Turkish government exploiting Syrian refugees: Jamal Wakim

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jamal Wakim, a professor at the Lebanese International University from Beirut, about Human Rights Watch censuring Turkish guards.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Give us your thoughts on the recent report issued by Human Rights Watch criticizing Turkish border guards in their treatment against Syrian refugees who have been trying to cross into the country.

Wakim: I believe that the Turkish government has been committing a lot of actions that breach international law and human rights, especially the way they treated the Syrian refugees since the onset of the Syrian crisis, because the government had a stake in forcing Syrian civilians to flee their villages, because the civilians were targeted in order to make them flee to Turkish territories, leaving camps, and they later used as a tool against the Syrian government. So now this has been going on since five years now. And now that the situation erupted to an open crisis, the Turkish forces are using violence to subdue the protests by the Syrian refugees who felt that they were trapped on Turkish territory, because some of them had the ambition to cross to European territories, European countries, but after the latest development and the latest agreement between the Turkish government and the European Union on blocking the Syrians from going either to their country or to European countries and keeping them under guard by the Turkish government, I believe that the crisis will grow further.

Press TV: How do you view the controversial deal that was inked between Brussels and Ankara? Many have put question mark over the legality of the deal and its assets.

Wakim: I believe that the deal breaches international law, because the duty of the Turkish government is to let these people go back to their country. However, the Turkish government has used the refugees at one point to blackmail the European Union into getting into an agreement that is favorable to the Turkish government. Once they used the refugees in order to create a crisis situation in Europe, they stroke the deal with the European Union and now they were using the refugees as a source of revenue because they were getting money from the European Union in order to settle these refugees in Turkish camps on the border with Syria.

And at the same time, they are blocking these refugees from going back to their country in order to keep the zone in northern Syria empty and in order to keep it for later plans to have it as a no-man or demilitarized zone under Turkish occupation in a way or another. And at the same time, maybe use the refugees as a source of crisis for the Syrian government itself. So the situation should be investigated by the United Nations, by international human rights organizations and the Turkish government should be rendered responsible for this crisis.

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