Ankara---The campaign for Turkey's June 7 legislative elections has been rich in political point-scoring while ignoring one of the biggest challenges the country faces in the years ahead -- the future of the almost two million refugees from the civil war in Syria.
Turkey is hosting 1.8 million Syrian refugees, more than any other country, and they have already become significant minorities in several cities, causing social tensions.
But with the Syrian conflict showing no sign of ending after more than four years of fighting, the refugees' future legal status is one issue which none of the parties wants to touch.
"The government is doing its best -- intentionally and wilfully -- to keep the subject of two million Syrians away from the agenda," said Murat Erdogan, director of Hacettepe University Migration and Politics Research Centre (HUGO).
He told AFP that issues such as education, citizenship and legal status were too heavy to deal with in the tense election atmosphere.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who makes no secret of his support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), boasts of Turkey's "open-door" policy and says the refugees cannot be sent back to Turkey's enemy Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"We cannot deliver to the tyrant our Syrian sisters with kids in their laps desperately seeking shelter, white-bearded old men tearfully seeking sanctuary," Erdogan said in a typically emotive speech Sunday in the southeast province of Sanliurfa near the Syrian border.
Only 250,000 Syrians reside in 25 camps in 10 cities near Turkish-Syrian border. The remainder are scattered throughout the country including the mega city Istanbul hosting 330,000 Syrian refugees.
Yet there has been no hint of any concrete policy over what to do with the refugees, with the parties not wishing to appear heartless but also taking care not to alienate voters by promising the refugees a more permanent status.
Turkey does not have a fully-fledged asylum policy compatible with international standards. Non-European refugees like Syrians are eligible only for temporary asylum-seeker status.
Turkey refuses to call Syrians "refugees" due to the temporary nature of their asylum. Instead it uses the term "guests".
AFP
