On the evening of June 30, fascist mobs and
lynch mobs, provoked by the news that a child was sexually abused by a Syrian
man in Kayseri, attacked neighborhoods where Syrians live, burned vehicles and
houses, and looted businesses. The day after the attacks in Kayseri, many
migrants were injured in the attacks that continued in Hatay, Adana, Urfa,
Izmir, Bursa, Istanbul, Maraş, Konya and Antep; the excuse was used that
jihadist groups with whom Turkey has maintained its occupation of Afrin, Tel
Abyad and Al Bab in Syria, were now attacking the Turkish army there. The
racist attacks were most intense on July 3 in Serik, Antalya, when Hasan Khalid
Al Nayif, an unaccompanied Syrian child worker, was seriously injured and Ahmed
Hamdan Al Naif, another unaccompanied child worker, was killed. While all this
was happening, the government, which is responsible for protecting the lives of
migrants, ensuring their safety and taking measures against attacks, remained
silent and failed to fulfill its duties. Unable to go out to buy food or meet other
basic needs, or even to go to work or to the hospital, numerous Syrians have
been locked in their homes in great anxiety.
On July 4, Syrians' concerns were further
heightened when their personal data, identity and passport data was shared on a
messaging platform where people were preparing to attack Syrians. The
Directorate of Migration Management, which is responsible for keeping, storing,
protecting and updating the data, and which deports migrants directly without
any justification if they do not update their data, has only said that "we
are investigating how the data was leaked". As of today, there is still no
satisfactory explanation. On the other hand, when migrants filed complaints
about the attacks they suffered, the statements of the attackers were taken as fact,
racist attacks were treated as judicial cases and a "restriction
code" was assigned to them, even if they were migrants who had been harmed.
The restriction codes constitute the basis for direct referral to refoulement
by law enforcement. Therefore, access to justice for harmed migrants is also
blocked.
Of course, we see that those who create this
atmosphere of anxiety and fear and those who carry out the attacks have been
facilitated and patted on the back by the police, and that the regime of
impunity, which protects racist attackers no matter what, has become the norm;
from September 6-7, Çorum, Maraş and Sivas, which we commemorated just last
week. We also know that the history of the Turkish Republic is a history of
massacres carried out by gangs created by, supported by and rewarded with
impunity by the state itself.
As a result of the violent suppression of
protests against the Assad regime in Syria, the subsequent military and
political interventions of imperialist states in the country and the war Turkey
waged in Syria arm in arm with jihadists, millions of Syrians were forced to
seek refuge. The AKP-MHP government took part in the war against Damascus and
Rojava with jihadist gangs in order to grab a share of the imperialist
expansionist policy in the Middle East and to block the Kurdish people's
struggle for freedom. In 2016, in violation of the right to asylum enshrined in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Readmission Agreement was signed
with the European Union, turning Turkey into a migrant prison. Thus, in
addition to the consequences of Erdoğan's definition of Syrians with terms such
as "incar, muhajir, guest", which have no equivalent in international
law and do not impose any obligations on Turkey, Syrians' right to asylum was
officially "annulled". The way has been paved for the provision of
basic public services to migrants through EU and UN funds on a project basis,
with the understanding that "if there are funds, there are rights and
services, if there are no funds, there are no rights and services", in a
temporary, uncertain and hobbled manner. This situation has become such that
the Removal Centers (Geri Gönderme Merkezleri – GGMs), where those detained are frequently
subjected to torture and ill-treatment, where patriarchal violence is most
severe, and which lack independent supervision, were built with these funds,
and today they provide "services" with these funds; in other words,
they forcibly send migrants back with these funds. With the Readmission
Agreement, Syrians were deprived of their right to a safe, dignified and
permanent life at the inter-state level.
In the aftermath of the February 6
earthquakes of 2023, Syrian migrants were held responsible for the services
that the government did not provide to the citizens affected by the earthquake,
the duties it did not fulfill, the resources it did not allocate; they were
targeted by politicians with false news for political interests. Syrians, who
have suffered the heavy consequences of the regional wars of division provoked
by imperialism, are targeted as if they were the cause of the economic crisis,
as if it was not enough that they were turned into a cheap labor force by
capital's greed for profit. With the rising anti-immigrant sentiment, the real
causes of poverty and unemployment are covered up and the real culprits are
invisible.
All this serves to legitimize domestically
and internationally the policy of sending Syrians back, which AKP and its
political partners have been weaving step by step since 2020. With the Dilution
Project, which started in 2022, the closure of many cities and neighborhoods to
the residence of migrants, and the Mobile Migration Points, which started to be
implemented in 2023, migrants are criminalized under the rhetoric of
"combating irregular migration", unlawfully detained, transferred to Removal
Centers and forcibly sent back.
We also know that the crime of sexual abuse,
which is being used to initiate and legitimize the pogrom in Kayseri, has no
race, ethnicity or nationality and that the perpetrators are men of all
nationalities, ages and educational levels. It is also a fact that for years
there has been silence in the face of the reality of male violence and abuse in
homes, schools, neighborhoods and the dormitories of sects, and that despite
all the objections of women's organizations, the Istanbul Convention, which
provides protection for all those subjected to male violence, including
migrants, has been unlawfully abrogated. The Kayseri Provincial Police Chief's
statement that the abused child was not Turkish in order to appease the
attackers on the night of June 30th once again showed how vulnerable migrant
women and children are to racist male violence.
As the We Want to Live Together Initiative (Birlikte
Yaşamak İstiyoruz İnisiyatifi), we
announce once again that we will continue our struggle against racism and
chauvinism. We condemn the attacks that started in Kayseri and continued in
other provinces, and we demand that those involved in the crime be tried before
the law. Material damages to homes, workplaces and vehicles during the attacks
should be compensated and racist attackers should be punished like the arrested
perpetrator of the abuse. We will continue to stand against those who spread
hate speech and target migrants for their own political gain and fight against
racism. We will stand against pogroms, hate attacks and racist policies and
continue to stand in solidarity with all those who stand for labor, democracy,
peace and freedom, together with migrants, for an equal and free life.
10 July 2024
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