Reports | 25 05 2020
A number of Syrians from different Turkish regions were detained by the Turkish police during the past week, in the cities of Istanbul, Izmir and Edirne, during the sit-in "No More Than Crossers" launched by activists to press on the Turkish government and the international community to facilitate the transit of refugees to Europe. The Turkish police then transferred the detainees to the city of Adana, and then to a camp in Ottoman area, near the Syrian border.
A group of Syrians living in those cities was going to participate in the sit-in, while others were detained for simply passing on the street. Abu Mohammed, a detainee inside the camp said: "I was going to visit my sick daughter in a hospital in Istanbul, the Turkish police stood me with my neighbor after they asked me about my nationality, and when they knew that I am Syrian, they called a car and took us to the police station, and although I told them about my daughter in the hospital and asked them to release me to go and see her, but they insisted on transferring me amidst a group of Syrians to the city of Adana, and then to the Ottoman camp."
After the interrogation, the Turkish police didn’t find any proof evidence against the detainees or a proof of being involved in any movement, and most of them are resided in Turkey legally, and carrying identification cards issued by the Turkish government, and they didn’t think that they are going to be detained supposing that the sit-in is licensed by the Turkish authorities.
A detained lady in the camp with her four children, says: "I have a legal passport with a formal seal on it, and the ID card issued by the Turkish government (Kimlik) I and my children, however, the police insisted on taking me to the police station, and from there our long journey began, until we got to this prison. " she added: "We did not know that our sit-in is that dangerous for the Turks, and if we knew, we wouldn’t participate that day, however, I have been arrested in a place far away from the point of the protest, so how could the police know our destination?".
The detainees accused the police of abusing and beating them every time they tried to ask any question, without taking into account the presence of children among them.
Mustafa, whose mother was assaulted more than once by the police, says: "My mother is an elderly and suffers from high pressure and asthma attacks, and on our way here to this camp, she tried to get off the bus during the break, because of shortness of breath, and she was abused by police beatings many times, and when he intervened to stop them they beat me with the sticks, and the same thing was repeated as when we arrived here, the police pushed my mother while we were recording our data, and when I asked them to deal with her kindly, they kick me out of the building."
Ottoman camp, is a brigade to discipline offenders, and a place for the accused in criminal cases, according to what the mother of four has told us, who was fear of the presence of her children among the killers in the same place, and she was surprised by the police’s negligence, which caused the death of someone in camp that night.
She says: "We were surprised when we got the news of the death of a young man in his thirties, who suffered some mental disorders. He had gone on hunger strike before we came, and his dead was discovered when we got to the camp."
The detainees’ choices were between staying in the camp, or entering the Syrian territories, with preventing their return to Turkey for three years, even though they reside in Turkey with their families, and can’t return to their villages controlled by some militant factions. Mustafa says, "I do not have any relative inside Syria, all of them are here in Turkey, where would I go if I was deported? and what is the sin that we made to be deported from Turkey as criminals? Just because we are Syrians they treat us this way."
A group of activists have launched a new campaign on the social media, entitled "Displaced Not Criminals" using this title as a (Hashtag) in Arabic and English, along with short messages on a lot of the Syrian phones who are in positions of responsibility, to move towards a resolution of the detainees’ crisis in that camp, among them there are some immigrants who were arrested on Turkish beaches after their boats were dumped by Turkish Coastguard, what led to the sinking of a number of them, according to news was published a few days ago.