The police structure in Turkey is highly centralized. It is hard, therefore, not to draw the
conclusion that the budget allocations for detaining foreigners are not accidental but
rather a part of national planning and priority setting.
Given the difficulty and expense of deporting most of the detainees, the government
shifts the burden of removal to the detainees themselves; they are held indefinitely until
their families can arrange return tickets on their behalf. Because the Ministry of Interior
could improve the deplorable conditions at Edirne if it chose to, it appears that it
intentionally keeps conditions at Tunca in Edirne degrading and inhumane as a means
of coercing detainees to self deport and as a signal to those who will be released to
leave the country or risk return to the bleeding wound.
Kırklareli
The Kırklareli Gaziosmanpaşa Refugee Camp (hereafter Kırklareli) has had a long history
as an actual refugee camp. In 1989 it was a safe haven for ethnic Turks fleeing Bulgaria;
in 1992, a shelter for refugees from Bosnia; and in 1999, a place of refuge for Kosovar
Albanians. It can no longer be described, truthfully, as a refugee camp, however. It is
rather a detention center for migrants, some of whom may indeed be refugees, but not
refugees being protected from persecution, but rather refugees that Turkey is seeking to
remove.
At the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit, Kırklareli held 174 detainees, including four
women and the four-year-old child of one of the women.
Although the men are locked away in a long barracks building, they were freely
wandering around the outdoor grounds of the fenced-in facility during the Human Rights
Watch visit. They appeared to be allowed to go outside the barracks during the
afternoons. The facility is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
Signs of its history as a former refugee camp are abundant in the form of old unused
shelters with faded UNHCR logos and an overgrown soccer field that have not been used
in many years, despite a rather comical attempt by the Kırklareli administrator to give
Human Rights a guided tour intended to show that old classrooms and recreational
facilities are still being used by the detainees.
Stuck in a Revolving Door
58
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