Statements

SYKP: With EU funding, Turkey is making immigrants' lives a nightmare!

PI Member SYKP on the EU-Turkey refugee deal and the recent attacks against refugees in Turkey.
The European Union signed a "migration agreement" with Turkey on March 18, 2016, to stop millions of immigrants, mainly people from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, who want to migrate to Europe from Turkey. The agreement stipulates that all immigrants who reached Greece by land or sea via Turkey will be returned to Turkey and held in Turkey.
The European Union signed a "migration agreement" with Turkey on March 18, 2016, to stop millions of immigrants, mainly people from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, who want to migrate to Europe from Turkey. The agreement stipulates that all immigrants who reached Greece by land or sea via Turkey will be returned to Turkey and held in Turkey.

Under this agreement, the European Union has pledged six billion euros to Turkey to finance projects developed for Syrian refugees and has paid most of it. In the June 2021 negotiations, the agreement was extended to 2024 and it was decided to transfer 3.5 billion euros to Turkey.

So, who are these people from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who want to emigrate to Europe via Turkey and risk death to do so? Why are they risking death and emigrating in the first place?

The U.S.-led "coalition forces," including European countries such as Germany, France, Belgium, and England, have been waging a proxy war in Syria against Russia and Iran for 10 years. As a result of the civil war that began in Syria in 2011, 10 million of the 24 million Syrians have had to leave their homes, villages, towns, and most of them their country. According to official figures, 3.5 million of the six million Syrians who have emigrated abroad (many researchers claim that this number has reached 4.5 million) have sought refuge in Turkey.

In the same way, due to NATO's Afghanistan mission, which started with the "Green Belt" project against the Soviet Union but took a new character since 2001, hundreds of thousands of Afghans died and millions of them fell on the escape routes.

Millions of people fleeing from the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the bloodiest regions of the new imperialist wars of redivision, use Turkey as a bridge to Europe. On the one hand, EU imperialism maintains trade agreements with the occupation, colonialism and reactionary dictators that cause migration, on the other hand, it tries to prevent the passage of people who just want to live to Europe at any cost.

The EU's inhumane agreement to keep immigrants in Turkey, combined with the Turkish government's racist policies, is becoming a nightmare for immigrants. Almost every day an immigrant neighborhood, a house, a workplace is burned down, immigrants are lynched and killed.

Finally, the neighborhoods where immigrants live in the Altındağ district of the capital Ankara were attacked by racists who had gathered from all over the city under the supervision of the police. The migrants' houses, workplaces and vehicles were burned, destroyed, and looted; among them many were injured.

The AKP-MHP government, which spends the funds it receives from the EU not to ease the lives of refugees but to fill the coffers of its supporters, uses anti-immigration and racism to maintain chaos in the country. It pushes migrants into the labor market as cheap labor and threatens workers with unemployment. The government uses them as an instrument of its racist, sexist, sectarian fundamentalist oppression of Kurds, Alevis and women.

The Turkish state and Erdogan government develop racism, hatred, and attacks against migrants in the country because of the dirty immigration agreement with the EU and the financial support they receive! The EU finances, Turkey makes the life of immigrants a nightmare!

We call on the workers of Europe to raise their voices against the colonial, imperialist and anti-immigrant policies of the European governments and states and to take measures so that the taxes they pay are not used to finance the anti-immigrant and racist system in Turkey.

Socialist Re-foundation Party - SYKP (Turkey)
European Coordination

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Date
17.08.2021
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