Turkey will take "drastic
measures" to deal with the influx of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees
into its biggest city Istanbul, including forcibly sending them to camps in the
southeast, the city's top official said. Istanbul governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu
on Wednesday said there were now 67,000 Syrian refugees in the city and
legislation would be adopted that could see them effectively expelled from the
city of 15 million to refugee camps closer to Syria. Mutlu said authorities
would take "drastic measures" to contain the negative consequences of
Syrian refugees in Istanbul, including sending those begging in the streets
back to the refugee camps "without their consent".
His comments came amid signs of growing tensions over the
increasingly visible presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey as well as protests in
several southeastern cities. Mutlu said 500 were already sent back to a tented
camp in southeast Turkey last month. Turkey, a vocal critic of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, currently hosts more than a million Syrian refugees after
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced an open-door policy for those
fleeing the conflict. Less than a third of these are living in camps along the
volatile border and hundreds of thousands are eking out a precarious existence
in big cities, including Istanbul. Syrian refugees have become a familiar sight
in Istanbul, with whole families huddled together on street corners and begging
for money in upscale and tourist areas.
