ISTANBUL— As refugees try to use a land route from Turkey as an alternate way into the European Union, Ankara has begun enforcing long-dormant rules on Syrians’ travel, in part over concerns about how the flow is affecting the country’s image, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press and interviews with officials and migrants.
So far the moves appear ad hoc and aimed only at preventing refugees from reaching the Turkish frontier city of Edirne, where hundreds are staging a sit-in near the Greek border. But one academic said it was a sign of a more-determined effort by Turkey to get a handle on the country’s massive refugee population.
“In the case of Syrians, this is the first time they are trying to be strict on movement,” said Ahmet Icduygu, who directs the Migration Research Center at Istanbul’s Koc University. “They’re clamping down.”
The one-page Interior Ministry document, dated Aug. 29, says officials consider that “Syrians who are trying to go to third countries through our country illegally are posing a threat to public order and public security and are negatively affecting our country’s image internationally.”
It orders checks on Syrians’ documents at the entrance and exit to each province and asks law enforcement to tell transport companies that Syrians are not allowed to leave the provinces where they have registered without permission. The document only refers to Syrians, who constitute the overwhelming majority of Turkey’s roughly 2 million refugees.
The effect of the order, whose authenticity was confirmed by two government officials, was that hundreds of Syrians who tried to reach Edirne to join their fellows last week found themselves stuck for days just outside a sprawling bus terminal in Esenler on the European side of Istanbul.
Hundreds of people, most of them Syrian, camped for days in and around a nearby mosque, many sleeping rough behind a cordon of police in riot gear.
