Refugee crisis and Turkish politics

The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban has raised tensions between the EU and Turkey over how refugees from the conflict should be accommodated.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Turkey has become one of the most important host countries of refugees in the world. However, many refugees have ended up working in Turkey’s informal economic sector in grim conditions and for extremely low wages. In addition, as the number of refugees has increased and their stay in Turkey has been extended by the continuing conflict in Syria, refugees have increasingly started to face social discrimination and mistreatment.

The worrying trend in Turkey is, however, the widespread and systematic anti-immigration and anti-refugee discourses and policies now being articulated by almost all of the opposition parties on both the left and right.