Committee: Syrian refugees in Germany forced to convert to Christianity

The head of the Refugee Rights Committee in the Turkish Parliament, Atay Uslu, has criticized Germany for forcing Syrian refugees to convert from their religion of Islam to Christianity.

Last week a Turkish Parliamentary delegation from the Refugee Rights Committee went to Germany to examine the conditions of Syrian refugees. As part of their visit, Turkish deputies went to see two refugee camps in Germany and met with officials and non-governmental organizations.

Speaking in the Parliament about their visit on Nov. 6, Turkish deputy Atay Uslu said they had observed German clerics force Syrian refugees to religious conversions in order to facilitate their refugee and asylum applications.

"We have already shared our criticism with German officials in this matter and some of them already acknowledged our concerns; however, some officials claimed that refugees are changing religions voluntarily. Nevertheless, it is not common or convincing that people can change their religion within a week," Uslu said.

Reminding that almost 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children are officially missing in Germany, Uslu said the case of missing children was a shame for humanity.

"In our visit we also asked about the issue of the missing children to German officials and requested a detailed investigation on this matter,'' he said.

Uslu also underlined that the current Geneva Convention is inadequate for responding to the needs of refugees and suggested that it is time to draw up a new refugee convention.

Providing some details about Turkey's humanitarian aid to the refugees, Uslu said so far Turkey has spent over $25 billion for refugees. "So far there have been 172,000 Syrian children born in Turkey. This figure is bigger than the total number of births in Denmark. More than 400,000 refugee children are studying in Turkey," he added.