Voici notre premier texte de campagne sur les centres de détention en Turquie, les "Misafir hanesi" (Guest house). En Turquie les conditions de détention sont particulièrement difficiles : il n’y a pas de durée de détention, les droits les plus basiques sont bafoués. C’est dans ce contexte que le groupe de militants auquel j’appartiens lance cette campagne. Plusieurs formes d’actions vont être menées : forums, manifestations.

A specter is haunting the world, the specter of immigration. To deal with this threat, the detention of undocumented migrants is becoming increasingly widespread.

Usually called administrative retention centers by States, in Turkey it takes the shape of Guesthouses. The development of these detention centers in Turkey and in the whole of Europe is one of the signs that the construction of migration management policies is at work. Migrants are victims of a silent war. Criminalized, detained, and rendered invisible, their attempts to cross borders are too often a synonym of death. The so-called fight against illegal migration is actually a war where we have, on the one hand, the States, police, special forces (like Frontex), borders, arms, law and prison, and, on the other hand, human beings. Among other examples, the recent death of Festus Okey, a Nigerian migrant, embodies this war. EU is fiercely pressuring Turkey, as a bordering country, to participate in this war and in return receive financial compensation for her collaboration. Turkey, without hesitation, enforces this hideous deal.

In this war, led to a large extent by the European Union, the use of camps for migrants, or of guesthouses as they are called in Turkey, is just one of many existing tools. There is a detention center for foreigners in each and every city ; the biggest ones are located in Kumkapi Istanbul, Izmir and Kirklareli.

What we call detention is all form of deprivation of liberty suffered by migrants and organized by the State. Turkey states that migrants are not being detained and that the placement in these misafirhane is meant to facilitate the deportation procedures from the national soil of foreigners who are found guilty of breaking the laws regulating the entry and the stay in Turkey, i.e. of what the State calls illegal migrants.

Detained upon a decision from the Ministry of Interior, migrants are being held for an indefinite period of time, from one month to a year and more, waiting to be deported or released. Not told why they are arrested, not informed on how long they will stay in detention, not having access to lawyers or to basic health services in emergency cases, they are deprived of the more basic rights entitled to detainees in the Turkish Constitution and in the international standards regarding detention.

Considered criminals, migrants are detained in degrading conditions, placed in crowded small cells. Minors, adults and entire families endure the same treatment. The crime they are accused of is to have left their country, to have travelled and crossed borders without the documents required.

Migration is a right. We see that today the most basic human rights are acknowledged by states to the extent that they coincide with “citizens’ rights”. The right to migrate, however, by its very definition comprises the deed of going beyond the borders of statehood and thus the concept of citizenship as commonly construed. For this reason, states tend often to criminalize any activity that calls into question the boundaries of their territorial sovereignty.

Migration is not a crime. Migration is a right. No one should be deprived of his/her freedom of movement. No one should be deprived of their liberty and locked up without his consent for having made use of this liberty.

We argue that under no circumstances a center aimed at detaining migrants can be acceptable. In no case depriving people of their liberty for having crossed borders or for having decided to settle down somewhere shall legitimately, morally and humanely be justified.

Detention centers, migrants’ camps are illegitimate !

Stop war against migrants