Syrian refugees in Ankara sent to tent camps in southeastern provinces

ANKARA – Doğan News Agency

AA Photo

Ankara police collected a group of Syrians from the tents and shanty houses where they were living late on Jan. 5, in order to send them to refugee camps in southeastern Turkey.

Police began to transfer the refugees, who have been struggling to survive on the Turkish capital's streets by begging for money, as a part of an operation conducted in collaboration with the Ankara Municipality, the provincial department of the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), and the Ankara Police Department’s Foreigners Branch, following the drop in temperatures.

Police officers were dispatched to the Çankaya district’s Balgat neighborhood, where a group of Syrians were living in tents and shanty houses. Some refugees refused to go to the camps, throwing things at the officers before the police forcibly transferred them into waiting buses. A Syrian woman reportedly fainted during the melee.

A total of 25 Syrians, mostly children, were taken by police for further processing to send them to camps in the southeastern provinces of Mardin and Şanlıurfa.

Turkey is struggling to meet the basic needs of around 1.7 million Syrian refugees who fled their homeland due to the ongoing civil war, as well as the violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Turkey does not call the arrivals from Syria “refugees” in official parlance, as most do not have official refugee status. Instead, they are known as “guests” and the refugee camps are referred to as “tented cities.”

The government is now planning to issue temporary identity cards for Syrians in order to facilitate their employment within a legal framework.