Turkish authorities arbitrarily arrested, detained, and deported hundreds of Syrian refugee men and boys to Syria between February and July 2022, Human Rights Watch said today.

Deported Syrians told Human Rights Watch that Turkish officials arrested them in their homes, workplaces, and on the street, detained them in poor conditions, beat and abused most of them, forced them to sign voluntary return forms, drove them to border crossing points with northern Syria, and forced them across at gunpoint.

“In violation of international law, Turkish authorities have rounded up hundreds of Syrian refugees, even unaccompanied children, and forced them back to northern Syria,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Although Turkey provided temporary protection to 3.6 million Syrian refugees, it now looks like Turkey is trying to make northern Syria a refugee dumping ground.”

Recent signs from Turkey and other governments indicate that they are considering normalizing relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In May 2022, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey announced that he intends to resettle one million refugees in northern Syria, in areas not controlled by the government, even though Syria remains unsafe for returning refugees. Many of those returned are from government-controlled areas, but even if they could reach them, the Syrian government is the same one that produced over six million refugees and committed grave human rights violations against its own citizens even before uprisings began.

The deportations provide a stark counterpoint to Turkey’s record of generosity as host to more refugees than any other country in the world and almost four times as many as the whole European Union (EU), for which the EU has provided billions of Euros in funding for humanitarian support and migration management.

"Turkey is bound by treaty and customary international law to respect the principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits the return of anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or other ill-treatment, or a threat to life. Turkey must not coerce people into returning to places where they face serious harm. Turkey should protect the basic rights of all Syrians, regardless of where they are registered, and should not deport refugees who are living and working in a city other than where their temporary protection ID and address are registered."

“The EU and its member states should acknowledge that Turkey does not meet its criteria for a safe third country and suspend its funding of migration detention and border controls until forced deportations cease,” Hardman said. “Declaring Turkey a ‘safe third country’ is inconsistent with the scale of deportations of Syrian refugees to northern Syria. Member states should not make this determination and should focus on relocating asylum seekers by increasing resettlement numbers.”