More and more people are forced to flee due to ecological destruction, wars, social collapse and poverty which are caused by capitalism. In places where these people migrate for a better life, the immigrant question is becoming a fundamental problem. As the war in Syria is entering its 8th year, close to four million immigrants from Syria are living in Turkey now and Turkey has become the leading country that this problem is lived in all its intensity. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan and Africa are already living in Turkey. Most of these immigrants have arrived Turkey with the hope of reaching Europe where they would have safety and humane living conditions. However, immigrants are stuck in this country due to the agreement between the EU and Turkey on the resettlement of refugees back to Turkey and the strengthening of the institutions like Frontex. Eventually many immigrants have established their lives here. Nevertheless they are still subject to severe abuse and exploitation in Turkey. The majority of the immigrants are working under the table below the minimum wage – and that is if they can find a job. Lacking any legal status, many immigrants are excluded from health and education services. Without doubt under these conditions the suffering of especially the women and children immigrants is the most severe. Syrian women are disadvantaged in the job market compared to men. They are vulnerable to sexual abuses and assaults and in numerous cases women immigrants are sold to rich men as slaves.
Today, the Syrian immigrants in Turkey are faced with a wave of violence and oppression fed by an escalating animosity. It appears that the new government policy towards the Syrian immigrants is deportation. Both the government and the so-called opposition party politicians are feeding into anti-Syrian racist feelings in word and deed, meanwhile attacks on the Syrian neighborhoods to the point of lynching and looting are increasing. This is not a coincidence. Provocative pogroms carried out by racist groups are an indication of both the collapse of the Turkish policy towards the immigrants and an indication of the new deportation policy. While the government initiated an intense deportation policy, AKP, CHP (the main Kemalist opposition party), MHP (the major Turkish fascist party, pro-AKP) and IYIP (a second Turkish racist party which is more secular and allied with the CHP) are in a race of racism with each other. The anti-immigrant consensus established during the last local elections, coupled with CHP municipalities’ (CHP holds most municipalities in the Aegean and Mediterranean coastal towns) bans on Syrian’s access to the beaches or their actions such as cutting social aids going to the immigrants clearly shows that all the parties of order are in unison in this anti-immigrant policy. This inhuman plan to deport people to Syria where war still rages on is at the same time the product of the European States’ bribe agreement with Turkey, which they called as “readmitting agreement”.
The events of the last couple of months already provided plenty of evidences of this racist attack on immigrants and the recent increase in the news of mass deportation calls for us to urgent action. Recently there are alarmingly increasing number of news about closures of workplaces owned by Syrians, oppressions and heavy fines against shops with Arabic signs in several towns. Especially in Istanbul, news and images are circulating in the social media about Syrians arrested in massive numbers and forced to sign a “voluntary return” paper by the police after which they are deported from Turkey. Since the war is still going on in Syria, the regime is forcing immigrants to sign “voluntary return” papers in order to deport them and this practice is used by the government for arbitrary deportations for a while now. However, especially since mid-July it is reported that this practice has been implemented massively that the police almost began a “Syrian hunt” in Istanbul and that Syrians are deported to regions in Syria like Idlib where the civil war still continues with certain excuses.
We cannot allow capitalists and politicians who serve them to force the Syrians pay the price of wars for which they are not responsible. We cannot watch idly by while Syrians are pushed into imperialist war zones where they face death and destruction.
We have to persistently explain that the real enemy is capitalism: it is capitalism that is responsible for the current economic crises, wars, the ecological crisis and other social problems and not the Syrians. We have to struggle against all these together, otherwise we are faced with extinction as a species. We have to struggle together with all the immigrants in order to create humane living conditions for all and against inhumane treatment that the immigrants receive here.
We have to raise the struggle together with our European comrades in for the cancelation of the readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey, and in order to secure the opening of the borders for everyone so that everyone can settle wherever they feel happier and safer.
We call on all our friend and comrades all around the world, who are struggling for a world without borders: let’s raise our voices together against the hypocritical policies of Turkey and the EU states against the Syrian immigrants. Don’t let our states to send the victims of wars back into the middle of the same chaos that is triggered by our own states.
Solidarity with immigrants! For a world without border!
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