Gaussudin Mubariz was already having trouble sleeping because he was worried he would be deported to Afghanistan before a stadium full of Turkish fans starts shouting slogans calling to them Immigrants to return to their home countries.
The 20-year-old was welcomed when he arrived in Turkey almost two years ago after leaving Kunduz for northeastern Afghanistan and after a perilous three-week journey through Pakistan and Iran.
He immediately found a job at a fast food restaurant in Istanbul and sent half his salary to his parents in Afghanistan.
But that all changed when police began arresting Afghans and placing them in detention centers in order to deport them. The growing anger of the Turks towards the immigrants, which was fueled by the economic crisis, pushed Ankara to take this decision.
“Refugee Warehouse”
Turkey has had one of the largest migrant populations since 2016 following the agreement concluded by Anchor with the EU.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan estimates that his country of 84 million now hosts five million refugees and migrants, of which about 3.7 million are Syrians and up to 420,000 are Afghans.
But economic instability, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, has made authorities and the population hostile to them to an unprecedented level.
According to a poll by the Aksoy polling institute, 85% of those polled said they were “concerned” about the prospect of Afghan refugees arriving in Turkey after the Taliban seized power in the war-torn country.
Erdogan has already warned Westerners, who are also worried about a large influx of migrants, that Turkey does not intend to become a “refugee depot”.
The anger of the Turks is now becoming more and more visible, with the most recent example being the thousands of football fans shouting from inside the stadium “we do not want refugees in our country” during the match for the qualification of the Turkish national team in the World Cup. .
“Afghans are here”
The Istanbul governor’s office announces almost daily operations to locate Afghans and other undocumented immigrants who are arrested and taken to detention centers.
The opposition CHP, which has a strong anti-immigration stance and controls cities such as Istanbul and Ankara, has put up banners with leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu saying: “Borders are our honor.”
This fear is forcing many Afghan refugees to keep a low profile. The stadium where many Afghan migrants used to gather every Sunday to play cricket against the Pakistanis has been empty for months.
One of the CHP vice-presidents in Istanbul, Burkay Duzce, defended his party’s stance and anti-immigrant rhetoric in the run-up to parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2023 at the latest.
“We are not saying that these people should be handed over to the Taliban,” he said. “But the question is to see what we can offer (to the new immigrants) that are emerging,” he added.
“Turkey is not an immigrant ghetto,” Duzce said.
The CHP’s pre-election slogans resonate with Turks who have seen product prices rise and incomes fall due to the collapse of the Turkish pound and rising inflation.
According to analyst Deniz Senol Sert of Istanbul’s Ozyegin University, Turkish hostility will force Erdogan – who could ask Turks to show compassion to refugees – to take an uncompromising stance.
“As long as there is competition for resources (…) hatred for foreigners will remain the same,” she said.
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