The EU is helping Turkey forcibly deport migrants to Syria and Afghanistan

One of the last things Sami saw before Turkey deported him was the flag of the European Union. 
This spring, the 26-year-old Syrian was beaten unconscious at the gates of an EU-funded detention site in southern Turkey, stuffed into a bus and sent back to the war zone he had escaped from years earlier. 
In the detention center, where he spent three miserable months, “the EU flag is everywhere,” said Sami, who asked to use a pseudonym due to fear of reprisal. “On doors, windows, soap bags, even on mattresses and pillows.” 
In the wake of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis, the EU has poured more than €11 billion into Turkey to help the country support, shelter and manage almost 4 million people who had fled northward to escape Syria’s devastating civil war. 
These funds represent the largest humanitarian effort in EU history, but its purpose is far from altruistic — aiming to minimize asylum-seeker arrivals in the bloc by ensuring they stay in Turkey. The amount includes nearly €1 billion for border security and asylum processing to help Ankara contain refugees.
Yet Ankara has grown tired of acting as Europe’s refugee repository. In recent years, the Turkish government started using much of this EU-funded infrastructure to reduce the number of asylum-seekers it hosts by rounding up and forcibly deporting Syrians, Afghans, and others facing danger in their home countries, according to an investigation by POLITICO and eight other news outlets in partnership with Lighthouse Reports.
As hostility toward refugees soared first in Europe and then in Turkey, reception centers were transformed into deportation camps. Detainees reported torture, neglect and being denied access to EU-funded supplies meant to improve conditions. Vehicles emblazoned with the EU’s blue-and-gold emblem and the Turkish star and crescent now hunt for undocumented migrants and, in at least one case, have transported them across the border against their will.
The medical clinic in the detention center where Sami was held, located outside the Turkish city of Şanlıurfa, was supplied by the EU. Yet, when Sami fell seriously ill shortly after arriving, he was refused treatment. By March, he was so sick he could no longer walk; footage filmed in northern Syria after his deportation showed a severely emaciated young man with hollow cheeks. 
“I entered [Şanlıurfa] weighing 73 kilograms,” Sami recalled. “When I left, I weighed 44 kilograms.”
The investigation revealed that the European Commission, the EU’s executive body responsible for overseeing the funding allocated to Turkey, has repeatedly ignored warnings — from civil society groups, lawyers, diplomats, and even its own staff — indicating that EU funds were being used to support a deportation system expelling tens of thousands of asylum-seekers.
Deportations to countries where returnees face serious risk of persecution, inhumane treatment or death are forbidden under international and European law. The EU itself considers Syria and Afghanistan too dangerous for organized returns; in early October, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that the Taliban’s treatment of women constitutes persecution, entitling female Afghan refugees to asylum based on their gender alone.
“There have always been concerns about human rights” regarding funding for Turkey, a former Commission official told POLITICO, noting that he had raised the issue internally for years. “The pushback policies, the return policies, they have been common concerns throughout.” 
Asked whether the Commission is aware that Turkey is now using EU-funded infrastructure to conduct forced deportations, the ex-official said: “They know. Everybody knows. People are closing their eyes.” 
In 2016, five years into the Syrian war, Sami’s siblings and father were killed when bombs fell on Aleppo, their hometown. He was still a teenager. 
That same year, the EU made a decision that has guided its refugee policy ever since. In a panic over the arrival of a million asylum-seekers in 2015, most of them departing from the Turkish coast, the bloc sought to convince Ankara to stop the crossings.
The result was the 2016 Turkey-EU agreement, marking the start of a strategy intended to turn neighboring countries into guardians of the bloc’s borders. Migration deals with Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and other nations followed.
Between 2016 and 2023, the Commission poured €11.5 billion into helping Ankara host Syrians and discourage them from traveling onward to Europe. Initially, the funds, mostly disbursed via NGO-run projects, were spent on emergency humanitarian aid. But over time, Brussels directed more money into programs to improve Syrians’ living conditions and to integrate refugees into Turkey’s education system and job market. 
Sami and his mother entered Turkey in 2019. He struggled to obtain documentation, but their presence was tolerated: At the time, all Syrians fleeing the war were automatically granted “temporary protection.” Turkish authorities rarely grant refugee status; Ankara referred to Syrians as “guests.”
There was just one problem: Turkey, much like the EU, wasn’t keen on hosting refugees forever. When the economy nosedived during the Covid pandemic, and Afghans started arriving in large numbers after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, long-simmering resentments exploded.
Many of the country’s politicians eagerly fanned the flames. In Turkey’s 2023 election, returning the country’s “guests” topped the agenda. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to organize the “voluntary” departure of 1 million refugees to a Turkish-occupied “safe zone” in northern Syria. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, his main rival, said his party would deport all Syrians within two years. 
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