Bomb refugees from Afghanistan? What are the US and EU asking of Turkey
The United States and Europe have asked Turkey to handle relocation applications for refugees from Afghanistan. Giuseppe Gagliano's analysis
As in all the wars of yesterday and today, even that of Afghanistan – indeed, we could say above all that of Afghanistan – has dramatic implications on the level of refugees.
The withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan and the progressive and inexorable conquest of the nerve centers of Afghanistan by the Taliban led to a real exodus in some ways similar to what happened in 2015 with the Syrian refugees.
Now, that the United States and the EU have asked Turkey to examine relocation applications from Afghans who have actively collaborated with American forces in the past years to obtain a visa is certainly a legitimate request. But equally legitimate is the statement by the spokesman for the Turkish president, who has clearly argued that Turkey is not and will not be the waiting room for refugees from any country.
On the other hand, for the many forgetful journalists who are not lacking in our country, in 2018 Israel had clearly expressed its refusal to accept Syrian refugees.
Indeed, preserving border security is a priority. Do we want to read this declaration as a declaration of a Northern League or neo-fascist origin?
Turkey, like other countries ( see previous article ) has given a very precise provision and that is to accelerate the construction of a wall located on the eastern border with Iran, a wall of a length of 300 km in which there are towers of control and spotlight.
Naturally, the army will have the task of managing this wall and above all of setting up checkpoints as the Defense Minister Halusi Akar pointed out. Can we define this as a disproportionate reaction, which violates sacrosanct human rights? In Turkey, at present, there are nearly 4 million refugees of which 3.6 million are Syrian refugees. The other 100,000 are Afghans.
How long will Turkey have to welcome refugees from wars? According to the Turkish authorities and up to now they have managed to pass between 500 and 2 thousand Afghans. So can we be surprised if on the part of the Turkish community – as happened recently in one of the districts of the province of Ankara, namely in Altintang – there have been reactions of intolerance not only verbal but also physical?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/guerra-afghanistan-profughi/ on Sun, 15 Aug 2021 06:21:26 +0000.