Turkey Steps Up Deportation Of Afghans Amid Similar Moves By Pakistan And Iran.

Afghan migrants hide from security forces in a tunnel under train tracks after crossing illegally into Turkey from Iran on August 23, 2021 -- days after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.

Turkey has become the latest country to begin deporting a large number of Afghans back to their country with almost 4,000 leaving in recent weeks.

The expulsions from Turkey come amid large-scale deportations of Afghans from neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Over the past month, an estimated 400,000 Afghans have been repatriated from those two countries.

Ankara said over the weekend about 3,900 Afghans have been deported to Kabul through special flights.

“I was arrested in Istanbul; they beat me a lot,” said a former Afghan Army soldier who was arrested in the largest city in Turkey two months ago. He had escaped to Turkey 18 months earlier fearing that the ruling hard-line Taliban would persecute him for his past work.
“We were then detained in a camp for two months in the city of Bursa,” he added. “Many young Afghans who were soldiers were also forcefully expelled alongside me." Milad, another young Afghan man, said he arrived in back in Afghanistan this week after an arduous land journey through Iran following his expulsion from Turkey earlier this month. “On our way back, we were beaten a lot,” he said. “We didn't have proper food to eat.” With living conditions deteriorating under the Taliban regime, Afghan migrants fled their country in pursuit of a better life wherever they could find it -- especially to neighboring countries.

Like hundreds of thousands of Afghans, Milad ended up in Turkey three years ago in a desperate attempt to escape poverty in his homeland. Some Afghans have sought shelter and work in Turkey, while others used it as part of an escape route into neighboring Greece and then on to other European Union countries.
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, Turkey hosts one of the largest refugee communities worldwide with some 3.6 million Syrians and more than 300,000 people from other nationalities, the majority of whom are Afghan. Last year, Turkey deported some 50,000 Afghans back to their country. In a 2022 report, global rights watchdog Human Rights Watch criticized Ankara for routinely pushing tens of thousands of Afghans -- many of whom are undocumented -- back to its land border with Iran or deporting them directly to Afghanistan “with little or no examination of their claims for international protection.”