Turkish border guards kill Syrian family and other refugees

Three children, four women and one man were killed on Saturday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It said a total of 60 Syrian refugees had been shot at the border since the start of the year.

Six of this weekend’s casualties were from the same family, said the observatory’s founder Rami Abdelrahman.

“I sent our activists to hospital there, we have video [of the corpses], but we haven’t published it because there are children [involved],” he said.

The Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists inside Syria, supported the claim, reporting that one of the children was as young as six.

Syrian refugees have been making illegal crossings of the Turkish border as Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon have reportedly made it virtually impossible for them to leave Syria legally.

Some attribute the crackdown on Turkey’s Syrian border and the implementation of a new visa regime to the EU’s restriction on arrivals from Turkey, the BBC reports.

“EU officials should recognise that their red light for refugees to enter the EU gives Turkey a green light to close its border, exacting a heavy price on war-ravaged asylum seekers with nowhere else to go,” Human Rights Watch said after a previous round of border shootings in March.

A senior Turkish official said Turkey was investigating the latest allegations of shootings but was “unable to independently verify the claims”.

“Turkey provides humanitarian assistance to displaced persons in northern Syria and follows an open-door policy, which means we admit refugees whose lives are under threat,” he added.

Turkey is reportedly building a wall along its southern perimeter, making it harder for Syrians to reach safety. Turkish diplomats say this is due to fears over infiltration by Daesh rather than any animosity towards refugees.

However, critics say Turkey does not make it easy for refugees on its territory. In legal terms, it treats them as temporary guests rather than as refugees with rights under the terms of the 1951 UN refugee convention. Despite recent legislative changes, the vast majority of Syrians do not in practice have the right to work in Turkey. Syrian children supposedly can go to Turkish schools, but in reality UNICEF estimates that 325,000 school-age Syrians are not in education, and many of them are forced to participate in child labour, the BBC reports.

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch allege that Turkey has deported some Syrians back to northern Syria, where Daesh, Syrian rebels, the Syrian government, an al-Qaida franchise and Kurdish forces are all fighting for territory.

Turkey reportedly denies the claims.