number of
Syrian refugees
registered in the country is 3.6 million, although there are
likely to be many thousands more unregistered. But what his candidacy did was
drag the issue of Syrian refugees back to the very center of political
conversation.
Not a voluntary return
It’s often unremarked in the media quite how forceful
Kilicdaroglu’s proposed policy towards Syrian refugees would be. Kilicdaroglu
said he would normalize with Assad and immediately sign a deal that would send
millions of Syrians back.
And this return would not be voluntary, in the way Erdogan
has proposed. It would be a forced deportation, within two years – something
that remains illegal under international law.
More concerning though to European capitals is his suggestion
that he would demand further funds from the EU to pay for the return of
Syrians.
Some of what Kilicdaroglu was saying was, of course, political
rhetoric designed to win an election.
And when on Tuesday the third-placed presidential candidate
Sinan Ogan was pictured shaking hands with and endorsing
Erdogan, it certainly seems as if it is unlikely Kilicdaroglu will get
the chance to enact his policies.
Ogan came third in the presidential vote with just over 5
percent of the vote; if only some of his supporters turn out for Erdogan on Sunday,
the incumbent is likely to win.
But for Europe, that won’t be Kilicdaroglu’s legacy. Erdogan is
not a man who has repeatedly won by not sensing which
way the political wind is blowing.
If Kilicdaroglu could get nearly 45 percent of the vote on such
a staunchly anti-Syrian platform, then perhaps, he or his advisers will
calculate, there may be more negotiation room with the EU.
The hope in Middle Eastern capitals is that Assad inside the tent might bring about a solution that would allow some Syrians to go home, thereby easing the burden.
Perhaps the 2016
deal with the EU – which gave Ankara €6 billion in return for stopping
migrants crossing its territory into the EU – could be renegotiated, as
Kilicdaroglu had suggested.
Neither the renegotiation of the deal nor the weaponization of refugees will
happen overnight, if at all.
But what the return of Assad and the Turkish election have done
is create the conditions for new developments. And people in desperate
situations do not wait for events to overtake them.
For Turkish politicians to even talk about forcibly deporting
refugees, or the return of Assad presaging more pressure for Syrian refugees in
Lebanon, creates a collective hostile environment. And this is where Europe
most needs to be concerned. Because those refugees pushed out of the Middle
East will not all go back to Syria.
Certainly, some will. But six million Syrians have not spent
years displaced by choice; they desperately fear what might be waiting for them
in Syria, and, inevitably, they will do anything possible to avoid that fate.
Which means only one thing: a journey to Europe.
This is the political danger behind the hope that millions of
refugees could just stay frozen in limbo for years on end.
Part of why the Middle East finally agreed to normalize with
Assad was that the costs of inaction had simply become too great. And as
the February
earthquakes proved, as much as there are unexpected political events,
there are also unexpected “acts of God.”
The longer the limbo of Syrians continued, the more likely it
was that something would come along to disrupt it and begin another mass
movement of people. Now, that day has arrived.
Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on
the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international
TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the
BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia
and Africa. Twitter
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