Statistics of Syrians in Turkey: The numbers explain
Executive Summary:
Turkey hosted the biggest number of Syrian refugees who were forced to leave their country since 2012. The government of Turkey changed its dealing with the migration issue through this time, it started by organizing and accepting the registrations of the refugees, then it applied redistribution policies, and lately it started to encourage the refugees to return to Syria without looking if the situation is suitable to safe return. Because of the absence of the accurate information that should be given to the Turkish and Syrian societies, and the scarcity of the official announcements in this case, many false news and disinformation that sometimes became facts in some people’s eyes, and that led to the increase of hate speech and provocations against the refugees in the social media, it also led to some panic and concerns between the refugees, and made some people depend on rumors.
This report tries to gather the available published information from open sources, and to analyze this data in order to extract further information that helps in: understanding the Syrian presence map in Turkey, and letting Syrians and others know the new facts that this analysis give, and making it easier to specialists to get to the information sources, and making this report a reference to them that helps in discussing the situation of Syrian refuges when they meet the concerned Turkish officials.
The number of Syrians who have the “temporary protection identity card” reached its peak in 2021. This number significantly decreased before this time in 2019, when the Turkish officials started an operation against illegal immigrants after the municipal elections. This number started to decrease again in 2022, and reached its lowest level ever in mid-2023.
The reasons of the recent decrease are the effects of the “anti-illegal immigration” operations that the new government of Turkey launched after the elections in May 2023. The Turkish officials significantly tightened the laws on all the foreigners in Turkey aiming primarily to reduce their numbers. Besides these restrictions, there are foreigners who died in the earthquake, or chose to return to their country voluntarily. The government also canceled the identities of some refugees who faced problems in their home address registration procedures; and it canceled the identities of refugees who left the country previously.
As we look at the information that was published by the administrations of Syrian border crossings with Turkey, we find that in 2019 the number of voluntarily returned people’s number reached its highest level, as the official operation against immigrants was occurring. The number clearly fell down in 2020 and 2021, but it started to increase again in 2022 to nearly the numbers of 2019. The data of the first 7 months of 2023 shows that voluntarily returned people’s numbers significantly increased, as the average in June reached 176 person per day. Most of these people returned through Tel Abyad border crossing, then from Bab Alhawa border crossing.
In another subject, the Turkish government allowed Syrian refugees in the first years of their immigration to stay wherever they want, which caused the concentration of Syrian populations in the big cities and the southern provinces near the Syrian borders. After that, the officials launched a redistribution policy by suspending the registrations for new comers, completely or partially, in specific provinces, in order to make the new comers move to new provinces that do not have a noticeable concentration of Syrian population.
As we follow the specific data about the distribution of Syrian population through the Turkish provinces, we can reach the conclusion that the local administrative in each province followed a different policy. As there were provinces such as Gaziantep, Bursa, Izmir, and Adana, that applied a welcoming policy which led to increase of Syrian population in a linear way during these years. On the other hand, there were provinces that applied very restrict policy, such as Sanliurfa, Hatay, and Kilis, that led to a continuous decrease in Syrian population. There were also other provinces that had inconstant policies, such as Istanbul, Ankara, and Kahramanmaras, which made the Syrian population change in an inconsistent way.
The report also studied the numbers of Syrians who were given the Turkish citizenship. The pace of giving the citizenship to Syrians was not consistent, as it decreased in recent years without giving any clear explanation. In contrary to the rumors that some opposition politicians and media channels say, the percentage of Syrians who were given the citizenship was very low in comparison with the Turkish population.
Furthermore, although there are some media and politic sides who claim that the crime rates increased significantly after the Syrians came to Turkey, the official information showed that the percentage of Syrian who committed crimes or violations was low, compared to the percentage among Turkish citizens, which assures that these claims do not show the reality.
The data showed that the percentage of Syrian workers who obtained a work permit is very low compared to the Turkish labour market’s statistics, although there is an official resolution that allows Syrian workers to obtain work permits, and that leads to the conclusion that there are still bureaucratic complexities that obstacle the process. In addition, there are many employers tend to employ Syrian workers unofficially and giving them very low incomes and refuse to give them health insurance and other dues, in order to save more money and increase their profits.
In another topic, the report tried to find out the statistics of companies who has a Syrian owner or partner in its ownership. The official information in this field were very scarce, but the available data and the evaluations assume that the number of such companies increased rapidly during recent years, reaching approximately the number of 20000 companies. Some specialist also say that the estimate capitals of these companies is 10 billion dollars.
The statistics of Syrian students in Turkish schools says that there was a tiny improvement in the rates of registrations to schools, although the government applied a resolution to integrate Syrian students in the Turkish education system in 2016-2017. The school dropout rates among Syrian children are still relatively high, as one-third of children in school age are out of schools. We can see high dropout rates among teenagers in secondary school age, which may be caused by the bullying and racism that Syrian students face in Turkish schools, and it might be caused from the families who are unconvinced in sending their children to schools, and prefer to send them to work in order to help them with extra income to deal with the increasing living costs.
The case is relatively similar among university students. The statistics shows that the percentage of enrolment in the universities among Syrian young people are low compared to the total number of Syrians in Turkey, in contrast with much higher rates within Turkish or foreigner young people from other nationalities in Turkey. This may have different reasons; one of them is the increase of university fees that the government started to impose on Syrian students as it is imposed on students from other nationalities since 2021. The other reason is the decrease in scholarships that are given to Syrian students. These two reasons came along with the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis in Turkey, and that forced many Syrian young people to join the work market in order to cope with the increasing living cost, instead of completing their university career.
All this information sheds a light on the importance of publishing the statistics and data of Syrians in Turkey transparently and periodically. This may help in understanding the changes that occur upon Syrians, and in combating with the rumors and false news about them, and in solving their problems. The Syrian institutions and organizations should work with the related Turkish sides on conducting joint studies about the Syrian presence in Turkey, aiming to have a deeper understanding of the challenges and to recommend prober solutions.
Read the full report (Arabic)
