Whoever wins, the refugees will lose

President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) did better than predicted in Sunday’s elections. The AKP is the largest party in the Turkish parliament and Erdoğan looks likely to win the presidential run-off on 28 May, to the disappointment of anyone who was hoping that his twenty-year rule might be approaching its end. For many of the four million Syrians living in Turkey, however, the results came as a relief. Erdoğan’s expected victory ‘gives them a sense of reassurance’, according to Ghazwan Koronful, a Syrian lawyer who lives in the Turkish port of Mersin.

More than 200,000 Syrians have been naturalised as Turkish citizens under Erdoğan’s government. One of them, Rana al-Masri, told me on Monday: ‘Yesterday I voted at 36, this was my first actual vote and it felt great.’ For those who have not been naturalised, the relief may be short-lived.

In the run-up to the election, the leading opposition candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, said repeatedly that he would deport all refugees within two years. My friend Muhammad, who left Syria in 2013, moved to Istanbul after the earthquake on 6 February destroyed his home in southern Turkey. He put it succintly: ‘KK’s campaign only focused on the rising price of onions and the plan to kick out the refugees.’

The far-right Nationalist Movement Party exceeded expectations, winning fifty parliamentary seats with 10 per cent of the vote. It has been allied with the AKP (as the ‘People’s Alliance’) since 2018 and backs Erdoğan for the presidency. The third-placed presidential contender, Sinan Oğan, took 5 per cent of the vote after attacking from the right on immigration. His ‘Ancestral Alliance’ of far-right parties was vocal in vowing to expel all refugees and he is now seen as the kingmaker in the run-off. He hasn’t yet come out in favour of either candidate but said on Monday that his ‘red lines’ are ‘the fight against terrorism’ (a dig at Kılıçdaroğlu’s support for Kurdish rights) and ‘sending refugees back’.

Tanju Özcan, the outspoken mayor of Bolu, who is temporarily suspended from Kılıçdaroğlu’s party, tweeted yesterday: ‘Those saying the refugees should remain will vote for RTE, those saying they should go will vote for KK. As I sent them away, Mr Kemal will also send them away!’ But the dichotomy he presents is false: blaming the country’s problems on refugees is no longer partisan.

Shortly before the election, Erdoğan condemned the opposition’s plan to expel Syrian refugees as ‘inhuman’ and ‘un-Islamic’, but he had previously unveiled a plan of his own to send a million refugees back to Syria. A nationwide survey in 2021 found ‘a significant decrease in social acceptance’ of refugees ‘and an increase in concerns’ across Turkish society. The government has gradually limited freedom of movement for Syrian refugees, and last year began forcibly deporting hundreds of them. Erdoğan is pursuing normalisation with the Assad regime while at the same time deepening the Turkish presence in northern Syria. Having entered the election trailing in the polls, if he wins he is likely to step up restrictions on refugees and further accelerate returns.

Given all this, there is a renewed focus for Syrians to get out while they still can. Majid, who fled military conscription in Syria and now works at a restaurant in Istanbul, is planning his escape route. ‘Whether Erdoğan wins or not,’ he said, ‘Syrians will migrate to Europe because the economic and political situation is not for us any more.’