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.” 

Unwanted ‘guests’

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. 

!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();

Policy changes followed. More Syrians became undocumented as the government imposed restrictions on where foreigners could live, preventing many from registering their address. Law enforcement stepped up search operations to find and detain unregistered migrants. In late 2023, Sami was caught in their net.

By that point, Turkey’s asylum and border control system had received around €1 billion in EU funding — an amount pieced together by reporters working on this investigation, as the Commission provides no public breakdown of money spent on migration-related projects. 

Some of these projects predate the 2016 deal. As part of efforts to align Turkey, a candidate to join the EU, with the bloc’s standards, Brussels paid to set up surveillance towers on Turkey’s eastern border. It also approved funding for six “reception centers” — sites to temporarily house and register asylum-seekers — and one “removal center,” from where migrants deemed to have no right to stay would be deported to their home countries.

Yet while construction was underway, the priorities were shifting. Under pressure to keep Syrians from traveling toward the EU, Ankara suggested they be put to a different purpose.

The six reception centers were “transformed to removal centres following the request of the Turkish Government in 2015, in agreement with the European Commission,” states a 2022 letter penned by the Commission’s neighborhood department, obtained by Lighthouse Reports.

An internal Commission report describes how the EU helped fund works to turn these centers into prison-like facilities preventing those inside from escaping. “The exterior walls were 1.5 meters high and did not prevent escapes and, on the contrary, encouraged such attempts,” wrote the report’s authors. “Upon this wall, 4.5-meter high security panel and barbed wire [were] established. The escape rate reduced profoundly.” 

Sami said he was detained by police on Dec. 27, 2023, as he was on his way to meet a friend for dinner. The officers stopped him after hearing him speak Arabic on his phone, he said, and asked for his kimlik, a Turkish-issued identity document. 

“I told them I didn’t have a kimlik, so one officer hit me with two palms on my face and another officer hit me with his foot on my back and his hand on my stomach,” he said. They took him to a police station and then to a detention site in Istanbul’s Tuzla suburb. 

Two days later, he was transferred to Şanlıurfa. 

Prisoners

Turkey now has 32 removal centers with a capacity of nearly 20,000, according to Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya. In an interview in August, he described them as “our greatest infrastructure power regarding deportation.” 

One EU diplomat, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said that the bloc has financially supported 30 removal centers — by funding their construction or renovation, or equipment, staff and management. Documents show that EU money was spent on everything from baby clothes to barbed wire, with total funding for the centers reaching nearly €213 million. (A Commission spokesperson put the value of contracts related to removal centers at €199.7 million.) 

The removal center in Tuzla was among many sites refurbished with more than €5 million in EU funds a few years ago, documents show. The Şanlıurfa center, one of eight constructed from scratch with EU money, received €6.8 million. 

!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();

In total, EU taxpayers helped fund the construction of 14 removal camps, of which eight are completed, the refurbishment and maintenance of another 11 sites, and the management of centers in general, according to the Commission spokesperson.

The spokesperson also said that all EU funding for refugees and migration in Turkey is delivered in accordance with the bloc’s rules, adding that ensuring the protection of refugees and managing the removal centers is Ankara’s responsibility. The EU regularly carries out monitoring missions to sites that received funding and also finances projects aimed at “strengthening access to rights and services” in removal centers, the spokesperson stressed. 

The Commission argues that removal centers are necessary to manage migration and that the EU is funding their improvement. “EU assistance to the removal centers has significantly helped Turkish authorities’ efforts to improve the physical and material conditions in the centers,” the spokesperson said. 

The conditions in the centers, however, are far from being in line with EU standards.

Shortly after arriving in the Şanlıurfa center, Sami started suffering excruciating stomach pain. A doctor in the center gave him no diagnosis but a “yellow pill,” switching to a red pill the next day when his condition worsened. On the third day, he was given an injection; in total, he says, the doctor changed his medication nine times within 20 days. 

After three weeks, Sami was unable to walk. “My stomach swelled in a strange way and filled with liquid,” he said, but the camp authorities refused to refer him to a hospital or keep him in the center’s small clinic — which the EU has paid to equip. 

A tender document dated July 2019 shows that for six centers including Şanlıurfa, EU money funded examination tables (one per center), stethoscopes (three), thermometers (also three), blood pressure monitors (two), bandages (lots), scales (two for adults, one for children), wheelchairs (two), hospital beds (two), oxygen cylinders (two), a defibrillator, a queue ticketing system and more. 

At some point during his stay in Şanlıurfa, Sami says he was suddenly moved to the nearby Harran camp for two days, just as a “committee from Europe” came by to inspect the center. He thinks Turkish officials were trying to hide his condition.

“I was very sick,” he said. The officers “returned us after the committee left.” It’s unclear which Europeans were visiting; a spokesperson for the EU delegation in Ankara said they did not carry out an inspection during the time Sami was in the center.

Harran is one of several informal camps that appear to be used as overflow units for official EU-funded sites. While Turkey and the EU speak of 32 removal centers, documents, local news and testimonies from refugees mention additional detention facilities not found on official lists.

One Syrian detained in Harran claimed he saw signs saying “this project is financed by the European Union” in the camp’s administration office. Reporters working on this investigation also found the EU logo on a bus used to deport Syrians, and on two vans in Istanbul used as part of a mobile checkpoint to round up undocumented migrants. 

The EU diplomat stated that Brussels does not fund checkpoints or unofficial camps, and an identification number on the vans indicate they were part of an EU-funded project in 2015, suggesting the vehicles were repurposed. (The number of such mobile checkpoints, a key part of Turkey’s deportation machine, has ballooned since their introduction last year; the fingerprinting system used in them was set up and later expanded with EU funding, documents show.) 

The diplomat added that the bloc has little control over Turkey’s use of its logo or repurposed equipment: “We know they use these banners according to their wishes.” 

A Commission spokesperson said that “there are no reports suggesting that EU-funded equipment, such as vehicles and IT systems, are used for other purposes than the ones intended for … any allegations will be investigated should evidence be provided.” Turkey’s migration management directorate said the vehicles in question were part of an EU project from 2015 that has “expired.” 

!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();

Reports of ill-treatment go beyond restrictions on medical care. Reporters working on this investigation interviewed 37 former detainees held in 22 EU-funded centers. They described dismal conditions, such as overcrowding, inadequate food and poor hygiene.

Ghani, an Afghan who served as an interpreter for the British army, was sent to an EU-funded center in Kırklareli, northwestern Turkey, after being caught trying to cross into Bulgaria in January. He said he was put in an insect-infested basement: “There were ‘funded by the European Union’ signs on the walls.” The EU financed the construction of the deportation center — originally intended as a “reception” site — with €6.7 million.

He and several other detainees said they could not access EU-funded supplies.

“The EU provided lots of good things like showers, football pitches, but we weren’t allowed to use them,” said Ghani. “When we got to the camp we were signing a paper [that] said the camp would give you shampoo, soap, a blanket, pillow. But we didn’t get that.” 

The Commission spokesperson said that the EU “does not require detainees or other people held in removal centres to sign any document.”  

But Dawood, a Syrian also detained in Kırklareli after trying to cross into Bulgaria last year, told a similar story. He described being told to sign a paper bearing the EU-Turkey co-funding logo after arriving. “It said that we had the right to a bed, clean sheets and pillows, soap,” he said, “but we didn’t receive anything, I couldn’t even find a place to sleep.”

When he was transferred to a camp in Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, he said that even milk cartons there featured the EU logo, but they had to buy them: “They used to sell us that milk in the supermarket in the camp.” 

Many detainees recounted serious abuse. Of the 37 people interviewed, 30 reported experiencing or witnessing beatings. 

“They treated us very badly,” Dawood said of the guards in Kırklareli. “They constantly shouted insults at us, they even used their batons to beat us.” 

In a recent submission to the United Nations, NGOs raised concern about reports of torture in centers including Şanlıurfa and Gaziantep. “Migrants are forcibly stripped of their clothing and confined to the basement rooms of the centers alone with cold air conditioning running for up to 6-8 hours,” a method that can cause hypothermia, they wrote.

Abdul, a 28-year-old Syrian farmer who came to Turkey in 2019 to receive treatment for heart valve disease, said he was detained in late 2022 while buying household supplies.

He ended up in an EU-funded center in Kayseri, central Turkey, “where we were subjected to severe torture, including beatings … and detention in refrigerators.” Every three days, he said, “policemen came to the detention center, and beat the prisoners. They put some of us into the refrigerator and kept us there for hours. I spent six hours in this refrigerator.”

Dawood also mentioned detainees being taken to a “refrigerator room” in Gaziantep. Guards took a man housed on his floor “and beat him so bad he couldn’t walk, they had to drag him back to the room,” he recounted. The Turkish government’s migration management directorate denied the existence of such rooms. 

Mistreatment inside EU-funded centers has been extensively documented by Turkey’s human rights watchdog TIHEK, Turkish NGOs and lawyers representing detainees, with some incidents going to court. One case currently at trial alleges that guards at the Izmir center beat up detainees in 2021; security cameras documented the incident.

“We saw that they had bruises and lesions on their bodies,” said Duygu İnegöllü, one of the lawyers involved. She is one of many lawyers reporting difficulties accessing their clients in EU-funded centers. Turkish government data listed in an internal EU document shows that only 21 percent of detainees were able to access lawyers in 2022. 

Detainees usually have their belongings, including their phones, taken from them on arrival in the centers, leaving them cut off from the outside world and unable to contact lawyers. 

“Not even my family knew where I was,” said Dawood. In Kırklareli, staff “told us that it doesn’t really matter if we hire a lawyer, we’ll be deported anyway.” 

The deportations

After two months in agony, Sami was transferred to a hospital, where he was told he had “stomach poisoning and blood poisoning.” He was handcuffed to his bed, but said “the doctor was very good and told me that ‘after 45 days you will get out of here healthy.’” 

The authorities had other plans. Ten days into his hospital stay, a police officer came to Sami’s bed and unlocked his handcuffs. He was free to go, he explained, but needed to return to the detention center to sign off on some paperwork. 

The doctor, Sami said, tried to dissuade them — to no avail. Back at the removal center, he was given release papers and a travel permit to Gaziantep, a nearby Turkish city, where he was told he could obtain a kimlik. (He shared the documents with Lighthouse Reports.)

He never made it to Gaziantep. “As soon as I got out, one of the officers grabbed me and pushed me towards the bus,” Sami said. “I asked him to read the papers I had with me, but he refused and hit me so hard that I fainted and woke up on our way to the Syrian crossing in Tal Abyad,” a border town. 

Most Syrians are dropped behind the Turkish gate and given no choice but to cross the few hundred meters of no-man’s-land on foot. Sami was driven to the Syrian gate, he said, because “I wasn’t able to walk.”

At no point during the crossing was Sami given any paperwork. But many Syrians report being coerced into signing documents that state they are returning voluntarily. In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of several violations in the case of a Syrian man forced to sign a voluntary return form and deported in 2018; 25 of the 37 former detainees interviewed reported being pressured to sign such forms or having forms signed on their behalf. 

Abdul, the farmer who recounted torture in the center of Kayseri, was eventually transferred to Şanlıurfa, where he and others were forced to sign voluntary return papers. 

“On July 14, 2023, it was a Friday at 5 p.m., they started calling out the names of detainees,” he recalled. “They put us on buses and the gendarmes started beating us.” One man, Abdul said, had his legs broken by officers after he refused to sign papers. “The officer took the initiative to sign on his behalf.” 

In Gaziantep, Dawood said, the guards handed him and others Turkish-language papers to sign, claiming they were just documenting their belongings. Dawood, who speaks Turkish, realized they were papers requesting a voluntary return. 

“I told them that I won’t sign,” he said. “Then they threatened me, saying that if I don’t sign they’ll call on the gendarmerie to beat me. I wanted to preserve my dignity, so I signed.” 

Those who arrived with him followed suit, he added, “except one guy. He wouldn’t sign, so they called in two gendarmerie officers in civilian clothing. They took him to a room and beat him until he signed.” 

In August, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya boasted that deportations of “irregular migrants” — a category including Afghans and some Syrians — had increased by 20 percent, reaching more than 160,000 over the past 14 months. “This is Turkey’s largest deportation figure of all time,” he said. “As Turkey, we have deported more than all European Union countries.”

In the previous year, “voluntary” returns of Syrians had increased by 113 percent, Yerlikaya said. The Turkish migration management directorate said that between 2016 and Sept. 19 this year, more than 715,000 Syrians had returned “voluntarily, safely and with dignity.” 

Under Turkish legislation, a genuine voluntary return involves multiple bureaucratic steps. The form requesting voluntary return must be signed by a representative of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to ensure the dignity, safety and voluntary nature of any repatriation. If no UNHCR officer is available, a Red Crescent official can sign; if that’s not possible, an NGO or local human rights official can sign. 

Two Syrian border officials said they had been asked not to record statistics about deportations, but that some data was collected. One official shared figures for the Bab al-Hawa checkpoint, saying that between January 2023 and August 2024, they registered nearly 27,000 returns as forced — approximately half of all crossings during that time. 

The Commission’s 2022 report on Turkey notes that 503,000 Syrians were “voluntarily repatriated” by that year but that UNHCR only monitored “approximately 125,000” of them. UNHCR itself states it has verified 186,400 voluntary returns between 2016 and June this year; in the first half of 2024, it has monitored fewer than 10,000. 

!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();

A UNHCR spokesperson said that the agency monitors voluntary returns to Syria “in a limited number of locations” and “follows up with the national authorities on cases of allegations of forcible returns brought to its attention.” 

A spokesperson for the Turkish Red Crescent said the organization “ceased its involvement in the voluntary returns process in 2022,” declining to specify a reason and saying they were unable to share data on returns monitored prior to that year. 

Back to Afghanistan

Non-Syrians rarely receive protective status in Turkey, which uses a version of the Geneva Convention extending protection to Europeans only. They are often simply sent back to the countries from which they came.

Afghans in particular are routinely deported en masse; in 2022, Turkey said it returned more than 66,000 Afghans by plane. Countless others are pushed back at the border with Iran, where Turkish guards patrol in EU-funded armored vehicles and look down from EU-funded watchtowers. 

An employee of Ariana Airlines said that since the fall of Kabul in 2021, the Afghan carrier has transported more than 100,000 deportees from Turkey to Afghanistan, usually men aged 18 to 55. Deportations have now overtaken the annual Hajj pilgrimage as the airline’s “largest and most profitable operation,” he said.

The vast majority of passengers are returning against their will, he believes. Many board the plane hungry, wolfing down food handed out by the crew. “Most of them claim that they only receive food once every 24 hours in the deportees’ camps.” 

Ghani, the former British army interpreter, was eventually handed a return document, which he shared with Lighthouse Reports. 

“The paper said I am going to Afghanistan by my choice. I said I don’t want to sign. They punched me. They said otherwise I had to go to Iran.” Despite contacting a lawyer, he was deported by plane to Afghanistan. 

Other cases documented for this investigation include a former Afghan special forces commander deported by Turkey to Iran, which sent him back to Afghanistan in mid-2023, where he was shot dead by the Taliban, according to his family; an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s and her illiterate daughter, made to sign voluntary return papers without their knowledge; and an Afghan singer’s husband and toddler, who were deported despite having valid Turkish residence cards.

An interpreter who has worked at several EU-funded removal centers — where he described overcrowding as well as a lack of hygiene and health care — said Afghan men are frequently tricked into signing return forms. 

“They make them sign a form without telling them, sometimes with violence,” he said. “Sometimes they are forced to sign a blank piece of paper, which [officials] later print out with a photo and stamp before they are deported.”

In a statement, the Turkish migration management directorate said that it operates “in accordance with law, human rights and our values of civilisation throughout … from the detection and capture of irregular migrants apprehended in our country, to their administrative detention in removal centres and their subsequent deportation to their countries of origin or safe third countries.” 

The directorate added that all removal centers follow “the principle of ‘zero tolerance to ill-treatment’” and that any complaints are “meticulously investigated.” It also said that “access to legal support is provided for all detainees,” with lawyers holding more than 117,000 meetings in centers between January and August 2024, and that in all removal centers “services such as food, cleaning, ventilation, access to health services” and more “are provided uninterruptedly.”

All deportations are carried out in line with Turkey’s national legislation prohibiting the return of refugees to places where they could be persecuted, it insisted. Regarding Syria in particular, “all foreigners returning to this country do so voluntarily.”

Allegations that Afghans are forced to sign voluntary return papers, have such papers signed on their behalf by Turkish officials, or are deported despite facing threats “are untrue,” the directorate said. 

Turning a blind eye

While the EU says it has little control over what is being done in Turkey, signs of its involvement are plastered across the infrastructure used for detentions and deportations.

A Turkish civil servant said that in the eastern deportation center where he worked until recently, several employees — a food engineer, a driver, translators and more — have their salaries paid via EU projects. The security cameras, renovations and repairs are funded by the EU, too. 

The bloc’s flag is “everywhere, on all the equipment, on the tables, chairs and beds,” he added. “One of the logos, for example, is a little sticker on a table that reads: ‘This table is 85 percent funded by the EU and 15 percent by the [Turkish] budget.’”

The European Commission told Lighthouse Reports that EU support for Turkey’s “migration management” — projects such as removal centers — amounted to more than €276 million between 2014 and 2020, and another €30 million since, adding that funds for border infrastructure amounted to more than €609 million since 2014. 

Documents show upward of €150 million was spent on such projects prior to 2014. Altogether, that makes close to €1 billion. 

More money has been pledged: In February, EU leaders approved a €64.6 billion top-up of the bloc’s budget, of which €2 billion will be spent on Syrian refugee aid as well as efforts “to strengthen border management” in Turkey, according to Commission spokesperson Balazs Ujvari. 

Conditions apply to all EU funding, and in theory, Brussels could recoup money if it were misused; the EU diplomat said that if there was evidence of abuse involving “projects that have been funded by us, that would also have financial consequences.” 

Yet so far, Brussels has shown little interest in what its money facilitates. 

The conditions inside EU-funded centers and the forced deportations have been extensively documented, and the former Commission official said these issues were “constantly” talked about internally. 

“These human rights concerns, the pushback policies, the return policies, they have been common concerns throughout the period I was dealing with Turkey,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss internal conversations. 

The Commission’s annual reports on Turkey noted reports of forced deportations as early as 2015. Its 2023 report acknowledges “recurrent allegations of human rights violations in the field of migration, particularly in removal centres.”

The European Parliament raised concerns about deportations as early as 2019. A 2021 Commission report on the EU’s refugee aid similarly noted “concerns of enforced returns.” NGOs say they have raised the issue repeatedly with senior Commission staff. 

“There is enough evidence in the public domain that shows what’s happening,” said Catherine Woollard, director of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. “So I think it’s not really credible that EU officials are not aware of what’s happening in the Turkish migration system.” 

Documents also show the EU is funneling an increasing share of its Turkey-related funding toward migration control, approving projects worth more than €260 million since 2022. That includes €220 million for a project to reinforce Turkey’s eastern and southeastern frontiers, which began earlier this year, despite frequent reports of mistreatment and pushbacks at the country’s border with Iran.

!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();

The former official said that Brussels stepped up funding at the behest of Olivér Várhelyi, the commissioner in charge of EU neighborhood affairs and a close ally of Hungary’s hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. 

The ex-official added that he personally raised human rights concerns with Várhelyi, but that the commissioner was “dismissive.” He added: “Let’s just say the commissioner is in favor of returns” and has pushed Commission staff “to really consider how much we could finance returns.” 

He alleged Várhelyi was also “super happy” about Turkey’s “massive amount of forced returns to Afghanistan.”

Várhelyi, who was renominated to serve in the Commission by Orbán and faces confirmation hearings for his new job of health commissioner next month, did not respond to written questions or multiple interview requests sent to his cabinet. 

Late last year, he said the EU would support “safe, dignified and voluntary returns … in close cooperation with [U.N. agencies] if this is requested by Türkiye.” 

Regarding returns, a Commission spokesperson said that Brussels has “started discussions” with U.N. agencies “to work with host countries on a more structured approach to voluntary returns to regions in Syria which are safe, dignified and informed, while maintaining protection measures.”

Beyond the border

Turkey’s position is that all returns are voluntary and that it is sending people back to safe places. Syrians aren’t deported to Damascus or rebel-held areas, but to a section in the north of the country under Turkish control.

The Turkish civil servant said that while he personally hadn’t witnessed people being forced to sign forms, he said it’s become interior ministry policy to expel Syrians. 

“Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya is a real hardliner… His aim is to empty Turkey of its foreigners,” he said. “He will try to send everyone back… Yes, he’s getting Syrians to sign voluntary return forms.”

One Turkish official who served as an adviser to Erdoğan until last year also acknowledged that some Syrians were being returned against their will. “There is a safe area on the other side,” he claimed, referring to the Turkish-occupied zone in northern Syria. 

Human Rights Watch earlier this year described this area as “pits of danger and despair.” 

The increase in returns to Syria is “worrying” organizations like Doctors Without Borders, given the lack of infrastructure to support displaced people, said Emmanuel Massart, the medical nonprofit’s Northwest Syria coordinator. 

The local health care system is in “constant collapse,” he said. “So if you add more people, it is going to be even more difficult to manage — on top of the fact that their security is not assured at all.” 

Nor is there any support to help returnees find shelter and food. Most displaced people live in informal camps, where access to water and bathrooms is scarce. 

“We have seen a few months ago that there were some cholera cases, which is a big, big sign for the lack of sanitation facilities,” Massart said. Plus, “a lot of patients in the camps … are not able to get access to their regular medication. So their condition becomes very, very severe, and they end up being medical emergencies.” 

That’s what happened to Sami. 

In a Turkish-run hospital in northern Syria, he was once again refused treatment. Sami eventually found shelter through a local mosque’s charitable organization and borrowed some money to buy medication, but became sicker and sicker, unable to even reach the toilet by himself. 

In July, he begged doctors for treatment inside Turkey. They agreed, sending him over the border accompanied by police. “I was treated like a criminal, not a patient,” he said. “Like someone who killed the president.” After three days in a Turkish hospital, he was deported a second time. 

Back in Syria, Sami lacks the funds to buy all the necessary medication. 

“I am taking only the important medicine,” he said in a phone call in late August, his voice still weak. “My health situation is better, but I should be recovered now. I’m not, because I couldn’t buy all the medication needed.”

Abdul, the former farmer, now lives in one of the many informal camps in northern Syria. His wife and toddler joined him after facing “harassment” and deportation threats, he said, even though his son — undocumented despite being born in Turkey in 2021 — also suffers from a heart condition. He’s unable to work or afford treatment. 

Dawood, who was deported after being forced to sign a voluntary return paper, managed to get smuggled back into Turkey earlier this year. “My goal is to reach Europe,” he said, as he has siblings living in EU countries. For now, he’s in hiding, sleeping on the floor of the Syrian restaurant where he works. His life in Turkey, he says, is “a prison.” 

Ghani, the former British army interpreter, says he was lucky that the Taliban didn’t appear to have a list of passenger names when his deportation flight landed in Kabul. “I had been worried I would arrive and they would arrest me.” He now lives in hiding in Afghanistan.

Turkey’s EU-funded deportation pipeline “is not human,” said Sami, trying to raise his voice above the call to prayer sounding across Turkish-occupied northern Syria. 

Europeans “should think about how they are affecting people’s lives and futures by financing these deportations,” he added. “For myself, I am already deported and what’s happened has happened for me. I want them to think of the others who still have a chance of life.” 

Reporters on this investigation included Zia Weise (POLITICO); Mohannad Al-Najjar, Şebnem Arsu, Muriel Kalisch and Steffen Lüdke (Der Spiegel); Andrés Mourenza (El País); Nicolas Bourcier (Le Monde); Melvyn Ingleby (NRC); Mohammad Bassiki (the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism Association); L’Espresso (Ylenia Gostoli); Jalil Rawnaq (Etiliaat Roz); independent journalists Mahmoud Baffakh, Giacomo Zandonini, J. Jalali and Mesud Tatuz; and May Bulman, Fahim Abed, Bashar Deeb, Elena DeBre and Charlotte Alfred from Lighthouse Reports.

The investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe and the Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund.

Data visualization by Giovanna Coi.