X.  Deportations from Turkey 

Overland Deportations to Northern Iraq

The Turkish authorities detain Iraqis who have been deported or summarily expelled from Greece until they gather a sufficient number to fill a bus.  After transporting them to the Habur crossing point on the Iraqi border, the Turkish authorities turn the Iraqis over to the Kurdish regional authorities.[137]  According to the following testimonies, the Kurdish authorities sometimes imprison and abuse the returnees.  A 21-year-old Iraqi Kurd from Kirkuk gave the following account of the arduous bus ride to Iraq and his subsequent imprisonment and torture by the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq:

At the end of January, beginning of February 2004, they took 84 Iraqis from Edirne on two buses. The people on the bus were from all over Iraq.  We were all handcuffed together in groups of two.  We were handcuffed the whole time.  We were not allowed to go to the toilet for a 34-hour bus trip.  We were fed bread and water only three times in 34 hours. One guy fell down.  They took him out of the bus.  The bus stopped on the highway for the drivers and guards to eat and rest, but they wouldn't let us out. 

At Silopi we crossed the bridge to northern Iraq.  We were transferred from Turkish handcuffs to having the peshmergas [Kurdish troops] handcuff us.

From the border, the peshmergas took us to Zakho.  We were kept in Zakho for 15 or 16 days.  Most people were held until relatives came to pick them up.  For those from Baghdad and outside the north, they would send a message to check their addresses.  They would take those people to the Kurdish-Iraq border and release them there.  I wouldn't tell them why I left.  They took me to another jail in Kirkuk where I was held for the next six months.

I have a friend who is a member of the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] and so they suspected me of being PKK.  They tortured me to say that I was a member of the PKK.  From the Iraqi side, the authorities do not like PKK members because they cause problems for the Kurdish government in northern Iraq.  They treated me very badly in the jail in Kirkuk. [138]

The 28-year-old Sabean man, who was deported from Greece to Turkey, [139] told Human Rights Watch how the Turks then deported him to Iraq:

They took us to the Edirne jail for two days where they treated us very badly.  They beat us, insulted us, and gave us bad food.  If you asked for water, they kicked you. 

Then, the Turks took us on a bus to the Iraqi border crossing at Zakho and turned us over to the Kurdish authorities.  We were handcuffed.  The Iraqi Kurds held 65 of us in a room for four days.  They questioned me.  I told the Kurdish official that I was a Sabean and that I suffered discrimination in the street, at work, everywhere.  He didn't say anything.  I told him I didn't have my ID and that I would have a problem if they returned me.  He told me that it wasn't his problem. 

The Kurds took me in handcuffs in a police car and released me on the other side of Kirkuk.  I waited for two weeks for a friend to send me a new ID, and then I went back to Baghdad.  I fled the country again as soon as I had enough money.[140] 

Indefinite Detention to Pay for Own Removal

Turkish law places no time limit on the detention of undocumented migrants.[141] The Turkish authorities appear to use indefinite detention as a means of coercing detainees to self-deport by contacting their families in their home countries to pay for return tickets.  Human Rights Watch observed particularly large numbers of south Asians, many of whom appeared to be Bangladeshis, who are held for long periods of time in particularly bad conditions until they can pay for their return tickets.  A newly arrived undocumented man in Athens who identified himself as a Palestinian and who had been arrested and detained in Balıkesir, Izmir, and Edirne while in Turkey explained the Turkish system of detention and removal:

If you don't get a plane ticket, you stay in jail.  In Turkey you pay for your own deportation.  They tell you to contact your family to send a ticket.  If the family does not give you a ticket, you stay.  You are stuck.  I met an Afghan man named Mahmoud in the jail in Balıkesir.[142]  He was a good man.  But he didn't have money to go back to Afghanistan. I only stayed 15 days in this dirty place, but Mahmoud was there for more than a year.  They separated him from his wife who was held in a different room.[143]    

The seriously ill Bangladeshi man in Edirne who is quoted above about the abuse and lack of medical care in the Tunca detention center, spoke about the purpose of his indefinite detention:

My friend went back to Bangladesh.  But I am not able to go back.  I have no money.  He was able. His older brother arranged the ticket for him.  But I am alone.  My family is very poor.  I lost my land to come here… I paid the smugglers $3,500 to come here and owe them $6,000 more and $500 in interest every month. My father is now like a beggar.   I don't know if Turkey will pay for a ticket to deport me.  I don't know how long they will hold me here.[144]