Refugees not allowed to leave for the European Union settled peacefully in Edirne. Now the government wants to expel them from there, too.
by Massimo Introvigne and Rosita Šorytė
In May 2023, the story of the 104 refugees of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL) stuck at the Kapıkule border between Türkiye and Bulgaria, and beaten and mistreated by the Turkish police while they were trying to reach the European Union, became international news. The AROPL is a Shia-derivative new religious movement, not to be confused with the Sunni-derivative Ahmadiyya Community persecuted in Pakistan. AROPL members are also regarded as heretics in both Sunni and Shia countries, and severely persecuted.
Media attention eventually generated a United Nations statement reminding Türkiye that the AROPL refugees faced serious risks if deported and that the obligation not to send back asylum seekers to countries where they may be persecuted or killed is “absolute and non-derogable.” The international mobilization allowed sixty-seven AROPL members to leave Türkiye, while 40 remained there (37 of the original 104 plus the members of an Iraqi family who arrived later).
What happened to the latter forty devotees? They tried to scrupulously respect Turkish laws. They settled in the city of Edirne and applied for asylum in Türkiye, based on the argument that they are from Iran and Iraq (except one who is from Palestine), where being a member of AROPL means being at risk of arrest every day. Their asylum claims were registered, and they received a temporary resident permit in Türkiye. They proceeded to organize themselves to survive, as most of them had left their countries of origin in a hurry and with little money. They pooled their meager resources together and rented a house where they could live communally and take care of the most vulnerable members. Many found jobs in Edirne. For people who had lost almost everything, some hope had been reborn.
Alas, once again the AROPL members in Türkiye are at risk, On July 14, they received an order to leave Edirne and scatter to eighteen different Turkish cities within fifteen days without any housing support. If they do not comply, their residence permits will be revoked, and they may be deported back to their countries of origin (notwithstanding the United Nations’ request to Türkiye not to do it). While now accustomed to deal with AROPL as a law-abiding and hard-working community, local authorities in Edirne told them the decision was taken in the capital Ankara and that there are security reasons not to keep them gathered in a city close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders. The AROPL suspects that opposition to its religious doctrines, which have been denounced as heretic in Türkiye too, also plays a role in the decision.
Not only does the order disrupt the peaceful life of the AROPL devotees in Edirne, who will lose their jobs and will have to start looking for new ones in cities they know nothing about, but it places the most vulnerable members in an intolerable predicament. There are old ladies who are asked to move alone to other cities, where they will be the only AROPL member in town and will not be able to count on the help and support of co-religionists. The refugees’ resources are barely sufficient to pay the rental of one house in Edirne where they are all living together. Simply put, they do not have the money to rent apartments in eighteen different cities.
To all these objections, Türkiye answers that how the AROPL refugees find accommodation and organize themselves is their problem. The country does not seem to have a system for supporting refugees, not even by placing them in temporary camps as other countries do. This puts the group’s members in the impossible situation of either ending up homeless on the streets, or risk becoming illegal and being deported back to their countries of origin.
It is a humanitarian as well as a freedom of religion crisis, since the reason the refugees cannot return to their respective countries is that they are persecuted for their faith there. And it is a crisis where, once again, the international community should intervene and remind Türkiye of its human rights obligations.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
