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Immigration to Turkey
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Turkey is a country shaped and defined by immigration. Since the 19th century, an exodus by the large portion of Turkish (Turkic) and Muslim peoples (who are termed "Muhacir" under a general definition) from the Balkans (Balkan Turks, Albanians, Bosniaks), Caucasus (Abkhazians, Ajarians, 'Circassians', Chechens), Crimea (Crimean Tatar diaspora), Crete (Cretan Turks), Central Asia and even Africa took refuge in present-day Turkey and moulded the country's fundamental features.[1] Trends of immigration towards Turkey continues to this day, although the motives are more varied and are usually in line with the patterns of global immigration movements.
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According to figures provided by Ankara office of the UN High Comissionner for Refugees, a total of 32,832 people are recorded as having made a valid asylum application in Turkey since 1998. Of these, 3900 Iranians and 2200 Iraqis, 400 Somalians and 300 Afghans are still in the country, while an additional 1400 Chechens, who are in a "refugee-like situation", are deemed of concern. [2]
The anti-war movement Savaş Karşıtları, citing the left-wing newspaper BirGün, gives the number of illegal immigrants apprehended in Turkey in the last ten years as 580,000, with a marked decrease (by almost one third) apparent in the last three years. According to the same source, among the fifteen known immigration routes across the Middle East to southern Europe, only two or three still has a Turkey connection. [3]
In the meantime, the Iraq War seriously aggravated the illegal immigration problem in Turkey, with the global parties directly involved often extending a lesser helping hand than Turkey itself to resolve the precarious situation of immigrants stranded in passage. [4]
- ^ In this context, particular cases of immigration from Europe can also be cited. The most obvious examples are, the Sephardic Jews given refuge mainly in the 16th century with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (as well as before and afterwards), whose descendants form the core of the community of Jews in Turkey today; and the village of Polonezköy in İstanbul, founded in 1881 by Polish settlers who, after the Crimean War, did not wish to return to Poland, occupied by foreign powers at the time. There are other more curious cases on which more detailed research needs to be done to establish a sound basis. One is the case of Hungarians claimed to have taken refuge in Gebze in early 19th century, and whose descendants might be among the inhabitants of Gebiz municipality depending Serik district in Antalya Province (see Karapinar). Yet another concerns various claims relating Vendéens, especially of Cholet, who would have been accorded asylum by the sultan Abdülhamid I after the Revolt in the Vendée and settled in various Turkish provinces. On a more ascertainable basis, there were several thousand Cossacks in Turkey for two centuries, near Manyas and Akşehir, until 1962, when they were repatriated to Russia.
- ^ UNHCR Ankara Office. UNHCR has four offices in Turkey; namely Ankara, İstanbul, Van and Silopi.
- ^ Savaş Karşıtları, 18 September 2006 (in Turkish). The numbers of apprehended illegals per year was; 11,362 in 1995, 18,804 in 1996, about 29,000 in 1997 and 1998, 47,529 in 1999, 94,514 in 2000 with a decreasing trend since: 92,364 in 2001, 82,825 in 2002, 56,219 in 2003.
- ^ Iraq's Christians on the run (in German)