By Yuksel Serdar Oguz
ANKARA
Turkey’s status as home to the world’s largest refugee population - created by the millions of Syrians who fled north to escape their country’s five-year civil war - is a burden that Ankara has embraced out of a sense of humanitarianism.
However, experts have told Anadolu Agency that the 2.8 million Syrians currently residing within Turkey’s borders offer beneficial opportunities for Turkey if they are integrated into society and the economy.
“With accurate, comprehensive and well-planned management of long-term migration policy by the Turkish authorities, Syrian refugees would have the potential to make a positive effect on social and economic life in Turkey,” Ozlem Eksi, an executive member of the Association For Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed, said.
The plight of Syria’s refugees in particular has gripped Europe since last year, when more than a million mostly Syrian refugees entered the EU, prompting political upheaval and threatening the basic tenets of the bloc such as open borders and the free movement of people.
The crisis was held at bay, from Europe’s viewpoint, by a deal for Turkey to accept “irregular migrants” that had crossed the Aegean Sea to Greece.
The agreement, which was aimed at undercutting the business model of unscrupulous people smugglers, came into effect at the beginning of April and has proved successful in slowing the flow of refugees making the perilous sea voyage to the Greek islands off Turkey’s western coast to a trickle.
As part of the agreement, the EU agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee for every failed asylum seeker returned to Turkey, as well as speed up Turkey’s EU accession process, offer relaxed visa regulations to Turkish nationals and provide billions of euros to help refugees in Turkey.
Although Ankara has stressed that its role in caring for Syrian refugees, as well as tens of thousands from other conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, has been motivated purely by humanitarian concerns, there could be tangible benefits to the influx.
“Turkey has implemented an open-door policy for refugees, showing an enormous generosity and that has been appreciated by the world since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011,” Eksi told Anadolu Agency.
In March, Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan said Turkey had spent more than $8 billion on refugees.
Invaluable resource
This stands in contrast to the $4.5 billion the UN’s refugee agency called for to aid Syrian refugees last year. Only $2.5 billion has been raised to date and Turkey has received a fraction of that funding.
Sociologist Yusuf Ekinci, of Ankara’s Yildirim Beyazit University, said Syrian labor could prove to be an invaluable resource for Turkey’s industrial and agricultural sectors.
“The refugees took shelter in Turkey during the first phase of the conflict and are now waiting for the refuge time to exceed five years to apply Turkish citizenship,” he said.
“Hence, the Ministry of Labor has made several regulations for the employment of Syrian refugees with an official status so Syrians can be naturalized and illicit work can be stifled.”
In January, Turkey took steps to ensure that Syrians who had been in the country for six months could work legally. Syrians are now allowed to make up to 10 percent of employees in any firm and are protected by minimum wage requirements.
This could see the informal labor market shrink further. In August, a World Bank policy paper noted the market had shrunk by almost 7 percentage points between 2011 and 2014.
Ekinci warned that failing to integrate refugees into the working population would mean they remain in unstable employment and are more likely to seek opportunities in Europe.
“This presumption implies risks for working and social life in Turkey” he added. These risks include price increases due to rising demand in Turkish cities where Syrian refugees are densely located and a destabilized labor market.
Muberra Emin, an education expert at the Ankara-based think tank SETA, said Turkey had the opportunity to save a “lost generation” of Syrian children traumatized by war. According to the Directorate General of Migration Management, there are more than a million Syrian child refugees in Turkey.
“Turkey should not approach refugees as guests but as individuals who can be permanent citizens in the near future,” Emin said. “The employment of Syrian refugees would integrate them into Turkey in peaceful and well-ordered conditions as well as preventing human trafficking to EU countries.”
She called for the education and work backgrounds of Syrians to be registered so they can be fully integrated into the work force. Turkey has introduced biometric identity cards for Syrians, but the attached microchip does not currently include details of previous employment or training.
Across Turkey’s 81 provinces, more than 300,000 Syrian children have received Turkish language courses, according to Education Ministry, and another 150,000 are expected to receive formal education up to the end of 2016.
“All of these efforts, implying a serious responsibility and burden for policy- and decision-makers, can finally bring results in the next 10 years with a strategic road map,” Emin told Anadolu Agency.
'Soft power'
Turkey’s huge refugee population offers another advantage according to Ozlem Cebi, a professor in international relations at Ankara’s Hacettepe University, namely enhancing Turkey’s role in the region and further afield.
It is exercising this “soft power” that benefits Turkey’s reputation, she said.
Cebi said Syrians currently in Turkey could cement ties between the neighbors whether they remain in the country or return to Syria.
“Therefore, refugees living in Turkey should be considered as potential envoys and the carriers of the future,” she said.
Turkey’s approach to the refugee crisis has also reinforced its relationship with EU states, particularly Germany, which took in the bulk of refugees in the EU last year.
“The EU has agreed that Turkey is an inevitable actor for the solution of the problems in the Middle East and Europe and has taken the initiative to proceed with visa-free travel and the opening of new chapters in Turkey’s EU accession bid,” Cebi said.
“One of the outputs of an efficient refugee policy [is] that Turkey's attitude towards refugees has enabled it to take firm stand against refugee hate crimes and the problems Muslims face in the EU.”
Time will tell whether Turkey can turn the plight of the Syrian refugees to their, and its, advantage but the rewards for both are too great to ignore.
