Eurostat figures dismiss claims of rising asylum from Turks to EU
by Ali Ünal
ANKARAMay 17, 2016 - 12:00 am GMT+3
by Ali Ünal
May 17, 2016 12:00 am
As the EU demands Turkey narrow its definition of terrorism for its citizens to be granted visa-free travel, concerns of rising asylum application under a relaxed visa regime were eased in the latest Eurostat Asylum report that says Turkish asylum applicants to the EU's 28 countries are negligible.
The head of the European Union Delegation to Turkey, Hansjörg Haber, said last week that under the visa liberalization regime the number of Turkish citizen who seek asylum in EU countries may rise significantly due to Turkey's definition of terrorism. "Under visa liberalization [Turkish citizens] could ask for asylum and will probably get it. So this is a heavy consideration for member states," Haber told reporters on May 12.
The latest Eurostat Asylum report, however, says that the number of Turkish asylum applicants to the EU's 28 countries is low. According to the Eurostat Asylum Quarterly Report, as of the end of 2015, 117,840 people from non-EU countries applied for asylum status. The report indicates that the number of Turkish citizens who have applied for asylum status in that period was 750. Taking into account that only 150 Turkish citizens were granted asylum status in EU member countries in the same period, this figure is insignificant.
Despite the EU continuing to use the fear of rising Turkish asylum applicants as an excuse to block Turkey's visa liberalization process, some senior EU officials are unaware of asylum application statistics. Haber said in response to a journalist regarding the number of Turkish asylum applicants: "I cannot give you the entire picture, but I'm from Germany, and Germany is one of the top 10 countries for Turkish asylum seekers. He said he does not know the details of the issue but maintains his concern: "I just have to confess that this I don't know [the specific numbers]."
In spite of Haber's claims, the Eurostat statistics show that people from Turkey are not among the top successful asylum applicants in Germany or the rest of the EU.
On the other hand, recent UNHRC stats prove that the number of asylum applicants to Turkey is on the rise while the figures of Turkish citizens who seek asylum in other countries are on a downtrend. Accordingly in 2006, there were a total of 4,550 individual applications for asylum to Turkey. In 2011, that number stood at 16,000. In 2013, it almost quadrupled to 44,800. By 2014 it had reached 82,000 and in the first 10 months of 2015 the number of new applications to Turkey hit 114,000, not including Syrians. The new applicants, combined with other pre-existing populations and new-comers who have not been able to register yet, reach a total of approximately 240,000 individuals as of late 2015.
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