Turkey Aims to Halt Irregular Migration and Migrant Smuggling in the Eastern Mediterranean – Türkiye
AUGUST 27, 2024
By Bülent Baykal and Özlem Özdemir
Turkish authorities assist a migrant. (Photo: Turkish Directorate General of Combating Irregular Migration and Removal Affairs)
Straddling East and West, at the intersection of South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, Turkey has been contending with persistently high rates of irregular migration for the past decade. As asylum seekers and other migrants progress typically from East to West, they may approach Turkey as either a transit or destination country. Whether individuals intend to eventually seek asylum or are searching for economic or other opportunities, irregular migration is a challenge for Turkey and other regional states to monitor and control. The movement can take many forms, including entering, staying, or working in a country without authorization.
In This Article
In Turkey, most migrants traveling irregularly are fleeing conflict zones in Afghanistan and Syria. Often, migrants traveling without authorization do so with the assistance of smugglers, including criminal groups and insurgents with ties to activities such as human trafficking, forced labor, and terrorism. Smugglers have been known to assist foreign fighters who supported extremists and sought to return to their origin countries after the territorial defeat of the Islamic State in 2019. Authorities have expressed particular concern about how smuggling can empower groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has engaged in attacks and clashes with the government that have resulted in thousands of deaths. The PKK and other groups obtain significant sums by facilitating migrant smuggling and human trafficking, as well as drug and arms trafficking, extortion, and other crimes. The business of smuggling migrants into Turkey and onward to the European Union is profitable and dangerous.
The Turkish government has placed a major focus on combatting this activity. As enforcement increases on various routes, smugglers often shift their operations and explore new pathways, posing new challenges to authorities. In recent years, the government has sought to build border barriers and otherwise halt irregular migration. While this has been done at times in coordination with the European Union, at various moments, migration management also has been a point of contention between Turkish and EU leaders.
This article provides an overview of the dynamics of irregular migration in Turkey, including the involvement of criminal smugglers and government enforcement.
Irregular Migration Trends and Responses
Turkey is host to the world’s largest refugee population, including about 3.2 million Syrians who benefit from temporary protection. At the same time, irregular migration has varied in recent years and reached a high of nearly 455,000 arrests by Turkish authorities in 2019, before declining temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic (see Figure 1). Over the last decade, more than half of arrests were of migrants from Afghanistan (nearly 732,000, or 35 percent of all 2.1 million arrests during the 2014-23 period) or Syria (453,000, or 22 percent). Other top migrant groups include Iraqis, Palestinians, Turkmenistanis, Uzbekistanis, and Moroccans.
