Migration, refugees and displaced people

AMMAN

We are in Amman for the meeting of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly's "Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons." Although Europe adopts an attitude of evading responsibility in the face of the waves of forced migration taking place in the world and keeping the migration waves, as far as possible, outside its borders, it tries not to remain a stranger to the subject.

Every month it looks on as refugees who regard Europe as a safe harbor and try to take refuge there are tragically buried in the waters of the Mediterranean. It does not wish to accept any responsibility of conscience in this matter. It stops the incoming waves of migration where they are, as far as possible, and when it cannot stop them, it gives shameful examples of isolating them in its own country under the most inhuman conditions, yet on one side it also continues to keep a record of the human rights violations dimension of this affair.

It tries to foresee the causes of the migration waves, their probable consequences, and how much they may concern it. It does not want to leave the job of keeping the records of conscience concerning forcibly displaced people to anyone else. It continues to keep the reporting of the human tragedies that take place through both scientific and democratic procedures.

We too, as members of parliament from Turkey (together with Tuğrul Türkeş, Serap Yaşar and Zühal Topçu), have come to Amman for the meeting in which the reports prepared during this period are discussed and some of them are put to a vote to be decided.

The reason the meeting is held in Amman is of course that Jordan is a country that stands out in hosting migrants and displaced people. Owing to the recent migration from Syria, Jordan hosts about 1 million 370 thousand Syrian refugees. About 140 thousand of them live in camps, while the rest have spread out and settled in different cities or towns, as in Turkey. Seven years have passed since the start of the Syrian crisis, and during this time those who came and settled from the beginning have built new lives, and a new sociology has formed.

Jordan underlines that although Turkey is the country that has accepted and hosted the largest number of Syrians in numerical terms, when measured against population, it is Jordan that has accepted the most. From this angle the situation is indeed so. Against Turkey's population approaching 81 million, the share formed by about 3 million 600 thousand Syrians stays around 4 percent, whereas the additional 1 million 370 thousand Syrians form 13.5 percent of Jordan's population of 10 million 90 thousand. In addition, the officials underline that, with the migrations they have long accepted from Palestine (2,175,491) and from a total of 52 different countries, chiefly Iraq (66,262), Yemen (9,838), Sudan (4,058) and Somalia (810), Jordan is the country hosting the most migrants in the world. By these counts, they form 36 percent of the total migrant population of 3,626 thousand currently in Jordan. It is known that the migrations Turkey has received from all these countries, adding Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt as well, come to well over 4 million.

It must be appreciated that Jordan, as a country, is fulfilling its duty toward migrants more than fully compared with the other countries of the region. Moreover, Jordan is a country with extremely limited means. On one side there are its geographical limitations. It has no serious production. Its water resources are extremely limited, and it cannot use its existing underground water resources as it wishes, because under the peace agreement they are treated as a security matter for Israel. The utilization of many of its mineral resources is likewise subject to restriction on the same grounds.

It is surrounded by occupying Israel in the west, by two unstable countries, Syria and Iraq, in the north, and by Saudi Arabia in the south. That Jordan, among countries none of which is normal, has to pay the price of all the regional instabilities seems to be its ill fate.

In fact, in a sense Jordan alone, perhaps on their behalf, shoulders the responsibility that the Gulf countries ought to shoulder because of the material wealth they possess and sit upon. For none of these countries takes any responsibility for the migration arising from these instabilities. But, for God's sake, all of them help Jordan in the face of the migration problem. We saw this with our own eyes (!). We visited the Zaatari refugee camp, which shelters 80 thousand people. The officials there try to do their best, and have tried to create a very nice, sincere atmosphere. But perhaps because we have grown too accustomed to the camp standards Turkey has put in place for refugees, we did not find the scene we saw at all heartening. They are all makeshift huts, camps that look like tin houses; in that state they virtually allude to the heavy sins of the ostentation in which the Gulf countries live, and bear witness to those sins.

Amid the news of the massacres still going on in Eastern Ghouta, while touring the camp, I cannot get out of my mind the scene of Trump, in front of Mohammed bin Salman, gushing about the employment and prosperity effect created in America by the latest arms purchases. Saudi Arabia's contribution to the provisioning of the people in these camps is very great. But it is of course so small, next to the aid given to America, which deserves not a penny, that it would be shameful even to mention it.

The children growing up in these camps, under these harsh conditions, grow up stitching all these contradictions, stitch by stitch, into their lives and personalities.

This is the saddest part. These children are our children.

Children who have suddenly grown up, who have shouldered all the contradictions of the world, who will either become a destiny or fall victim to a destiny.

Children who record everything in all its details on humanity's account, and who will sooner or later set this account before those responsible.

A small note: Asylum seeking and displacement caused by regional problems in the world have doubled in the last ten years. Of course, what a coincidence that the world arms industry has also doubled in size during this time.