“We will encourage Syrians to return to their countries,” Erdogan said Saturday during a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s Central Decision and Management Board (MKYK).
“We will definitely deport the criminals” and take “new steps” to alleviate growing concerns among Turkey’s citizens about Syrian refugees, he added.
Turkey’s Immigration Office, which falls under the Interior Ministry, says there are currently 3,644,342 Syrian refugees in Turkey who fled Syria’s protracted civil war.
“We had to open our doors to the Syrians. We couldn’t ignore it. We took care of them,” Erdogan said.
However, he is now calling for a mechanism to encourage the voluntarily return of refugees to Syria.
Under strict new measures, Erdogan will abolish free health services for Syrians, forcing them to pay as Turks do, a move that will increase the financial burden on refugees.
Syrian refugees in Turkey face numerous challenges, including poverty, which worsened last year with Ankara’s economic woes. Children, in particular, are vulnerable to discrimination and a lack of educational opportunities, according to the UN.
Polling agencies close to the AKP say the party may have lost Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, and Antalya in this year’s municipal election partly because of Erdogan’s lenient policies towards Syrian refugees.
Since the Turkish military launched the Euphrates Shield and the Olive Branch operations in Syria, around 330,000 Syrians have returned home.
“After the resolution of Manbij and East of Euphrates issues, this figure will reach millions,” Erdogan told an AKP parliamentary meeting in early July, referring to Ankara’s quarrel with Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria.
More than half of all Syrians have been displaced at least once during the eight-year conflict, many fleeing to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. But with neighboring countries creaking under the strain of these massive refugee populations, there are growing calls to send these families back.
In the first six months of 2019 alone, some 79,886 Syrians used the Cilvegozu Border Crossing in southern Hatay province to return to Syria, according to Turkish state media agency Anadolu.
Rudaw English has contacted the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) office in Turkey for comment on Erdogan’s new policy, but is yet to receive a response.
Related: Xenophobia troublesome reality for Syrian and Turkish youth in Turkey
A violent attack on Syrian businesses in Istanbul in early July shed light on the divisions in Turkish society over the continued presence of refugees.
Syrian refugees come under similar pressure to leave in Jordan and Lebanon, according to rights groups.
Human Rights Watch in early June condemned Lebanon’s order for Syrian refugees to demolish their hard shelters, branding it as tantamount to “illegitimate pressure” to return to their war-torn country.
At least 1.5 million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since 2011, many of them living in informal settlements in the country’s east.
Nearly a million are registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
“This crackdown on housing code violations should be seen for what it is, which is illegitimate pressure on Syrian refugees to leave Lebanon,” HRW refugee rights director Bill Frelick said. “Many of those affected have real reasons to fear returning to Syria, including arrests, torture and ill-treatment by Syrian intelligence branches.”
