Life in limbo for Syrians Turkey no longer wants

For two years, Turkey has pursued a sharply harsher policy towards refugees, and Syrians above all. Neighbourhoods where they had lived for a decade suddenly became zones of surveillance; homes were raided, workplaces inspected, streets watched. Deportation became a daily possibility. Syrians now share maps of the red migration vans on social media like emergency alerts, hoping to spare someone a sudden return to the danger they once fled.

This shift followed a fierce political campaign by parts of the Turkish opposition that blamed Syrians for inflation, rising rents and unemployment. The narrative took hold, and a quiet hostility seeped into daily life. Syrians felt that their right to remain had become conditional, contingent on political winds far beyond their control.

Restrictions multiplied: travel permits between provinces, neighbourhoods closed to Syrians, landlords hiking rents with impunity, near-impossible work permits that left factory managers free to exploit Syrian labour. Deportations, once rare, became routine, often carried out on flimsy pretexts or on none at all.

Amid this this climate that was inflamed by party rivalries, racism continued to grow in cities that shifted to opposition control after the 2024 municipal elections. Some attacks turned violent, even as activists and parts of the state tried to defend Syrians’ right to a dignified life.

Some Syrian activists now argue that neither Turkish civil society nor Syrian organisations did enough to build real familiarity between the two communities. Others admit that Syrians’ tendency to withdraw into their own enclaves, often out of fear, made genuine integration more difficult and deepened their sense of insecurity.

After the fall of the Assad regime, many Syrians hoped that a path home was finally opening. But the reality was harsher. Syria remains fragile, institutions are overburdened, and services stretched thin. For Syrians in Turkey, that meant standing between a homeland not yet ready to receive them and an exile that was closing in around them.

Some chose to return despite the difficult conditions, driven by the soaring cost of living in Turkey and by a belief that life might be more bearable in the new Syria. Those who stayed found the pressure tightening further. Rents did not fall, closed neighbourhoods did not reopen, and new restrictions appeared, including a weekly fingerprint rule that fixed their place of residence to a single province.

Each new restriction pushed more Syrians towards return, even if that return meant a tent pitched on land where their homes once stood.

Amid the fear and uncertainty, Syrians in Turkey hold fast to a simple hope. They want a strong and cohesive Syrian community in exile that can represent them and defend their rights under the 1951 Geneva Convention. They seek a clear legal status that protects them from arbitrary deportation and ends their limbo under “temporary protection,” which grants neither refugee rights nor stable residency.

And they long for an embassy that serves them rather than surveil them. An embassy that listens to their grievances and supports them in exile until the day they can return to a safe and just Syria, ready to welcome them as citizens.