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The influx of up to three million Syrian refugees has made sourcing from an already challenging industrial sector hugely problematic as Dr Emre Eren Korkmaz will explain in an occasional series of blogs on Turkey. In this blog, Eren outlines the current situation and gives a brief legal overview.
What to do with three million refugees has become a crucial question in Turkey.
Not only the government but also the business world, media, civil society organizations and citizens regularly share their views on the issue, even though it is clear that the refugee crisis is not a temporary one.
The vice-president of the ruling party, Mrs Öznur Çalık said on 10th September that once peace and unity is achieved in Syria, those three million refugees will return home.
But this is not a convincing message for anyone – apart from signaling a change in discourse within the ruling party, which had previously stated its willingness to offer citizenship to refugees.
ETI focuses on Syrian refugees working within textiles
ETI’s Turkey programme is focusing on Syrian refugees within the textiles sector.
Following earlier collaboration between ETI stakeholders and partners, the Turkish government granted temporary work-permits to Syrian refugees in January 2016.
However, neither local employers nor refugees have shown much interest in obtaining legal work permits.
So one of the aims of ETI’s programme is to understand the reasons for this and take concrete steps to find a solution.
World’s largest refugee population
Turkey hosts the world’s largest refugee population. That’s three million people. Of those, 2.75 million are from Syria.
This number does not include unregistered refugees (thought to be very high) and does not exclude refugees who are seeking to emigrate to Europe via irregular means.
Here’s some facts and figures:
- The mass movement of Syrian refugees began in April 2011.
- The number of registered Syrians at the end of 2015 was 2.5 million.
- 984,000 Syrians were registered as refugees within 2015.
- Almost half of refugees are children and young people: 37% of refugees are below the age of 15 and 11% are aged between 15 and19.
- 290,000 Syrians reside in 26 state-run camps, so called temporary accommodation centres.
- The rest live in almost all parts of Turkey and try to survive by their own means.
Turkey's refugee laws
The Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP) came into force in April 2013. Arguably, it is in line with the Turkish legislative code and with EU legislation.
Yet according to LFIP, only refugees from Europe are defined as refugees. Others are accepted as ‘conditional’ refugees and are given temporary protection until they can find a new and safe third country.
LFIP regulates the rules regarding the right to family reunion, long-term residence, education and health services, and labour market mobility of migrants.
Additionally, the Temporary Protection Regulation was declared in October 2014 to outline further the procedures and details that apply to the LFIP.
These two documents govern the treatment of foreigners and provide temporary ‘conditional’ protection for Syrian refugees.
While Turkey has raised a geographical reservation by only accepting people coming from Europe as ‘refugees’, ‘conditional’ refugees arriving from the East, are supposed to be treated equally according to the 1951 and 1967 UN refugee conventions to which Turkey is a signatory.
However, Turkey’s insistence on preserving the geographical reservation hinders integration and naturalization processes.
And the duration of temporary protection is not stated.
Work permits for Syrian refugees
Since January 2016, Syrian refugees, who have been in Turkey for more than 6 months, are entitled to a work permit.
According to the Regulation on Work Permit of Refugees Under Temporary Protection:
- Refugees cannot be paid less than minimum wage and the number of refugees cannot exceed 10% of employed Turkish citizens in the same workplace.
- Work permits are issued at the request of an employer prior to signing an employment contract and refugees must be treated equally with local workers and must enjoy the same rights and liberties.
However, despite progress in many areas, the weakest side of Turkey’s regulations and measures for refugees is around access to the labour market.
It can be speculated that one of the reasons for this is the insistence of authorities – and of society as a whole – in viewing Syrians as temporary residents and a rejection of the fact that they are already a part of society.
More broadly, there have been many and significant problems within Turkish labour relations and the involvement of Syrian refugees make these problems even more complicated, including but not limited to the rise of child labour, which I will address in a later blog.
Consequently, international retailers should understand that this is a unique and complicated situation that must be dealt with collaboratively while working within the legal framework..