Country of origin information report Turkey March 2007

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27 Internally displaced people (IDPs)
27.01 As noted in the Human Rights Watch (HRW) World Report 2007, published in January 2007:
“The Turkish government has failed to facilitate the return of the estimated 378,335 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the southeast who were forced by the army to flee their villages during the armed conflict with the PKK in the 1980s and 1990s. The government has failed to rehabilitate the basic infrastructure of most villages destroyed by the army during the conflict; many villages have no electricity, telephone access, or schools. What is more, the security situation in some regions remains poor; the 58,000 village guards—Kurds armed and paid by the government to fight the PKK—often occupy or use vacated lands, and have killed 18 people, including would-be returnees, in the past four years. IDPs who do return to their villages cannot afford to rebuild their homes or re-establish agriculture. A 2004 compensation law, which could have provided the financial means to support IDPs who want to return to their villages, has been interpreted and applied by some provincial compensation commissions so as to pay derisory sums (often as low as US$3,000) or exclude eligible IDPs from compensation altogether.” [9b]
27.02 As recorded in the May 2006 Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) report entitled “Overcoming a Legacy of Mistrust: Towards Reconciliation between the state and the displaced”:
“The Turkish government’s policy on internal displacement has so far neglected the specific problems of urban IDPs. Likewise, the European Commission, which monitors Turkey’s progress on this issue in its annual Progress Reports, has focused mostly on returns and has not paid much attention to IDPs’ current conditions. Therefore, the adoption of the Framework Document and the Hacettepe Survey are positive steps by the national authorities for the purpose of addressing the current conditions of the displaced.” [98a] (p26)
27.03 The same report continued to note that:
“According to government figures, two thirds of the displaced population (approximately 240,000) have not returned to their original homes. The actual numbers of the displaced currently living in cities may in fact be much higher. Some of these urban IDPs no longer consider returning to their original homes; others are currently unable to return although they would eventually like to do so. IDPs received almost no aid during the initial years of displacement from the authorities for resettlement in other areas in terms of assistance for housing, food, cash, access to education, health care, and employment opportunities. Therefore, the displaced have often joined the ranks of the urban poor in south-eastern cities (such as Diyarbakır, Batman, Hakkâri and Van) as well as western metropolises (such as Istanbul and Ankara). Urban IDPs suffer from a host of interrelated problems, including poverty and joblessness; inadequate access to education for school-age children; use of child labour as a coping strategy; poor housing; and insufficient access to health and psychosocial care. Coming from agricultural backgrounds and hence lacking skills for urban employment, the majority of displaced adult men and women are unemployed.” [98a] (p26)