Tag Archives: Turkey

UN: Syrian Refugee Numbers Pass 5 Million Mark in Region

Data from the United Nations refugees agency released late last month showed that the number of people fleeing Syria’s civil war to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt has passed the 5 million mark.

According to the latest data collected by UNHCR and the government of Turkey, a total of 5,018,168 people have now taken refugee in Syria’s neighbours and in other countries in the regions. Millions more have fled to other parts of the country, including tends of thousands in March, mainly women and children, who were trying to get away from a rebel offensive northwest of the city of Hama.

Since 2011, in the wake of anti-government protests, which spiralled into a full-blown conflict between rebels, Islamist militants, government troops and foreign backers Syrians have poured across these countries borders. While an initial rush of refugees in 2013 and 2014 steadied for the following two years, the numbers have again risen this year after the military victory by the government and its Russian allies in the northern city of Aleppo. Syrians have also fled to Europe in large numbers, making 884,461 asylum claims between April 2011 and October 2016, with almost two-thirds of those claims being in Germany or Sweden. Hundreds of thousands more live in Gulf countries that are no party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, such as Saudi Arabi, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, so they are not recorded as refugees. A UN-led humanitarian appeal to help Syrian refugees and support host communities has received only 6 percent of the money that it requires this year – US $298 million out of US $4.6 billion.

UN: Syrian Refugee Numbers Pass 5 Million Mark in Region

Data from the United Nations refugees agency released late last month showed that the number of people fleeing Syria’s civil war to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt has passed the 5 million mark.

According to the latest data collected by UNHCR and the government of Turkey, a total of 5,018,168 people have now taken refugee in Syria’s neighbours and in other countries in the regions. Millions more have fled to other parts of the country, including tends of thousands in March, mainly women and children, who were trying to get away from a rebel offensive northwest of the city of Hama.

Since 2011, in the wake of anti-government protests, which spiralled into a full-blown conflict between rebels, Islamist militants, government troops and foreign backers Syrians have poured across these countries borders. While an initial rush of refugees in 2013 and 2014 steadied for the following two years, the numbers have again risen this year after the military victory by the government and its Russian allies in the northern city of Aleppo. Syrians have also fled to Europe in large numbers, making 884,461 asylum claims between April 2011 and October 2016, with almost two-thirds of those claims being in Germany or Sweden. Hundreds of thousands more live in Gulf countries that are no party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, such as Saudi Arabi, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, so they are not recorded as refugees. A UN-led humanitarian appeal to help Syrian refugees and support host communities has received only 6 percent of the money that it requires this year – US $298 million out of US $4.6 billion.

EU Strikes Visa Deal with Ukraine and Georgia

This month, diplomats and MPs struck a deal to end an internal EU dispute, which will result in the EU soon letting Ukrainians and Georgians visit the bloc without needed a visa. The dispute had been holding up the promised measures.

Agreement on a mechanism to suspend such visa waivers in emergencies has effectively ended mounting embarrassment for those EU leaders who felt that the bloc was reneging on pledges to former Soviet states that it has promised to help as they try to move out from Moscow’s shadow. The move came after the European Council President warned that the EU was risking its credibility by failing to reward Georgia and Ukraine for painful reforms. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since hailed the move as “encouraging news from Brussels.”

The prospect of easier travel to Western European countries has been used by governments in Kiev and Tbilisi in order to win popular backing for painful, EU-sponsored reforms. However EU leaders got cold feet about opening doors to 45 million Ukrainians after the public backlash that followed last year’s refugee crisis in Europe. Furthermore, facing strong challenges from anti-immigration parties in elections next year, leading powers France and Germany demanded strong controls before any visa agreement was signed. Late-night talks have since resulted in the European Parliament conceding that governments can reimpose visa requirements quickly, with MPs’ approval.

Georgia, which has only 5 million citizens, has long been seen as being ready for visa liberalization. However many believe that its failure to achieve such as agreement has been due to the EU’s hesitation over Ukraine, which is bigger, closer and currently stuck in conflict with Russia. A similar plan to ease travel for Turkey’s 75 million citizens, which is part of a deal whereby Ankara has helped the EU shut out Syrians and other people seeking asylum, has added to political sensitivities in Brussels about the issue. The process with Turkey has been frozen because of Ankara’s failure to fulfil all the EU conditions, coupled with anger across Europe at Turkey’s crackdown on opponents following a coup attempt in July.

The bloc has disclosed that any new visa waivers can only come into force after the EU has increased an emergency brake to suspend any free-travel deals in emergencies. However talks on exactly how that “snap-back” mechanism would work have dragged on for months. It will now allow the executive European Commission or a majority of EU states to suspend swiftly a country’s visa exemption for nine months if there is a sharp rise in its citizens overstaying their permitted time in the EU making multiple asylum requests or other problem for th European. The EU would be able to extend the suspension period for a further eighteen months in some cases, however through amore complex procedure that would also give a say to the European Parliament.

Terrorism-Related Deaths Decreased in 2015

A report released on 16 November indicated that deaths from terrorism in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries decreased last year by 650 percent despite a marked fall globally as Nigerian-based Boko Haram militants and the so-called Islamic State (IS) Group suffered military defeats at home but carried out more attacks abroad.

The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) has reported that worldwide, there were 29,376 deaths that were caused by terrorism in 2015. This figure represents a decline of 10 percent, adding that this is the first decrease in four years. GTI disclosed that his decline was due to action against IS in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria, which cut the numbers killed there by a third. IS was the deadliest group in 2015, overtaking Boko Haram. Last year, IS carried out attacks in 252 cities that led to 6,141 deaths. The index however has noted that Boko Haram’s move into neighbouring countries – Cameroon, Chad and Niger – saw the number of fatalities in the se countries increase by 157 percent.

The report however notes that the groups have spread their actions to neighbouring states and regions, where they have caused a huge increase in fatalities amongst OECD members, most of which are wealthy countries, such as the United States and European countries. According to GTI, of the 34 OECD member countries, 21 had witnesses at least one attack with most deaths occurred in Turkey and France. Last year’s terror incidents included coordinated attacks carried out by IS gunmen and suicide bombers at the Bataclan music venue, a soccer stadium and several cafes in Paris in November, which killed 130 people. The index also noted that Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Turkey all suffered their worst death tolls from terrorism in a single year since 2000, adding that in total twenty-three countries registered their highest ever number of terrorism deaths. Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria, which accounted for 72 percent of all deaths, were the top five ranked countries in the GTI. The United States ranked 36^th, with France coming in 29^th, Russia in 30^th and the United Kingdom in 34^th.

According to Steve Killelea, executive chairman at the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) think-tank, “while on the one hand the reduction in deaths is positive, the continued intensification of terrorism in some countries and its spread to new ones is a cause for serious concern and underscores the fluid nature of modern terrorist activity,” adding that “the attacks in the heartland of western democracies underscore the need for fast-paced and tailored responses to the evolution of these organizations.”

Rebel Commanders Re-take Town in Syria

Rebel commanders and monitors have reported that Turkish-backed rebels have captured the symbolically important Syrian town of Dabiq from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

According to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Dabiq was under “full control” of Turkish-based Syrian rebels. The small town, which is located in the northern region of the country, holds great value for IS because of a prophecy of an apocalyptic battle and it has been heavily featured in IS propaganda. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that 1,200 IS fighters had been brought in to defend Dabiq. The battle for the town has been building for weeks, with one village after another being seized from IS militants by rebel fighters who are backed by Turkish airstrikes.

The advance on Dabiq is part of a wider offensive led by Syrian rebel groups, with Ahmed Osman, the commander of the Sultan Murad rebel group, reporting that the group had also recaptured the neighbouring village of Soran.

In other Syrian developments, during a meeting of foreign ministers in London, US Secretary of State John Kerry disclosed that new sanctions were being considered against Russi and Syria because of their actions in the city of Aleppo. Meanwhile there are reports of at least one person dead and dozens injured in an explosion that occurred on the edge of the makeshift Rukban camp, where some 75,000 Syrian refugees are trapped on their country’s border with Jordan.